Animal Morality And Master Morality

In his book, Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche examines the origins of Good and Evil. He postures that these two concepts are derived from language, rather than essential morality. He argues that people label things as good or evil based upon their personal feelings and position of privilege. Douglas Smith translated this edition of Genealogy of Morals into English, but he also included explanations of some of Nietzsche’s key concepts. According to Smith, “A central concept in Nietzsche’s argument, ressentiment is the essence of slave morality, a purely reactive mode of feeling which simply negates the active and spontaneous affirmation of values on the part of the nobility” (142). Ressentiment stems from the oppressed party’s jealousy. The oppressed do not accept that it is bad that they do not have the luxuries and rights that the nobility posses. Instead, the oppressed use ressentiment, flip the moral spectrum, and declare that those luxuries are evil.

It does not find its root and origin in objective circumstances; it originates from a place of suppression, of seeking freedom, and most significantly, of ressentiment. Herein the idea Nietzsche proposes is that the slaves are responsive against their noble masters because they are weak and impotent, leading to the festering of hatred and resentment. This means that values culminating from the revolt would be inaccurate in representing the true meaning of “good” or “evil”, because they were formed through the tainted lens of the slaves of ressentiment. They would portray the slaves, the weak, and the powerless as “good” and favourable, while casting the nobles, the masters, and the upperclassmen in an “evil” and malicious light. This inverts the original notion that the nobles are the definition of “good”. Nietzsche expounds this situation by clarifying that the nobles become “blond beast[s]” (Nietzsche, page 128) when out of their familiar circumstances, insinuating that they turn into a barbaric state where they seek victory over those who are inferior to them. In turn, displays of brutality will be expressed, as a by-product of this barbarism and therefore, fulfilling the morality of the nobles as “evil”. Nietzsche also expresses that this form of morality may not always be beneficial; it cages the

In her essay Speaking of Animal Rights, Warren (1987) argues for the weak animal rights position, which holds that non-human animals have weaker rights than human beings because non-human animals do not have the same moral status as us human beings (383-4). This is due to their lack of the ability to “reason well enough to function as autonomous moral agents” (385), which she believes is a requirement for being moral of human beings (384-5). In this essay, I will argue that Warren’s weak animal rights position misses the entire point about speaking of animals rights and we should instead recognize non-human animals as our moral equals and grant them full moral rights in virtue of their entitlement to dignified existence , rather than basing moral equality and rights upon rationality, as Warren indicates.

There are arguments made that would support the eating or medical testing of animals, but there are also other arguments that do not support eating or medical testing of animals. When a person views these arguments using a virtue ethics position, the result would have to be in accordance with the view that the right actions are produced by the virtuous characteristic. The question asked is what would the moral status of animals be according to a virtue ethicist’s perspective; and if virtuous ethics is can be applied to the animal’s moral status? There are two types of moral statuses, a moral agent and moral patient: A moral agent is an individual whose actions can be established by moral reasons; a moral patient is an individual who needs

A comparable theme from both Nietzsche and Murdoch is that humans derive their beliefs about human nature from morality. Nietzsche believes morality is living out passions, rather than suppressing them as religion does. Nietzsche denies religious moral values and believes that each individual’s conscience has natural passion to determine what is immoral or moral. Nietzsche believes that as human beings get morality from nature. Nietzsche believes that there are people with a strong morality, who can carry out their passions in life, and there are those who do not have strong inner morals who cannot control their passions in life. Those who cannot control their passions suffer because their passion overpowers them. The greatest of moralities are “those that accommodate nature, the weakest are those that deny it” (Nietzche 535).

One of the main themes Nietzsche wrote about was how the master morality the foundation to the ancient romans, and that this morality disappeared as the slave morality of Christianity spread through ancient Rome. Nietzsche was concerned with the state of European culture during his natural life and therefore focused much of his study on the history of master and slave morality within Europe.

Nietzsche first introduces the concept of slave and master morality in the chapter about “Good, bad and evil”. He explains it as a society which is split into two, where a “militarily and politically dominant group of ‘masters’ exercises absolute control over a completely subordinate group of ‘slaves” (xx). Thus, the slaves become the abused, oppressed, and weak- what he refers to as slave morality. Meanwhile, the masters are the noble human beings who determine what is good and bad based on their own values- which he defines as master morality. This group of people do not set values and morals, but create them. They use the term “good” when referring to themselves, and use the term “bad” when referring to the “slaves”, “who by virtue are of their weakness are not capable of living the life of self-affirming physical exuberance” (Nietzsche 1884). Correspondingly, the slaves end up developing hatred for their masters and

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

Both sides of the dichotomy believe the other to be evil and themselves good. Nietzsche characterizes these two competing morality’s as slave and master morality. Master morality values dominance over the weak and despises cowardice, humility, and narrow utility. Conversely, slave morality values compassion, humility, and submissive behavior. Nietzsche believes that those accepting slave morality accept it because their condition doesn’t allow for fulfillment of master morality. This isn’t to say they would abandon slave morality if their condition improved, but that their initial acceptance is rooted in the restricted lifestyle of commoners.

