In Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche first opens up by claiming his dissatisfaction of previous philosopher’s attempts of describing morality. Nietzsche claims that the idea of morality of being of no value is simply wrong; as people with higher morality are often worth more than people with low morality. He also goes on the explain the people of the lowest morality are priests- as they have created the most hate in the world. He then goes to say “Priests make everything more dangerous, not just medicaments and healing arts but pride, revenge, acumen, debauchery, love, lust for power, virtue, sickness” (16). Since different religions have different Gods who have different stances and moral on life, these beliefs cause a division between humans.
Nietzsche’s eternal return is a thought experiment made to guide people to have an insight on how living in a world without morals will be like. It goes like this, everything that has happened in will be repeated from what you from, what you said, did, and felt over your entire life over and over again. When you die, you get reborn immediately in the same year and place where your life started and you will get to relive your life exactly the same way you did in the previous life. This thought experiment encourages us to think like this, What if it was all real? So it encourages us to resort to the best methods we would want to relive over and over again.
According to Nietzsche, “The slave revolt in morality begins when ressentiment itself becomes creative and gives birth to values” (36). The slave class had become angry with the knightly aristocrats for their intolerance and physical bruteness towards them, and this provided the spark for the internal resentment in the slave class to manifest itself as a productive
Nietzsche began by showing his dissatisfaction with the English psychologists who tried to explain the origin of morality. They claim to be to be historians of morality, but completely lack a historical spirit. Their hypothesis claims that people benefitting from the unegoistic actions of others would praise those actions and call them “good”. Nietzsche said that a change takes place when the priestly caste gains power and it is said that the priestly caste “regards itself as “pure,” or “clean.” (Professor’s ppt), here pure and clean becomes the opposite of good and bad.
The Genealogy of Morals is Nietzsche's most nonstop critique of morality, that put on such a unique approach to value theory in a confusing way that made many of the readers feel lost in a whirlpool of his thoughts and made them struggle for some solid ground from which to assess his works. Certainly, much if not most of Nietzsche’s studies have suffered from misinterpretation about his work, due to a dependence on secondary sources, lack of knowledge of Nietzsche's primary study, the complexity of the works, and the failure to oversee see the background of the rest of his other works. This essay will be based on two pairs of moral terms which entail good and evil, good and bad as well as the role of slave and master morality as the origins
Nietzsche brings us to an incredible journey discussing distinction between the notion of “good” and “bad” while referring to what he calls master/slave morality. Though, his meaning of good and bad is not necessarily ours, because he is really talking about on the one hand nobility,the higher power mind and the common on the other hand. The idea of master nobility highlights the hierarchy in people and the noble think of themselves highly compared to the common person. On the contrary, slave morality is the opposite of noble morality, where there is rejection of hierarchy and morality is viewed as being equally applied to all regardless of class. People who are weak in will exhibit herd/ slave mentality that rejects life–affirming behaviors while denying basic instincts (Nietzsche 114).
The ones, the noble, who abide by the master morality is powerful, respects suffering and harshness, and is not made for pity. Hence, they are ‘good’. Nietzsche describes these people as “noble and courageous human beings” (260). Ones with master morality is the
In the first essay of On the Genealogy of Morals (GM), Friedrich Nietzsche resumes his work on a theme he had already addressed in his previous book, Beyond Good and Evil, which is about concepts of ‘good’, ‘bad’ and ‘evil’. In this essay that he titled ‘Good and Evil’, ‘Good and Bad’, Nietzsche analyses the relations of strife between what he considers to be the three social classes that constitute a society, that is to say the masters, the priests and the slaves. It is clear that the masters are strong while the slaves are weak, however it is more complex to place the priests, that one could argue are ‘weak nobles’ while others see them as ‘strong slaves’. This essay argues that Nietzsche’s essay offers a very interesting explanation for
An attempt to propose a universal moral law is invariably a denial of the fullest expression of man’s elementary vital energies. As a consequence he condemned Christianity and Judaism as worse offenders because they are both contrary to man’s basic nature and thus produced what he called botched and bungled lives and debilitates man. Hence he proposes a morality that is not based on God, but allows man to realise himself and be free of any religious caprices. He therefore proposes twofold idea of good and evil, and that is, the master morality and the slave morality. 3.3.1 Master Morality (Herren-Moral):
A custom can act to fulfill a purpose entirely different from that which it was intended to serve and by questioning the ideals that have been passed down, we can accurately assess the significance of certain values. Morality is a system of interpretation and implementation whereby something’s function may have become entirely removed from its purpose. According to Nietzsche, nothing has inherent value, everything is given value and purpose by people and in relation to something else (Nietzsche). As an ideology is used to the advantage of emerging authority figures and assigned a new function, its previous purpose and history become insignificant to its modern relations (Nietzsche).
As mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, Nietzsche’s sets out his project in On the Genealogy of Morals because of culture’s negligence in investigating its own values. In this respect, the application of genealogy to some moral is not moved by pure curiosity. In turn, just like irony genealogy is motivated by a critical interest toward morality. Accordingly, at the outset of GM we find Nietzsche framing its work’s Leitfragen as ‘[…] under what conditions did man devise these value judgements good and evil? And what value do they themselves possess?
Nietzsche argues, “compensation is made up of a warrant for and entitlement to cruelty” (41). Punishment to the debtor, either by the creditor or other authority, is a form of pleasure, and because the inferior was violated, his debt is paid as humiliation and harm were
In the essay “Good and Evil, Good and Bad”, written by Nietzsche, he defines the evolution of two different sets of moral codes: the “master” morality and the “priestly” morality. He condemns the “English psychologists” as missing the “historical spirit.” The English psychologists claim that our concept of “good” is essentially derived from our concept of the “useful”, though this connection is usually forgotten. According to Nietzsche, the psychologists’ beliefs are unhistorical in at least two areas: first, it projects the psychologists’ own obsession with “utility” into the subject of their uncertainty, giving upswing to an intellectual time in their history of morality. This prompts them to falsely define the “good” and “evil” from the
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE Friedrich Nietzsche was a German philosopher, essayist, and cultural critic. Before he started to been philosophize, he started his vocation as a classical philologist. Friedrich Nietzsche was born on 15 October 1844 and passed away on 25 August 1990 at age 55. Nietzsche 's body of work is related extensively on art, philology, history, religion, tragedy, culture and also science.
Nietzsche ‘s critique on the traditional concept of responsibility is heavy handed and sometimes quite harsh. It’s ludicrous to believe in this traditional notion, firstly because responsibility and moral judgement is merely a construct and, secondly, free will cannot account for a cause to an action or effect. Nietzsche criticises western notion of responsibility through deconstructing conceptuality and causality. Both are concepts which are, such as language, manmade constructs- fictions. Language is used to communicate, but not to thoroughly explain.
