It was Friedrich Nietzsche who called Christianity a slave morality. How could a religion which is said to teach love of thy neighbor, promote world peace, and avoiding sin be accused of harboring the enslavement of character so feverishly explained by Nietzsche? Many would denounce Nietzsche as an evil crazy person, one whose ideals were in line with the ideals of Nazi Germany. One would be incorrect assuming this of Nietzsche as one would be incorrect to argue that Christianity is not a slave morality. For it is defined as to which constitutes a slave morality that to me in no doubt does it cast that Nietzsche was correct in more ways than one. By cause of withheld and deep resentment for the master, sparked the means of which constitutes Christianity being a utility in which the Master is not conquered but made equal.
In order to fully understand the depth in which Nietzsche was correct, one must think outside of pre conditioned assumptions so easily acquired from society. Nietzsche was an atheist. To further grasp the meaning of Nietzsche’s proposed “Slave Morality”, one only has to look through the eyes in which the idea was proposed.
It must first be understood that Nietzsche was not some radical denouncing the Christian faith and doing a whole bunch of evil things. He was not a Nazi and actually opposed the nationalist party. He was born in 1609, and died in august of the year 1900. During his lifetime, Roosevelt was elected the same year his father died, the civil war took place, Pope Pius IX issues syllabus errorum, Germany expels the Jesuits and before his death Pop Leo XIII declares Testem Benevolentiae in which condemns “Americanism”2. It was a much different time as compared to our present.
I was first introduce...
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...nfront the master morality class. Instead they hold a deep resentment, unlike the master morality in which anger is either acted on or quickly forgotten. In this sense Nietzsche labeled the slave morality a utility. Meaning instead of directly confronting or conquering and being above the master, by means of guilt and other means they assimilated the master making them an equal. This is evident in the fact that Jews were salves, Christianity built off of Judaism, romans prosecuted Christians, and then look at Rome now. Who’s in charge of the Vatican, the Catholic Church is. Time and time again the religion and its analogs were challenged with extreme adversity, but by the teachings of the religion the slave morality is able to endure.
Nietzsche endorsed a value system which moved beyond the limits of good and evil. In a
way a call to better mankind as a whole.
Douglass continues to describe the severity of the manipulation of Christianity. Slave owners use generations of slavery and mental control to convert slaves to the belief God sanctions and supports slavery. They teach that, “ man may properly be a slave; that the relation of master and slave is ordained by God” (Douglass 13). In order to justify their own wrongdoings, slaveowners convert the slaves themselves to Christianity, either by force or gentle coercion over generations. The slaves are therefore under the impression that slavery is a necessary evil. With no other source of information other than their slave owners, and no other supernatural explanation for the horrors they face other than the ones provided by Christianity, generations of slaves cannot escape from under the canopy of Christianity. Christianity molded so deeply to the ideals of slavery that it becomes a postmark of America and a shield of steel for American slave owners. Douglass exposes the blatant misuse of the religion. By using Christianity as a vessel of exploitation, they forever modify the connotations of Christianity to that of tyrannical rule and
In the Second Essay of On the Genealogy of Morals (titled ““Guilt,” “Bad Conscience,” and the Like”), Nietzsche formulates an interesting conception of the origin and function of guilt feelings and “bad conscience.” Nietzsche’s discussion of this topic is rather sophisticated and includes sub-arguments for the ancient equivalence of the concepts of debt and guilt and the existence of an instinctive joy in cruelty in human beings, as well as a hypothesis concerning the origin of civilization, a critique of Christianity, and a comparison of Christianity to ancient Greek religion. In this essay, I will attempt to distill these arguments to their essential points.
Oppositely influenced by Nietzsche’s thoughts on Christianity it is no surprise concepts used in Martin Luther King Jr.’s Letter from Birmingham Jail can be differentiated between Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil. Nietzsche believed that people in charge set the rules for master and slave morality, he also believed that Christianity is a form of slave morality. Nietzsche thought people should only be treated equal as long as they are equal in force and talent. King argues that Christianity to him means that we are all as people equal to one another.
