Nietzsche's Genealogy Of Good Vs. Good Evil 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.

The Birds of Prey are natural predators, seeking out the wekaest prey to latch on to in order to gain the energy for life, and the nobles, according to Nietzsche, are doing the exact same. He portrays this idea with the statement, “ to demand of strength that it not express itself as strength that is not be a desire to overwhelm, a desire to cast down, a desire to become a lord, a thirst for enemies and resistance and triumphs, is just as nonsensical as to demand of weakness that it express itself as strength,” (Nietzsche, 13) meaning that all the actions that the Birds of Prey have commited are being undertaken because it would be unjust for them to deny who they truly are. He is portraying that if a group is powerful, they will strive to stay on top and therefore, all their actions will be justified with the idea that it is in our very nature to act in our own self interest, and those who oppose are only furthering themselves from the actual truth of morality. Because of this, the lambs and the little lambs who consider themselves to be “patient, humble, and righteous,” are in the wrong according to Nietzsche when they claim that, “good is everyone who does not do violence.., who

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

This is a significant problem to the revealed religions because they believe in a wholly good and omnipotent God. Why then, would this God allow evil? In this paper, I will provide, explain, and evaluate St. Augustine of Hippo’s

I agree with the Nietzsche’s claim that “Every elevation of the type ‘man’ has hitherto been the work of an aristocratic society and so it will always be”. I agreed because in our society those things happen between upper and lower class family. Most of the time upper class family used to dominate and criticize lower class family in each step of their foots. Some time middle class family also cannot leave to dominate lower class family in their each step. Higher-class family has more power, take delight or pleasure in things, and possess more wealth and benefit. Lower class family deprived from all of these things.

Friedrich Nietzsche was a philosopher in the 1800’s. His work has since influenced, impacted, and brought forth new questions for many philosophers to follow. One of Nietzsche’s famous writings Beyond Good and Evil expresses his views on society and the two different classes it holds, slave and master. He expresses his belief that the two are in warfare with one another, the strong (master) fighting for the will to power, while the weak (slave) tries to pull the master down to their level using clandestine forms of revenge. Nietzsche believed the slave morality was one that included humility, obedience, and submission, and was the destructive choice and attribute of Christianity, while the master morality was full of arrogance and pride

Nietzsche writes, “we want to show them the advantage of being in our power-that way, they will be more satisfied with their situation and more hostile towards and willing to fight against the enemies of our power.” This philosophy is very similar to when El Patron says to Matt, “Without me, you would never have seen a beautiful sunset or smelled the rain approaching on the wind… I gave you these things, Mi Vida. You… owe… me.” El Patron only gave Matt life so that Matt would feel indebted to El Patron therefore, being less resistant to give El Patron his organs. Another similarity is that both Keepers and Nietzsche's philosophy is that they are more hospitable to their equals and scorn those who are unworthy. Nietzsche writes, “the members of the knightly caste became accustomed to treating each other with exquisite courtesy.” which is much the same as how the Keepers treated one another. The Keepers, just as the members of the knightly caste, treated one another with extreme hospitality, and treated the Lost Boys, whom were “not worthy of their contention and pride”, with great hostility. Although The House of the Scorpion and “On the Doctrine of the Feeling of Power” are very different genres, there are bits and pieces of similarities in concepts of power that one may pull from the two

Good Bad is that of Nietzsche. Good Evil is the verbiage of the plebian, the nihilists that perpetuate the fallacy of Christian morality. Nietzsche’s genealogy of morality is intriguing because of the ironic, and hypocritical origin story that he develops. By pinpointing moments of inaccuracy and hypocrisy, he demonstrates the inefficacy of Good-Evil morality. Christian morality is rooted in envy and inefficacy, in a wish to achieve the strength of the aristocracy. This is replicated through ascetic teachings using weaknesses to the Christian advantage. Termed ressentiment – meaning hatred, and hostility – the envy of the proletariat, of the weak is used as the key term. Nietzsche claims that ressentiment refers to an inability to change a situation – to guilt. By focusing narrowly on the origins of Christian values, Nietzsche builds a story of emotion, trying to stimulate anger and resentment against the church. For Nietzsche, Christian Values arose out of weakness and trickery. The premise of their core values – justice and patience are used to explain away an inability to fulfill the desires of the slaves or the weak. However, a significant problem originates in Nietzsche’s attempt to acknowledge that Christianity originated in a lie that neither the weak nor the strong believed. If both the strong and the weak have memory on which to develop a history and morals – how did the Christian morality gain

