Slave Morality and beyond Good and Evil

rusvik

rusvik

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Nietzsche began his career as a philologist (student of ancient text and languages) and developed an overriding interest in the Ancient Greeks, who he thought represented the peak of Western civilization before the onset of ‘slave’ or ‘herd’ morality which culminated in Christian, Utilitarian and Kantian systems of ethics (among others). Like Callicles, Nietzsche argued that morality was something developed by ‘weak’ people in order to defend themselves from the ‘strong’.


At this point, we might recall the elitism of Aristotle’s ethics, where moral excellence is only available to the nobility. However, Nietzsche has something rather different in mind. One of the main themes in Nietzsche’s work is that ancient Roman society was grounded in master morality, and that this morality disappeared as the slave morality of Christianity spread through ancient Rome. Nietzsche was concerned with the state of European culture during his lifetime and therefore focused much of his analysis on the history of master and slave morality within Europe (partly through the rise of ‘slave’ religion like Christianity.


The superior person looks with profound suspicion on values such as compassion, pity, and selflessness, as well as on the ideal of equality of all persons. Superior people, in expressing the will to power, embody completely natural human functioning; they live the most completely actualized human lives, and as such, are happy, energetic, and optimistic about the human condition.


Slave morality, by contrast, is pessimistic and fearful. Slaves are victims (the “abused, oppressed, suffering, unemancipated, the weary and those uncertain of themselves”; but according to Nietzsche, most slaves choose to be victims. Slave morality is timid, and favours a limited existence; it “makes the best of a bad situation.” It promotes the virtues that “serve to ease existence for those who suffer: here pity, the complaisant and obliging hand, the warm heart, patience, industry, humility, and friendliness are honored — for here these are the most useful qualities and almost the only means for enduring the pressure of existence. Slave morality is essentially a morality of utility,” i.e., a morality that values the mediocre group over the superior individual.

 In slave morality, “good” means “tending to ease suffering” and “evil” means “tending to inspire fear.” (In master morality, by contrast, it’s good to inspire fear.) Nietzsche believes that slave morality is expressed in the standard moral systems (particularly Christianity and utilitarianism). That is, Christianity and utilitarianism both exemplify the same ideology: the ideology of the majority, the herd, the cowardly, the conventional, the less-than-fully-human. Inferior people, who outnumber the superior ones, use ideologies (“slave moralities”) like Christianity, utilitarianism, and Marxism, to try to deny the will to power. They promulgate silly ideas like equality, and urge “virtues” like humility and pity. But they are trying to live a lie; they are trying to deny obvious facts of nature, and trying to make a virtue of their weakness and cowardice. In so doing, they develop artificial boundaries that constrain the strong from reaching their full potential.
Nietzsche thinks slave moralities have pretty much taken over as the official moralities of the Western world; unlike most philosophers, he thinks the triumph of ideals like equality and democracy in modern times is a great tragedy for humanity. Equality and democracy are for Nietzsche the worst, not the best, values; they are the exact opposite of what humans in their hearts actually value, the opposite of what it is natural to value. Inferior people naturally see the superiority of their “natural” masters; hence by nature, they fear them and feel uncomfortable with them. When slave morality takes hold, the inferior ones are suddenly given “moral” license to brainwash and persecute those who try to express the will to power. Thus when the ideal of equality rules, the best specimens of humanity are at risk. Nietzsche would like to revert to an ancient “classical” time when the “natural aristocrats” (those who expressed the will to power) actually ruled.


For Nietzsche, any feelings of guilt are simply the ‘bad conscience’ of unhealthy Christian morality, which ‘turns a blind eye’ to our natural inclinations. He is not critical of all morality, however: he appeals to the ‘higher morality’ that informs the actions of the ‘great man’. What these might specifically be is not explained in detail (for the ‘great man’ creates his own morality) these would be morals which are in some sense ‘life-affirming’.


Under Nietzsche’s interpretation, moral values are symptoms or signs of a deeper physiological condition, psychological state, or attitude toward life. Nietzsche uses various terms to describe the antithesis between two radically opposed attitudes toward life exhibited by moral values in general. ‘Moral’ values are those of denial, sickness, metaphysics, of the reactionary and the plebiscite. The kind of life that Nietzsche thinks is not like this. Instead, a noble life is affirmative, creative, healthy, egoistic and brimming over with vitality. Such a person, for Nietzsche, sees that moral philosophy belongs to slave morality.
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Nietzsche on Master and Slave Morality | PY-111
 


dsm56 said:
Why is Nietzsche hated a so much less than Ayn Rand? Funny dat.
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One of the reasons is that the whole 'Will to Power' and 'Ubermensch' was taken quite literally be the Nazis.