Another way to define “Master Morality” and “Slave Morality” is by defining a person’s culture. A persons culture defines their upbringing which moles their behavior and opinion (that also gives them different views on good and evil). The author recognizes both “Master” and “Slave” as humans with different back stories and different view on the same issues even if they lived close together. For instance, every religion has one basic concept not to harm the other. Yet each individual that interprets the text (even if they are from the same religion) defines it differently because of their upbringing or personal background. The religion itself is similar to both “Master and Slave Morality” but the understanding of the text is different because of their own personal thoughts (because every person is unique) which creates the difference between the
Nietzsche uses an elevated level of diction to help him achieve his purpose, he uses Latin in many passages to make the reader look to the bottom of the page and thus think about what he is proposing. His combination of elevated diction along with deductive reasoning can sometimes lose the reader, but just as fast as the reader is lost Nietzsche offers forth a formula which helps the reader follow his thinking. Nietzsche believes that a person’s "virtue is the consequence of happiness," or that a person’s emotions are the product of their beliefs. Nietzsche’s uses consequence to mean something more like cause than effect. He interchanges monosyllabic and polysyllabic - in the form of metaphors - words in connotation to sometimes differ the reader from the beaten track of thinking. He believes in a set course "that he became ill, that he failed to resist the illness," for humans and that they cannot deter from it (this is very far left in a time of conservative Europeans, late 19th century). Even in his "formulas" Nietzsche’s meaning is not as straight forward as it seems. It seems that he believes that individuals genetically are means to an end, but this is more of a metaphor for humanity, or that humanity is their own means to an end.
Christianity during “the era of slavery is not homogenous: it is extremely complex” (Davis, p. 72). Christianity ranged from one extreme to another representing the hypocrisies and horrendous uses of religion. Douglass and Jacobs both paint a striking, and unpleasant, picture of the contradictions in the Christianity of the South. Douglass illustrates how slaveowners used Christianity as one of their main strategies in keeping slaves docile and “their minds starved” to be “shut up in mental darkness” (p. 198). The passages of the Bible that “emphasized obedience, humility, pacifism, patience, were presented to the slave as the essence of Christianity” (Davis, p. 62). The idea of exposing slaves to religion was to provide
While critical of the attitude found in the ressentiment of slave morality, Nietzsche’s includes it as an important factor contributing to the bad conscience of man. Even though Nietzsche dislikes the negative results of bad conscience – man’s suppression of his instincts, hate for himself, and stagnation of his will -- Nietzsche does value it for the promise it holds. Nietzsche foresees a time coming when man conquers his inner battle and regains his “instinct of freedom.” In anticipation of that day’s eventual arrival, Nietzsche views the development of bad conscience as a necessary step in man’s transformation into the “sovereign individual.”
Christianity in the context of American slavery took on many faces and characteristics. As a religion, it was used as a tool of manipulation for slave masters to further justify the institution, and particularly assert authority over their slaves. In the slave community, Christianity was adapted in the slave community as a means to shape an identity and create a sense of dignity for an oppressed people. Christianity in the context of the slave community was a means to uplift and encourage the slaves, a way in which to advance the interests of slave-holders, and in some cases, a means used to justify freedom.
Nietzsche begins his discussion of good and moral with an etymological assessment of the designations of “good” coined in various languages. He “found they all led back to the same conceptual transformation—that everywhere ‘noble,’ ‘aristocratic’ in the social sense, is the basic concept from which ‘good’ in the sense of ‘with aristocratic soul,’… developed…” (Nietzsche 909). Instead of looking forward at the achievement for morality, Nietzsche looks backward, trying to find origins and causes of progression. He ultimately comes to the conclusion that strength implies morality, that superiority implies the good man. The powerful nobles, through pathos of difference, construed plebeians and slaves as bad, because of their inferiority in every sense of the word. From this concept of the pathos of difference was born the priestly morality, wherein the nobles were construed in an altogether different and less favorable light.
