"What Nietzsche sometimes condemns as 'herd morality' he also describes as 'slave morality,' a morality fit for slaves and servants. Although there are strong suggestions of this view in some of Nietzsche's earlier works (Daybreak and Human, All Too Human), it is first fully stated in Beyond Good and Evil, and later more thoroughly worked out in On the Genealogy of Morals. In Beyond Good and Evil Nietzsche boldly announces that 'wandering through the many subtler and coarser moralities which have so far been prevalent on earth . . . I finally discovered two basic types, . . . master and slave morality.' He immediately adds that these two usually intermingle and function together in all sorts of complex ways, and that they even coexist 'within a single soul.' This simple dichotomy belies Nietzsche's own insistence on subtlety and complexity, to be sure, but in the Genealogy he makes it quite clear that what he is giving us is a 'polemic,' an oversimplified but brutally thought-provoking way of looking at morality.
Morality, in the singular sense presented in the Bible and defended by Kant, is slave morality. In its most crude form it consists of general principles imposed from above (by the rulers or by God) that yoke and constrain the individual. In its subtler and more sophisticated forms, that external authority is relocated internally - in the faculty of reason, for example. But what is most characteristic of Morality in either its crude or its sophisticated forms is that it is mainly prohibitive and constraining rather than inspiring. Kant may have been 'awed' by 'the Moral Law within,' but the Categorical Imperative itself, as he spells it out in several general formulas, consists mainly of implicit 'Thou shalt nots' ('Only act such that you would have others in the same circumstances act in the same way,' 'always treat people as ends and never as means only') The ultimate test of a maxim, according to Kant, is whether when universalized it is something that logically cannot be done. Nietzsche, of course, thinks that universalization is utterly irrelevant to virtue. Indeed, insofar as it can be universalized (or even generally described!) a virtue is diminished or destroyed.
Master morality, by contrast, is an ethics of virtue, an ethics in which personal excellence is primary. But personal excellence is not to be contrasted with (or set in opposition to) personal happiness, as obligation so often is. Achieving excellence is precisely what makes one happy, according to both Nietzsche and Aristotle. To grudgingly fulfill one's obligations, at some cost to one's own goals and satisfaction, makes one unhappy. (Righteousness is a poor substitute for happiness.) The 'master' takes as his or her morality (in the anthropological sense) just those values, ideals, and practices that are personally preferable and suitable. The 'master' is epitomized neither by the overly genteel Aristotelian gentleman nor by the overly brutal Homeric heroes but by the very civilized yet still sufficiently Dionysian Greeks of the Golden Age. Master morality takes as its watchword "Become who you are,' and whether or not one turns out to be like anyone else, or even whether or not one is acceptable to others, are matters of no concern.
It is the masters. Nietzsche tells us, who establish the meaning of 'good.' The masters use this term to refer to what they see as admirable, desirable, satisfying, and, in fact, to refer to themselves. (The bombastic Roman general in the musical A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum sings out proudly, 'I am my own ideal!') They thus recognize the distinctions between what is good and what is bad, but the latter refers only to deficiencies of the good, what is frustrating or debilitating, to failure, or inadequacy, to what is other than themselves, their tastes, their virtues, and to others who fail or fall behind. No principles, rulers, or gods are necessary to make the distinction, which arises from the ideals and desires of the masters themselves. Putting it simply, one might summarize master morality as 'being myself, and getting what I want,' with the understanding that what one is and what one wants may be quite refined and noble. (To interpret 'getting what I want' as an expression of selfishness reflects an impoverishment of desire, a sure sign of slave morality.) Not getting what one wants is bad, not necessarily in any larger sense (such as causing disastrous consequences for the community, or violating God's laws and inviting divine retribution) but simply because it falls short of one's own aspirations and ideals.
For the slaves, by contrast, getting what one wants is just too difficult, too unlikely, too implausible. Slaves do not like themselves, so the idea of becoming who you are is not particularly appealing. Slaves ultimately do not value getting what one wants but, in a perverse yet readily comprehensible sense, not getting what one wants. Their virtue lies not in being themselves but in not being the other, the master, the privileged, the oppressor. The masters see the slaves as pathetic, as miserable, as unhappy, both because they don't get what they want and because what they want is often so petty. But the slaves do not see themselves that way. They see themselves as deprived. They see themselves as oppressed. They see themselves, in modern terms, as victims. Nor do they see the masters as merely happy and fulfilled. The slaves see them as oppressors, as people with the wrong values, the wrong ideals, the wrong ideas about living.
Thus, in the long history of Morality there came about a most remarkable 'revaluation of values,' according to Nietzsche. First the ancient Hebrews, then the early Christians, turned master morality on its head, declaring that the very values and ideals that masters took to be the heart of their ethics were in fact offensive, first to God, then secondarily to God's righteous believers. Getting what you want, rather than being the standard of ethics, is the root of all evil. In slave morality, the simple distinction between good and bad gets replaced by the metaphysical distinction between good and evil. The masters' distinction between good and bad simply refers to getting versus not getting what one wants, fulfilling versus not fulfilling one's aspirations. The slaves' distinction between good and evil refers, instead, to external and 'objective' standards, God's will and principles of reason. Nietzsche sees in this reformulation of values an 'act of . . . spiritual revenge' --
'The wretched alone are the good; the suffering, depraved, sick, ugly alone are pious, alone are blessed by God . . . and you, the powerful and noble, are, on the contrary, the evil, the cruel, the lustful, the insatiable, the godless to all eternity, and you shall be in all eternity unblessed, the accursed, and damned!'
