Explain Nietzsche's distinction between the "noble" and "slave" moralities

Submitted for PH334 (Nietzsche in Context) Coursework, 1000 words

I explain Nietzsche’s distinction between “noble” and “slave” moralities – their differing conceptual order, psychology, and typology – and the mechanism of their inversion, the “slave revolt in morality”.

Nietzsche identifies “noble” morality as the value system arising among those who experience themselves as powerful, healthy, and life-affirming – the aristocratic type whose evaluations spring from overflowing vitality. Though some read this as merely psychological, he is tracing its historical origins. He ridicules the ahistorical “English psychologists” (GM I.1-2) on the origin of moral judgements and defends his alternative with reference to etymology: “‘noble’, ‘aristocratic’ in the social sense, is the basic concept from which ‘good’ […] developed” (GM I.4).

Thus, in noble morality, ‘good’ is primary and affirmative: it was “‘the good themselves […] who felt and established themselves and their actions as good” (GM I.2). What they counted as good is condensed in Nietzsche’s equation, “good = noble = powerful = beautiful = happy = beloved of God” (GM I.7). Only after the noble “conceives the basic concept of ‘good’ in advance and spontaneously out of himself” does its antithesis, ‘bad’, emerge – a secondary label for those lacking his distinguishing qualities (GM I.11).

By contrast, “slave” morality originated among those unable to act on their impulses: “while every noble morality develops from a triumphant affirmation of itself, slave morality from the outset says No […]; and this No is its creative deed” (GM I.10). It begins by negating something external; ‘evil’ is its first moral category. Some interpret this as polemical emphasis, but Nietzsche’s philology shows it marks genealogical priority in concept-formation: the German schlecht (‘bad’) derives from schlicht (‘plain, simple’), whereas ‘evil’ (böse) supplies the primary, moralising predicate of slave morality (GM I.4).

Slave morality first reinterprets “the ‘good man’ of the other morality, precisely the noble, powerful man” as evil; only then does a counter-concept of ‘good’ arise. Like lambs who say, “‘these birds of prey are evil; and whoever is least like a bird of prey, but rather its opposite, a lamb – would he not be good?’” (GM I.13), the slaves define themselves as good by recasting weakness as virtue. Thus the conceptual order is inverted: noble morality runs from good to bad, slave morality from evil to good. Some interpret this as wholly descriptive; though primarily descriptive, Nietzsche plainly despises the excesses of the now-dominant slave morality. His stated aim is to move, not “Beyond Good and Bad”, but “Beyond Good and Evil” (GM I.17); though in that book, he admits, “in all higher and more mixed cultures there also appear attempts to mediate between the two [moralities]” (BGE 260).

This inversion reflects opposing psychologies. Noble valuation issues from active affects and the “flourishing, abundant, even overflowing health” of the knightly-aristocratic type (GM I.7). These “‘well-born felt themselves to be the ‘happy’”, and their happiness lay in doing: “being active was with them necessarily a part of happiness” (GM I.10). They do not nurse injuries; “strong, full natures” are “incapable of taking one’s enemies, one’s accidents, even one’s misdeeds seriously for very long” (GM I.10). Even their terms for inferiors retain “almost benevolent nuances […] of pity, consideration, and forbearance” (GM I.10) – the way birds of prey do not consider lambs wicked (GM I.13). Some read this as compassion, since Nietzsche suggests, “here alone genuine ‘love of one’s enemies’ is possible” (GM I.10), but this should be read ironically: it marks not Christian pity but condescending contemptuousness born of the “pathos of distance” (GM I.2); they do not take them seriously enough to hate them. The nobles’ stance, in short, is self-affirming: it “acts and grows spontaneously, it seeks its opposite only to affirm itself more gratefully and triumphantly” (GM I.10).

