Business Ethics
PHL 248-501
Final
“The beginning of the slaves’ revolt in morality occurs when ressentiment itself turns creative and gives birth to values: the ressentiment of those beings who, denied the proper response of action, compensate for it only with imaginary revenge. Whereas all noble morality grows out of a triumphant saying ‘yes’ to itself, slave morality says ‘no’ on principle to everything that is ‘outside’, ‘other’, ‘non-self ’: and this ‘no’ is its creative deed. This reversal of the evaluating glance – this essential orientation to the outside instead of back onto itself – is a feature of ressentiment: in order to come about, slave morality first has to have an opposing, external world, it needs, physiologically speaking, external stimuli in order to act at all, – its action is basically a reaction” (Nietzsche, First Essay para. 10). Slave morality is something that the inferior came up with to comfort themselves against their superiors. Those that are inferior use slave morality to cope with the fact that they are too weak to defend themselves against those who hold more power than them. Slaves do not like the fact that the wealthy have power and social status. Therefore, slave moralists view those who have authority as being evil and themselves (the commoners) as being good.
Nietzsche clearly states this in the example he uses with the birds and lambs. “– There is nothing strange about the fact that lambs bear a grudge towards large birds of prey: but that is no reason to blame the large birds of prey for carrying off the little lambs. And if the lambs say to each other, ‘These birds of prey are evil; and whoever is least like a bird of prey and most like its opposite, a lamb, – is good, isn’t he?’,” (Nietzsche, First Essay para 13). This paragraph is a perfect example of slave morality. The birds of prey are strong and take advantage of the lambs as they see fit. The lambs are weak and are not able to physically defend