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Origins of Morality Essay

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The moral philosophy that we know and recognize today in the Western world is slave morality, a morality which puts forward ideals of fairness, equality, and democracy. However, many centuries ago during the medieval times, master morality was the norm; a morality that favors those superior in strength, beauty, intelligence, and status. Master morality preceded slave morality. Friedrich Nietzsche was a philologist, who used his knowledge of words to trace the origins of morality from their ancient definitions. He said that morality was something that man had created, specifically the nobles, for they were in a position that enabled them to declare what is to be considered good or bad. The concept of “good” was created when the …show more content…

From this hatred and ressentiment, they start a slave revolt in morality with the emergence of a new philosophy that makes the poor, oppressed, and persecuted “good”, consequently, making those with power who had excessive lavish lifestyles “evil”. They said “let us be different from the evil, namely good! And he is good who does not outrage, who harms nobody, who does not attack, who does not requite, who leaves revenge to God, who keeps himself hidden as we do, who avoids evil and desires little from life, like us, the patient, humble, and just” (Genealogy of Morals, pg. 46). The slaves turned their weakness, impotence, and inability to fight back into something meritorious. Nietzsche said they were the most devious kind because they lie about not wanting power, when in truth they also want to dominate the nobles. Their reward is eternal life, in the kingdom of god, in heaven where they would be looking down on their masters below who are burning and suffering in hell. Although, it took thousands of years to convert the noble’s morality into that of slave morality, they had succeeded using religion, an ideology for the weak as we have seen the Jews influence Romans because Christianity was founded from Judaism. The supreme rights of the majority triumphed. Comparatively, another philosopher, Jean Jacques Rousseau offers another explanation on how morality had developed in the history of humanity. He returned to the very beginning when man

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