Nietzsche’s first main idea is that “good” was utilized by noble classes to determine their own actions as useful. On the other hand, “bad” denoted the opposite, namely, the lower classes, or any action negatively useless or destructive to the noble class. Thus, the origin of good and bad stemmed from the superiority of a higher class with respect to its lower class. As exemplified by Nietzsche, “everywhere, ‘noble’, ‘aristocratic’, in social estate is the basic concept from which ‘good’ as ‘spiritually noble’ developed”, whereas “‘bad referred to the common man with no derogatory implication” (13). On the other hand, the reflection on usage for slave morality contradicts the first dichotomy of good and bad.

The “on the genealogy of morality” is written by Fredrik Nietzsche, a German philosopher in 1887. The book contains three essays and mostly focusing on moral and morality and examines the morality. The first essay is on ‘Good and evil’, ‘Good and bad’ that come from different origin. When good come with bad it has a different meaning when it comes with evil that Nietzsche calls that the noble morality and slave morality. Noble framework good is defined strong, powerful, brave and bad is weakness, impotence and Slave frame work pious, compassionate, virtuous and bad is power, strength, and haughty honor. The slaves were feeling oppressed by the wealthy nobles or masters who had happy lives and they called the nobles and masters “evil” humans and called themselves as “good” human beings. His definition of good is an antithesis of the original Aristotle “good”. He mentions about Christianity that “Christianity is the religion of the

Hunting is our natural instinct which has been passed down from generation to generation. Since the beginning of time humans have hunted down animals for food which is seen as an acceptable norm in our society because animals fall under the food chain that is meant to be eaten by us humans. However, those hunting were done for our survival but nowadays it is for entertainment and to show dominance. Sports hunting is not only cruel but unnecessary because if we are to use an animal ethics than it falls under a negative aspect where we are killing innocent beings for our mere pleasure. Hunters kill endangered species and fail to realize the consequences or they just do not care. Philosopher Kant and Peter Carruthers stated animals are not rational

It is men of a noble rank that Nietzsche determines has the “master morality.” These are powerful, healthy and courageous men that are essentially barbaric to those they claim to be beneath them.

Nietzsche was the re-evaluator of human values and what it meant to be human—a critique of the theme, human values, that we’ve been following scantily through this paper. Nietzsche also drives home what’s at stake in believing one thing from another, most often turning his ire towards Christianity. What Nietzsche discovered, however, was that our beliefs weren’t truly our own. Instead, he found that we were adopting discourses and meaning from places other than ourselves—contradicting the belief that the INDIVIDUAL was subjectively and AUTONOMYSLY choosing their own course in life on their own. Power structures and discourses such as master-slave morality, Victorian era discourse of Good versus Evil (as opposed to the Greek discourse of Good versus Bad), and Christian belief in sin resulted in what Nietzsche called ressentiment. This idea of a tension between Greek ideas of Good and Bad versus the Victorian/Christian ideas of Good and Evil were essential to Nietzsche’s thought. In short, through a long historical power game, the “slave-revolt in morality” poisoned and corrupted the very values of a noble life—it amounted to a vindictive attempt to undermine the happiness of the fortunate. Ultimately, he pointed out what was at stake in blindly believing European morality, that it was baseless when their absolute authority was removed. To Nietzsche, these standard morals of altruism, guilt, moral responsibility, ascetic self-denial etc. were not just baseless but harmful. Rather than call for a brave new moral world, Nietzsche acknowledged that goodness had been internalized to a point where it would be a long and arduous journey for Europe to morally correct itself. This point of his in Genealogy of Morals is a long and nuanced treatise, but the main thrust of the argument is that virtue had been perverted and ensconced into European society in such a way that humans were barely capable of overcoming this dominant and pervasive discourse about virtue and Good and Evil. It would take a special man to overcome such psychologically entrenched discourse and fundamental belief, to gain a triumph of the will—a new type of man that later-Nietzsche called the Ubermensch. I personally view this struggle Nietzsche

The time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look upon the murder of men” (Leonardo Da Vinci)