Master & Slave Moralities

September 2021

Something from Nietzsche’s “The Genealogy of Morals” that hasn’t left my mind since I first read it. It explains a lot about the world we live in now, and the state of the human race. (#1, #2)

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In any population, you are going to have a group of people who are more talented / gifted / intelligent than average. Let’s call them The Strong. You are also going to have a group of people who are less talented / gifted / intelligent than average. Let’s call them The Weak.

The Strong will naturally accrue the power in society for no other reason than they are more capable and talented than the others.

Because The Strong won their greater power and influence through outsmarting or outperforming others, they will come to adopt ethical beliefs that justify their position: that might makes right, that they are entitled to their privileged position, that they earned what is theirs. Nietzsche calls this “Master Morality.”

Because The Weak lost their power and influence by being outsmarted and outperformed, they will come to adopt ethical beliefs that justify their position: that people deserve aid and charity, that one should give away one’s possessions to the less fortunate, that you should live for others and not yourself. Nietzsche calls this “Slave Morality.”

Master/Slave Moralities have been in a kind of tension in every society for all of recorded history. Many political/social conflicts are side effects of the struggle between Master and Slave Moralities.

Nietzsche believed that the ideas of guilt, punishment and a “bad conscience” are all culturally constructed and used by The Weak to chip away at the dominance and power of The Strong. He also believed that Slave Morality is just as capable of corrupting and oppressing a society as Master Morality. He used Christianity as his primary example of this.

Nietzsche believed that Slave Morality stifled man’s greatest characteristics: creativity, innovation, ambition, and even happiness itself.