-- It is in contrast to the sometimes bloated pretensions of philosophy, theology, and metaphysical dogma that simple appeals to motives and emotion gain their force. In attacking Christianity and Judeo-Christian morality, Nietzsche does not remain on the same level of esoteric abstraction as his religious and moral antagonists. What he does instead is to dig under them. What could be more effective against the self-righteous pronouncements of some philosophers and theologians than an ad hominem argument that undermines their credibility, that reduces their rationality and piety to petty personal envy or indignation? What could be more humiliating for a morality that incessantly preaches against selfishness and self-interest than the accusation that it is in fact not only the product of impotent self-interest but hypocritical as well? And what could be a more effective argument against theism than ridiculing the psychosociological ground out of which such a belief has arisen?
Such humiliation is Nietzsche's objective in his psychological guerrilla war against Christianity and Judeo-Christian bourgeois Morality. Nietzsche wants to shock us. He wants to offend us. He wants us to see through the rationalized surface of traditional Morality to its historical genealogy, the actual human beings who lie behind it. Like Hegel, his great misunderstood predecessor, he holds that one can truly understand a phenomenon only when one understands its origins, its development, and its overall place in human consciousness. But understanding a phenomenon, in this sense, does not always lead to further appreciation.
Nietzsche contends that what we call 'Morality' originated among actual slaves, the miserable Lumpenproletariat of the ancient world (a term introduced by Marx to denote the lowest classes of society). Morality continues to be motivated by the servile and resentful emotions of those who are 'poor in spirit' and feel themselves inferior. 'Morality,' however brilliantly rationalized by Immanuel Kant as the dictates of Practical Reason or by the utilitarian philosophers as 'the greatest good for the greatest number,' is, according to Nietzsche, essentially the devious strategy of the weak to gain some advantage (or at least minimize their disadvantage) vis-a-vis the strong. What we call Morality, even if it includes (indeed emphasizes) the sanctity of life, displays palpable disgust for life, a 'weariness' with life, an 'otherworldly' longing that prefers some other, idealized existence to this one.
To describe this, of course, is not to 'refute' the claims of Morality. Morality might still be, as Kant argued, the product of Practical Reason and such a matter of universalized principles. Nietzsche concedes that it may in fact be conducive to the greatest good for the greatest number, the public good. But to recognize that such obsessions with rational principles and general welfare are products and symptoms of an underlying sense of inferiority is certainly to take the glamour and the seeming 'necessity' out of Morality.
The great moral philosophers have given us visions of the perfect society (Plato), portraits of the happy, virtuous life (Aristotle), formal analysis of Morality (Kant), and impassioned defenses of the principles of utility and equality (Mill). Nietzsche, by contrast, offers us a diagnosis, in which morals emerge as something mean-spirited and pathetic. The basis of slave morality, he tells us, is resentment, a bitter emotion based on a sense of inferiority and frustrated vindictiveness. It is a thoroughly reactive emotion, provoked by the successes of others.
The contrast between slave morality and master morality ultimately comes down to this emotional difference: that the slave nurtures resentment until it 'poisons' him, while the master, noble and self-secure, expresses his feelings and frustrations. Although Nietzsche sometimes writes like an anthropologist, describing two alternative 'perspectives' on life, his continuous condemnation of resentment leaves little doubt as to which of the two 'moral types' he finds preferable. Nietzsche's 'genealogy' of morals is designed to make the novice reader uncomfortable with his or her own slavish attitudes, but it is also written to inspire a seductive sense of superiority, the urge to become a 'master.' These are dangerous attitudes, however, quite opposed to the edifying moral 'uplift' we usually expect from ethical treatises.
Nietzsche's 'genealogy' is, in fact, only partially a genealogy; it is much more a psychological diagnosis. It does not include a very condensed and rather mythic account of the history and evolution of morals, but the heart of his account is a psychological hypothesis concerning the motives and mechanisms underlying that history and evolution. 'The slave revolt of morality begins,' Nietzsche tells us in Genealogy, 'when ressentiment itself becomes creative and gives birth to values.'
Modern critics might well dismiss such speculation as yet another version of the 'genetic fallacy.' (That is, the question is not the genesis or the motivation of morals but rather the validity of our moral principles.) But even Kant himself insisted that one cannot evaluate the 'moral worth' of an action without considering its intentions. An action performed out of noble sentiments is noble, even if the act itself is rather small and inconsequential. An action expressing vicious sentiments is vicious, even if the act itself turns out to have benign consequences. At least in part, ethics is made up of what one might generically call 'feelings' - or, better, what Kant called the 'inclinations' - which would include not only respect, a sense of duty, and the sweet (but suspicious) sentiments of sympathy and compassion, but also the nasty negative emotions of envy, anger, hatred, vengeance, and, especially, resentment."
Master and Slave Morality
From - What Nietzsche Really Said Pg. 108-115
- Robert Solomon & Kathleen Higgins