Friedrich Nietzsche is recognized for being one of the most influential German philosophers of the modern era. He is known for his works on genealogy of morality, which is a way to study values and concepts. In Genealogy of Morals, Friedrich Nietzsche mentions that values and concepts have a history because of the many different meanings that come with it. Nietzsche focused on traditional ethical theories, especially those rooted in religion. Not being a religious man, he believed that human life has no moral purpose except for the significance that human beings give it. People from different backgrounds and circumstances in history bend morality's meaning, making it cater to the norms of their society. For example, the concept of what is "good" in the ancient Greek culture meant aristocratic, noble, powerful, wealthy, pure, but not in modern era. Meaning, in the past the term “good” was not applied to a kind of act that someone did but rather applied to the kind of person and background they had. Nietzsche’s project was to help expand one’s understanding by re-examining morality through genealogy of morality; helping one to be more aware of a potential confusion in moral thinking. He feels that the current values and concepts that have been instilled into a society are a reversal of the truth, forcing him to believe that one’s moral systems had to have been created within society. In the works of genealogy of morality, Nietzsche traces out the origins of the concepts of guilt and bad conscience, which will be the main focal point, and explaining its role in Nietzsche’s project against morality. It will be argued that guilt and bad conscience goes against Nietzsche’s role against morality because it can conflict with the moral co...
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, a German philosopher, believed there are two different moralities; master and slave morality. For Nietzsche, a morality is a set of value judgements. These moralities define a person not only by their actions, but how they handle these certain situations throughout their daily life. I believe Nietzsche chose these two moralities as they are strong opposites that are rational. The distinction between "master morality" and "slave morality" are easy to be misunderstand.
The system of justice that Nietzsche employs although somewhat cynical has a substantial amount of merit as a form of justice, which is present in our society. This is demonstrated through the depiction of the creditor/debtor relationship that exists in our democratic societies, and the equalization process that occurs, and furthermore that Nietzsche is correct to assess justice as such a principle. The issue is most obvious in the penal system; however it is also prevalent in personal day-to-day relationships as well as political structures.
Where Kant’s system is based on a set of principles or duties, Nietzsche’s system is based on virtue. Nietzsche is critical of Christianity in general and its evaluation of morality. In the reevaluation of values, he shows how the characteristics of morality in Christianity are more prohibitive of living virtuously than those of Ancient Greece, which include strength, confidence, sexuality, and creativity. In Christianity, those values are pity, shame, asexuality, and humility. The set of values of Ancient Greece is considered Master Morality and the values of deontology is considered to be Slave Morality. Master morality is a step in the right direction for morality but still not the
The church told them that they had original sin and that by focusing on God, Heaven, and one’s soul, the church can fix the sin inside one. This is Nietzsche’s theory called Metaphysical. The Metaphysical theory says that the church has one pay attention to their internal instead of having the followers focus on the life they live now. By focusing just on God, Heaven, and Soul, one is deemphasizing the importance of the religion itself. With the revaluation of values, Nietzsche focused on morality, more specifically, Master Morality and Slave Morality. Master Morality is when one is concerned with strength and competition, and achieving goals is an accomplishment. Slave Morality deals with concepts of good and evil with the Evil representing the Master morality. The slave morality lives within the master’s shadows and will reject what the master stands for, this morality will suffer from resentment also, both moralities can be found in the same person. In a person, the Master morality vision has gone beyond the concepts of good and evil and has looked into a deeper meaning in themselves, but the master morality is not an end
He then said that slave morality causes human to lose strength mainly because the Christian moral code is built around kindness and treating others impartially. Master morality, on the other hand, is built around arrogance, self-affirmation and the ever-changing quest of understanding the human body. Master morality requires a man to create his own values from knowledge, experiences and desire with no regards to traditional or societal moral code. The loss of strength is said to bring suffering to human life which Nietzsche regarded as the slave morality. Many researchers find it difficult to understand Nietzsche’s thoughts process however, it appeared that his style of writing was deliberate so as to hide its underlying meaning from other