Nietzsche

Refer to Sections 10, 11, 12, and 13 of Nietzsche’s First Essay and critically summarize his argument of the eventual victory of the “slaves revolt” in morality. In “First Essay: ‘Good and Evil’, ‘Good and Bad,’” which is part of the work On the Genealogy of Morality, Nietzsche outlines the two types of morality--aristocratic and slave--and describes the eventual overtaking of aristocratic morality by slave morality through the “slaves revolt.” Nietzsche claims that master morality came first, with its defining characteristics being the morality of the masters, nobles, and warriors who saw themselves and their actions as good, thus causing those characteristics associated with them to be viewed as good and the opposite of these to be considered bad. Slave morality, however, is derived from noble morality and is identified with the priests, plebeians, and slaves, who are weak, poor, and impotent, and therefore resent the strength and wealth of the masters. With this said, they declare the masters as evil and call themselves good. Although this logic seems to be valid, there is not such a clear divide between the masters and the slaves. If slave morality is based on resentment towards the masters and now that the world has succumbed to slave morality, then who are the masters we resent? This contradiction boils down to the fact that Nietzsche is oversimplifying the classes in society. If one is not a master, then it is not necessarily true that he is a slave, and if one is not a slave, it is not necessarily true that he is a master. It appears that Nietzsche is forgetting to take into account the middle class, such as the craftsmen and merchants, in his argument. Let me begin my assertion by explaining aristocratic morality in more detail, for we must understand how society functioned prior to the slaves revolt in order to understand the origins and motivations of slave morality. “The judgement ‘good’ does not emanate from those whom goodness is shown! Instead