Nietzsche on Slave Morality Essay Example

“Nietzsche on Judeo-Christian Morality” In Nietzsche’s aphorisms 90-95 and 146-162 he attacks what he believes to be the fundamental basis of the “slave” morality prevalent in the Judeo-Christian tradition as well as other religions and societies. From the beginning, he distinguishes the two different types of moralities he believes to exist: the “master morality”, created by rulers of societies, and the “slave” morality, created by the lowest people in societies. The former stresses virtues of the strong and noble while looking down upon the weak and cowardly. This type of morality, however, is not as widespread as the “slave morality” that has been adopted by so many religions. Nietzsche looks through the psychology and logic of the “slave morality” to determine its virtues and origins. One of the first things Nietzsche mentions in his critique of “slave morality” is how it seems to closely associate the concept of good with stupidity and naïveté. “Slave morality” makes the “good natured, harmless, easy to deceive man” the model people should strive to be according to Nietzsche. Power is viewed as a corrupting quality, which one must admit is certainly a common theme in the Bible and history. This also is a good point that Nietzsche seems to be making: of course power and the misuse of power are viewed to be “evil” in “slave morality”; this is a morality created by the people who have constantly been under the thumb of evil rulers throughout history. The Jews were enslaved in Egypt, early Christians were persecuted for decades, and throughout the version of history we read the lower people suffering are always seen as the “good guys”, even the American Revolution is an example of this. This brings up another critique of morality made apparent to me by Nietzsche: does it have any actual basis in anything proven to be real? It’s very similar to Darwin’s work in this way. Darwin begs the question “are humans really special creatures endowed with