When describing master-morality/noble morality, Nietzsche goes on to state that: “It is the powerful who know how to honour, it is their art, their domain for invention. The profound reverence for age and for tradition—all law rests on this double reverence, — the belief and prejudice in favour of ancestors and unfavorable to newcomers, is typical in the morality of the powerful; and if, reversely, men of “modern ideas” believe almost instinctively in “progress” and the “future,” and are more and more lacking in respect for old age, the ignoble origin of these “ideas” has complacently betrayed itself thereby.” Can you explain what Nietzsche is being said here, and how would Nietzsche, as a philosopher of hope and future possibilities, justify the atavism manifested here? (see page 8, section

Nietzsche states that morality is not composed by the everlasting word of God or by the incontrovertible rationality like most psychologists claim rather, morality is socially constructed invented by one group to distinguish and empower themselves at the expense of the weaker group. To be more specific, the powerful and rich define what is good, this was concluded when they saw the differences between them and the weak and poor people below them. This system was called Good and Bad Master Morality, with this system the rich and powerful gave certain words a specific meaning and associated them with people. If the nobles are considered

Nietzsche’s first essay refers the nobleman as ‘master morality’ and the lower class as ‘slave morality’ (p.17). Slave morality is recognised for their creative force from ressentiment or resentment. Slave morality defines power as the evil that harms people and states good as being nice and treat each other as equal.

Friedrich Nietzsche’s view of master and slave morality lies in the differentiation of two periods of time in western civilization. Before the fall of the Western Roman Empire, master ideals such as passion, pride, competition and the concept of accepting ones fate were accepted and considered positive traits. After the fall; Judeo/Christian thought replaced master ideals with what Nietzsche calls, slave ideals such as equality, humility, conformity and the hating/rejection of one’s place in life. The vilification of master ideals following the fall of Rome and the rise of Christianity led to a perversion of hierarchical roles in society where the weak rule and the strong are suppressed and imprisoned by faulty morality. Nietzsche’s roman

However Aristotle's good life could not appeal to Nietzsche because it is too entangled with the reflective or rational activity of the soul Aristotle's view of the moral life must be rejected by Nietzsche. Indeed, Nietzsche, who rejects this view of the human as an essentially rational being, would certainly resist such a view of morality in which an individual moderates his or her own flourishing by using practical reason to establish the mean in every course of action. Nietzsche on the other hand offers the concept two different concepts that of master morality which is the morality of the masters, the nobles, the warriors, who see themselves and their actions as good. Thus, strength, power, health, wealth, and happiness are all considered "good." These masters then perceive what Nietzsche calls a pathos of distance between themselves and those who are poor, unhealthy, weak, or impotent. These are all undesirable qualities, and so the masters dub them as "bad." This is the contrast between "good" and "bad" that defines master morality. Those opposed to the masters develop slave morality. In this passage, Nietzsche identifies slave morality with a priestly caste, though he identifies it elsewhere with the slave and the lower class . These people are the poor, the unhealthy, the weak, and

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

Masters are totally free. They do what they want, to whom that want, and whatever they want. How it is such a person in such a situation begin to think about morality. Nietzsche proposes a person in such a situation would begin by saying that whatever it is the approval of our desire is good. We can imagin such a list of thing such a master might approve of . he will no doubt desire to show off his courage during battle to keep power over his slaves and it demonstrates his honour in front of his fellow master. Goodness in master morality is