Slave morality’s psychology is the reverse. Its wellspring is ressentiment – a negative affect that, unable to discharge itself, “becomes creative and gives birth to values” (GM I.10). Too impotent for action, the reactive psyche “always first needs a hostile external world in order to act at all – its action is fundamentally reaction” (GM I.10). Some regard its simultaneously reactive yet creative nature as contradictory; but the creativity lies not in the first No – the instinct to recast the strong as evil – but in its rationalisation. For that, creativity is necessary, to induce the strong themselves to internalise the inverted values. Thus, they first find pleasure in condemning the strong – Nietzsche quotes Aquinas: “the blessed in the kingdom of heaven will see the punishments of the damned, in order that their bliss be more delightful for them” (GM I.15). Then, to cultivate guilt in others, they “must make the bird of prey accountable for being a bird of prey”, smuggling in a voluntarist picture of agency. Impotence thus acquires a creative outlet in the fiction of a doer behind the deed, a “neutral substratum behind the strong man, which was free to express strength or not” (GM I.13); that fiction enables the conception and spread of the revaluation.

Noble and slave moralities also correspond to two historical-typological cultures: the warrior-aristocrat and the priest, or equivalently the dichotomy of “Rome against Judea, Judea against Rome” (GM I.16). Roman culture is aristocratic, recognising no moral universality; its exemplars resemble Homeric warrior-heroes like Achilles, for whom glory measures worth. The contrast is to priests – figures of spiritual authority within an originally noble stratum – who, physically impotent, transpose superiority into the realm of purity (GM I.6). Jewish priests, consumed with ressentiment toward the “strong and noble” Romans (GM I.16) but unfit for war, stage the “slave revolt in morality”: they invert noble values by defining strength as evil and weakness as good, and postulate the specious theory of agency that holds the strong accountable for their nature (GM I.7).

It is disputed whether this “slave revolt” names an event or a mechanism. Nietzsche presents it as a “fearful struggle on earth for thousands of years” (GM I.16). Some see it as psychological, since it does not depict a particular historical episode. But since it unfolds over millennia, and “all protracted things are hard to see, to see whole” (GM I.8), Nietzsche can be read as allegorising the protracted event for clarity. Christianity is a decisive historical vehicle rather than its essence: it made slave morality globally dominant – “Rome has been defeated beyond all doubt” (GM I.16) – yet the same reactive pattern persists in secular moralities that universalise innocence and blame.

Ultimately, noble morality affirms strength; ‘bad’ is its foil. Slave morality, born of ressentiment, begins with ‘evil’ and exalts weakness. Each reflects a type – active warrior and reactive priest – whose struggle culminates in the “slave revolt”, where the latter’s values prevail.

Bibliography

Nietzsche, F. (1966). Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future. (W. Kaufmann, Trans.) New York: Vintage Books.

Nietzsche, F. (1967). On the Genealogy of Morals. In F. Nietzsche, & W. Kaufmann (Ed.), On the Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo (W. Kaufmann, & R. J. Hollingdale, Trans., pp. 1-163). New York: Vintage Books.

Result

Mark: 62% (Low 2.1)

Feedback:

This is a good treatment of the distinction between master and slave moralities. You show good knowledge of the texts and your exposition is mostly accurate. However, there are some significant places for improvement.

First, the essay relies much too heavily on direct quotations of the primary text. You of course want to avoid ignoring the primary texts, but it is possible to err in the other direction too. The result is that the essay sometimes reads almost like an abridgement of GM I, rather than, well, an essay. Relatedly, the paper lacks much of a focus. You list many points of difference between noble and christian values, but there is very little argumentative arc or organising thesis here. The result of both of these issues is that the paper is, for the most part, expository rather than interpretive.

Suggestions for how to improve:

• Don’t try to let the primary texts do your work for you; instead consider a few key passages, and discuss them in more depth.

• Have an overarching thesis. It’s helpful to consider how else the text (or some portion of it) might be interpreted, and then structure your essay around arguing that your reading is better.