Nietzsche and Morality

In Friedrich Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morals, the author discusses the origins of the development of common social morality, the rise of concepts such as personal conscience, and the fundamental nature of asceticism. Specifically, Nietzsche’s Genealogy is a collection of three essays that address these three concepts in depth. Nietzsche’s discussion on the relationship between “master morality” and “slave morality” provides the foundation of much of the philosopher’s views on the development of modern moral ethics and is based in large part on the contrast between the slave and the free man. Likewise, as time progresses, the concept of morality shifts towards an understanding where the “slaves” in society view themselves as good and their masters as bad, and the masters view their own strength  as a source of positive morality, and the weakness of the slave as the fault in their respective system of morality. This essay focuses on an analysis of the first treatise in the text, “Good and Evil, Good and Bad”. 

To start, Nietzsche begins his analysis of the origins of human nature and the moral and ethics system with a discussion on the merits of objectively defining “good” in the content of societal norms. For Nietzsche, power itself is what drives the development of moral systems and ideologies. Instead of “good” being defined as the example of the wealthy social elite as a reflection of their identity, the concept of proper ethical behavior and a positive morality is developed as a result of social control. Specifically, elites “felt and set themselves and their actions up as good” which, due to their position as the powerful overlords of society and sociocultural power, enabled them to define for themselves the idea of “good” (Nietzsche 2). Thus, the elite placed the mantle of what we deem good morality upon themselves, and decried the poor as “bad” in the sense that they fail to embody the virtues that allow the elite to justify the label of “good”. 

Nietzsche views the changes in the perceptions of the moral system as a result of the oppositional nature of slave morality. While the elite noble can “conceive the fundamental idea [of] “good” in advance”, the slave must rather define himself in opposition to the existing moral structure; slaves require “external stimuli” in order to lead to action (Nietzsche 14). Thus, while the noble classes view themselves as intrinsically happy and therefore good, the lower classes view their elite counterparts with great dislike and hatred and attempt to find as many flaws as possible in order to be able to define their own morality in opposition to the greed and excess of the wealthy and powerful. Here, Nietzsche’s concept of “resentment” becomes evident—when “resentment itself becomes creative”, the “resentment of those beings who are prevented from a genuinely active reaction and who compensate for that with a merely imaginary vengeance” are able to create their own moral structure outside of the established system (Nietzsche 10). Nietzsche then remarks on how the slave idea of “good” is precisely how the noble classes have defined “bad”, and that the slave’s concept of “bad” is defined as the noble’s idea of “good”. These are oppositional definitions that arise from the resentment of the slave position in the power allocation in society. 

Nietzsche offers a unique understanding of how social forces have created the contemporary definitions of good and bad. For Nietzsche, oppositional definitions that are borne out of the power play of social, economic, and political power variations between classes have led to the rise of opposing, yet synergistic, forms of moral behavior. 

Work Cited

Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm. On the Genealogy of Morals. New York: Vintage Books, 1967. Print.