That and the fact that socialist like to distort the meaning of popular philosophy and story, similar as to how Robin Hood, the great libertarian tax avenger, became a sobbing wellfare distributing fag in the minds of socialists.
 
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hehejo said:
Because he was "insane".
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To be fair when he wrote most of his work he was completely sane.


rusvik said:
One of the reasons is that the whole 'Will to Power' and 'Ubermensch' was taken quite literally be the Nazis.

That and the fact that socialist like to distort the meaning of popular philosophy and story, similar as to how Robin Hood, the great libertarian tax avenger, became a sobbing wellfare distributing fag in the minds of socialists.
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A big part of that was because Nietzsche's sister was a Nazi. None of Nietzsche's own writing supported Nazism in any way, but when he died his sister took a lot of his unpublished work, edited it to be very sympathetic of Nazism and then released it.
 
cardine said:
A big part of that was because Nietzsche's sister was a Nazi. None of Nietzsche's own writing supported Nazism in any way, but when he died his sister took a lot of his unpublished work, edited it to be very sympathetic of Nazism and then released it.
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Well, he did accuse the jews of bringing slave morality into Europe through Christianity, but as far as I know, he wasn't an anti-semitte and had jewish friends.
 
Nietzsche said:
Superior people, in expressing the will to power, embody completely natural human functioning; they live the most completely actualized human lives, and as such, are happy, energetic, and optimistic about the human condition.
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Every time I've heard some derivation of this quote I had to wince... At least in the modern world, being a "superior person" is to have standards way too high for society to meet, and therefore is destined to meet with disappointment all throughout the day, every day.

Frankly I find the world we live in, with over 7 billion stupid, brainwashed sheep in it, a GREAT disappointment; and no matter how successful I become, I will never, EVER become "optimistic about the human condition."

Now technology... That I can become optimistic about... But the human condition holds us back by centuries of progress in that arena. :(
 
If the flynn effect is true then it means people are getting smarter, and yet we have record foodstamps, unemployment and disability insurance. The future of america is 80+% of the country on some form of government assistance. It's not that we're not smart enough or a lack of work ethic, but society is moving too fast for many to keep up. it's a pretty depressing future, certainly not what the founding fathers had in mind.
 
lukep said:
Every time I've heard some derivation of this quote I had to wince... At least in the modern world, being a "superior person" is to have standards way too high for society to meet, and therefore is destined to meet with disappointment all throughout the day, every day.

Frankly I find the world we live in, with over 7 billion stupid, brainwashed sheep in it, a GREAT disappointment; and no matter how successful I become, I will never, EVER become "optimistic about the human condition."

Now technology... That I can become optimistic about... But the human condition holds us back by centuries of progress in that arena. :(
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Have you considered... You know... That you could maybe not belong to those superior people?
 
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lukep said:
Every time I've heard some derivation of this quote I had to wince... At least in the modern world, being a "superior person" is to have standards way too high for society to meet, and therefore is destined to meet with disappointment all throughout the day, every day.

Frankly I find the world we live in, with over 7 billion stupid, brainwashed sheep in it, a GREAT disappointment; and no matter how successful I become, I will never, EVER become "optimistic about the human condition."

Now technology... That I can become optimistic about... But the human condition holds us back by centuries of progress in that arena. :(
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Do you think we'll eventually be able to overcome or circumvent the human condition with the help of technology?
 
pfgannon said:
Do you think we'll eventually be able to overcome or circumvent the human condition with the help of technology?
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What a great fucking question... This makes today almost worth getting out of bed.

I'd lost all hope of tech having that effect on humanity years ago, pretty much at the same time I figured out why politicians keep their jobs.

Humanity is fucked up, and they mostly need their overlords to tell them how to do every little thing... But over the last couple or three years I've been seeing a lot of great clues about how that problem can be stopped/destroyed.

(& no, I'm not talking about Eugenics.;))

There appears to be a possible solution within negative feedback loops created with technologies that circumvent government services.

Obviously the internet is such a technology that spawns these loops, but it's only one of many I've been seeing lately, and they are popping up at an awesome rate.

I'm not going to go into any detail on a public forum about them, but feel free to PM or skype me if you're curious.

So my official answer is: "Lookin' more likely." Time will tell but I've just gotten to the point myself where I am starting to feel positive about it.
 
avatar33 said:
This thread reminds me of this question: would you rather be loved or feared?
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And the answer is that the very question is a typical slave morality false dilemma. Of course you can be both loved and feared at the same time.
 
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