Beyond Good and Evil: Nietzsche's Philosophy on Good and Evil

This paper is a comparative study between Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil and Martin Luther King Jr’s Letter from Birmingham Jail. Detailing their views regarding ethical and unethical law.

“As soon as a religion comes to dominate it has as its opponents all those who would have been its first disciples.” Nietzsche was one of the first modern philosophers to rebel against rationalism and when World War I came about, the revolution against religion truly became a legitimate statement. Friedrich Nietzsche strongly believed that many of those that practiced religion were led to the acceptance of slave morality. Religion had always played a fundamental role in society as it sets strict boundaries and standards of what is morally correct and incorrect. However, Nietzsche claims that, “Human nature is always driven by “ ‘the will to power’ ”, but religion will tell one otherwise, saying that one should forbid their bad desires. In Nietzsche’s

According to Nietzsche, the right and wrong (good and bad, good and EVIL) are just a type of the concept. Nietzsche explains that from the beginning in his first argument that the “good” did not originate among those to whom goodness was shown. It explains that the trait of “good” was really a trait as we know it today, it was actually people who were good themselves, which is Aristocratic who are powerful, high minded and high class people who controls the class below them and also politics in some cases. This was the concept that defined what right and wrongs were because it cleared things out that good was really a trait but the people who were powerful and high class in society, unlike bad which was completely opposite. But over the time

Masters and slaves are constantly discussed throughout Nietzsche’s work, but the connection between them is discussed best in his book On the Genealogy of Morality. The first of the three essays outlines two alternate structures for the creation of values, which is credited to masters and the other to slaves.

In a small rebel held town in Idlib province, the Syrian government used chemical weapons and killed dozens of civilians and injured hundreds more, including children. On April 6th United States President Donald J. Trump sent fifty-nine cruise missiles to an airbase responsible for the attack to protect the people of Syria. In this situation Donald Trump wanted to help the innocent civilians, but also made the United States a target and put the citizens of U.S. at risk. This is a perfect example of good versus evil. Literature writing also uses the theme of good versus evil. In the books The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and Night by Elie Wiesel the themes of good and evil are developed by showing selfishness and loss.

Nietzsche was a revolutionary author and philosopher who has had a tremendous impact on German culture up through the twentieth century and even today. Nietzsche's views were very unlike the popular and conventional beliefs and practices of his time and nearly all of his published works were, and still are, rather controversial, especially in On the Genealogy of Morals. His philosophies are more than just controversial and unconventional viewpoints, however; they are absolutely extreme and dangerous if taken out of context or misinterpreted. After Nietzsche's death it took very little for his sister to make some slight alterations to his works to go along with Nazi ideology.

Throughout his writings, Nietzsche aims to inform his readers that we as humans can only reach our potential by following our passions and ignoring the flawed ideals of the church. Under the doctrine of the church’s morality, innate passions of its followers must be abolished in order to become proper Christians. By destroying the inner passions of its followers, the church is doing a great disfavor by using morality to rule out nature from their lives.

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

Friedrich Nietzsche was a German philosopher who believed that master morality was the superior morality as opposed to slave morality. He starts in the selection of “In Beyond Good and Evil” by saying “To refrain mutually from injury, from violence, from exploitation and put one’s will on par with that of others: this may result in a certain rough sense in good conduct among individuals when the necessary conditions are given…” Nietzsche explains here that if everyone could just treat each other equally, the world would be a lot better. In his opinion, those who believe this refuse to believe what this way of thinking really is, which is “a Will to the denial of life”. At this point, one has to think very deeply to the basis and must resist all sentimental weakness. Nietzsche says that “life itself is ESSENTIALLY appropriation, injury, conquest of the strange and weak, suppression, severity, obtrusion of peculiar forms, incorporation, and at the least, putting it mildest, exploitation,” but why should these words be used specifically when we live in a world where for ages the world has been marked with a disparaging purpose? People in a society treat each other in an equal manor. This type of behavior is taken place in almost every healthy aristocracy. If the society considered itself a healthy and not a dying society, and continues to maintain a positive outlook of things and refrain from doing negative things within the society, then the society will be the “incarnated

For Nietzsche, “the slave revolt in morality begins when ressentiment itself becomes creative and gives birth to values: the ressentiment of natures that are denied the true reaction, that of deeds, and compensate themselves with an imaginary revenge.” (Nietzsche 913). This imaginary revenge causes the complete reversal in defining words of class. The resentful slaves and priests looked up at the nobility with anger, characterizing them as selfish, corrupted, abusive and tyrannical, among other things. Ultimately, they came to the conclusion that the nobility were the pinnacle of evil. In doing so, “he has conceived ‘the evil enemy,’ ‘the Evil One,’ and this in fact is his basic concept, from which he then evolves, as an afterthought and pendant, a ‘good one’—himself!” (Nietzsche 915). Through the venomous eye of ressentiment, the slave class has characterized the good men, those with strong moral character as evil, and in doing so, has

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.

In Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche discusses how he is not a believer in democracy. The principles of democracy were put together by levelers, or people that believe in democracy. These principles lead to equality that restrains life to one universal truth and Nietzsche did not agree with this idea at all. He believed that these principles caused people to form into one large herd. In this herd, people follow one another with no will to power, which results in the downfall of individual rights and instincts. This makes the herd the definition of morality in society, which Nietzsche disagrees with. But he brings up the idea of neighbor love. Neighbor love is the idea that we are all in one herd so we are all equal which creates us to all

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

3). In his most basic claims, Nietzsche implicitly negates the possibility of a “disinterested” or “objective” truth. He would not urge so definitively for an affirmation of reality, if he held out for the possibility of fantasy or god. The ‘innocence of becoming’ is a clear example of how Nietzsche, for all intents and purposes, “debunk[‘s]” the relevance of claims made by traditional authorities. In essence, Nietzsche basically nullifies the relevance of societal hierarchy. Not only this, but the further claims made by such a society regarding morality and philosophical thinking, are seen to be – at best – gullible and naïve. The ‘innocence of becoming’ refers to even the lowest classes of society finding power in their status. In lieu of accepting that we are completely alone in the world, Nietzsche asserts that we have a constant need to blame others for our state. It is simply much easier to do than to accept that everything we do has no genuine or reaching consequences. While the ‘innocence of becoming’ is not necessarily an innocent process as those we choose to blame are usually blameless, it is fair to say that we are innocent of it; much like the ‘will to power’ it also works through self-deception. Evidently we are able to commit to life affirmation by essentially taking no responsibility for our weakness. Christianity itself is closely connected with the ‘becoming’ process as in its

Nietzsche is widely known as a critic of religion. In fact, he talks in depth about morality in regards to religion in his essays about the genealogy of morals. But the problem is not within religion itself or within morals. The problem is involved in the combination of the two to create society’s understanding of morality through a very religious lens. In fact, Nietzsche has criticism for almost any set of morals constructed by a group of individuals and meant to be applied to society as a whole. True morality, according to Nietzsche, requires a separation from these group dynamic views of morality- or at least a sincere look into where they originated and why they persist- and a movement towards a more introverted, and intrinsically personalized understanding of what morals mean in spite of the fact that “the normative force to which every member of society is exposed, in the form of obligations, codes of behavior, and other moral rules and guidelines, is disproportionally high” (Korfmacher 6).