Nietzsche's 'On The Genealogy Of Morals'

In On The Genealogy Of Morals Friedrich Nietzsche is arguing that a revaluation of our values is needed, and as an example of such revaluation, he gives his narrative of the “slave revolt”. The “slave revolt,” he argues, began with a struggle for power between the priests and the knightly aristocrats. The priests, having much more intelligence than the knightly aristocrats, lacked physical strength; the knightly aristocrats, on the other hand, had brute strength, but lacked intelligence. Because of their lack of strength, the priests had to find a way to overthrow the knightly aristocrats without using physical coercion. To do this, they utilized the slave class. 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

Master morality, first and foremost, refers to people and the actions that these people demonstrate. For example, in master morality, those individuals who are powerful and wealthy are regarded as “good,” and those individuals who are not powerful or lack wealth are regarded as “bad.” This came to be because those in power created the ideas of master morality and designated what was to be regarded as “good” and “bad”. Naturally, the people who were considered “good” at the time were also the people who were creating the ideas of “good” and “bad.” Anybody below these aristocrats was considered “bad” and viewed as