Nietzsche's Genealogy Of Morality

Masters and slaves are constantly discussed throughout Nietzsche’s work, but the connection between them is discussed best in his book On the Genealogy of Morality. The first of the three essays outlines two alternate structures for the creation of values, which is credited to masters and the other to slaves.

Nietzsche was a revolutionary author and philosopher who has had a tremendous impact on German culture up through the twentieth century and even today. Nietzsche's views were very unlike the popular and conventional beliefs and practices of his time and nearly all of his published works were, and still are, rather controversial, especially in On the Genealogy of Morals. His philosophies are more than just controversial and unconventional viewpoints, however; they are absolutely extreme and dangerous if taken out of context or misinterpreted. After Nietzsche's death it took very little for his sister to make some slight alterations to his works to go along with Nazi ideology.

In this Commentary of sections 1-7 of essay two in Friedrich Nietzsche’s The Genealogy of Morals, I will give a brief overview of the text, to help with showing the content that the comment covers, the go deeper into the individual sections and relate them to Nietzsche’s way of thinking and also look into any problems or solutions offered by those arguments.

Marx's ideas on labor value are very much alive for many organizations working for social change. In addition, it is apparent that the gap between the rich and poor is widening on a consistent basis. According to Marx, the course of human history takes a very specific form which is class struggle. The engine of change in history is class opposition. Historical epochs are defined by the relationship between different classes at different points in time. It is this model that Marx fleshes out in his account of feudalism's passing in favor of bourgeois capitalism and his prognostication of bourgeois capitalism's passing in favor of proletarian rule. These changes are not the reliant results of random social, economic, and political events; each follows the other in predictable succession. Marx responds to a lot of criticism from an imagined bourgeois interlocutor. He considers the charge that by wishing to abolish private property, the communist is destroying the "ground work of all personal freedom, activity, and independence". Marx responds by saying that wage labor does not properly create any property for the laborer. It only creates capital, a property which works only to augment the exploitation of the worker. This property, this capital, is based on class antagonism. Having linked private property to class hostility, Marx

On the Genealogy of Morals by Friedrich Nietzsche is typically listed as one of the most important philosophical works of the modern era. It is only modern, of course, to philosophical standards, being a mere 129 years old. It is also one of the most controversial works of its time, having the dubious distinction of being connected to Nazi ideology; it also has a not very subtle racist, sexist, and Darwinist bent that is a reflection of Nietzsche himself. That being said, I think that it is also serially misunderstood. Nietzsche directly mentions the role of interpretation in ethical discourse in the Genealogy, and the interpretive element factors heavily into one’s understanding of the polemic and by extension, ethics philosophy as a whole. Throughout the book, Nietzsche uses interpretation as a tool in itself to make a constructivist and existentialist argument about the history of ethics as whole. His idea that man has used interpretation throughout history, and the interpretive elements in Genealogy outside of the historical analysis, seem to say that almost all ethics are derived from interpretation and therefore constructivist in nature, which is a heavily existentialist argument. For example, the entirety of the first essay is based heavily upon the role of interpretation in the development of the early ethical systems that Nietzsche argues are built on the

Marx was a big proponent for the working-class movement and the equality in terms of property. To him, the issue that is most important to conquer is the issue of the estrangement and alienation of man, where man himself is the alien power over man – more specifically, it is workers who are being estranged (Marx 1988, 79). Consequences of this estrangement can be seen with private property, because although it seems to be the root of the problem, private property is actually the consequence of “alienated labor”, explaining why capitalism is a horror to him (Marx 1988, 81). It may be thought that an easy way to give workers equality would be to pay them equal wages, but this is yet another estrangement of labor (Marx 1988, 82). Progress, to Marx, would need to consist of a way to diminish the root of the problem – estrangement of the worker. This would consist of “emancipation of the workers” because the emancipation of the workers would have a large ripple effect, and result in the universal human emancipation (Marx 1988, 82). As it has been addressed multiple times, the estrangement of the worker is the root of the problem, and a step towards progress would need to consist of the workers being emancipated so they are no longer alienated and forced to labor while getting nothing but monetary payment for their labor. The alienation of workers furthers the issue by leading a society towards private

As the bourgeois advanced financially, they also gained political influence. They progressed from a once oppressed class to an independent urban republic. As their political influence increased, certain changes became clear. The bourgeois had “torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation (Marx).” This force eventually grew to the point that it was able to force other nations to conform to its values and methods or suffer extinction. As the bourgeois became richer, the proletarians began to suffer more. The balance of property began to shift even more rapidly than before leaving property “concentrated…in a few hands (Marx).” Eventually, the super-efficient production of the manufacturing economy began to take its toll on the bourgeois as well as the proletarians. More goods were produced due to the cheaper costs and ease of manufacture leading to an over-production of goods (Marxism). Over-production became a serious problem, resulting with widespread unemployment of the proletarians, and threats of a revolution on the horizons.

Marx wished to emancipate the Proletariat and ultimately develop a class-consciousness, which respects the lower class. “In Marxism the division of society into classes is determined by position within the process of production.”7 The goal was to eliminate the property of all individuals, because private property is what keeps the Proletariat enslaved. The Bourgeoisie dominated control of the property and capital distribution, which hindered the advancement of the Proletariat. Marx believed that the Proletariat must abolish capitalism in order to destroy the Bourgeoisie culture and aspects of the upper class, such as aspects of family, religion, and

Marx argued that due to capitalism’s competitive nature, it would eventually die out and be replaced with a new form of government, communism. It is to Marx’s beliefs that change cannot simply occur through reforms or changes in government, rather a revolution in which the proletariat overthrow the bourgeois is necessary. Marx promoted the revolution, moving history towards its natural conclusion, through his ten proposals for a communist society. Among them include: a heavy progressive income tax, an exclusive monopoly of the banks under the state, transferring ownership of the modes of production to the state, a more equal distribution of the population over the country, and most importantly, the abolition of private property. Marx stated,” the theory of communists may be summed up in the single sentence: abolition of private property.” Marx acknowledged that this notion was radical and asserted that it is due in part to the liberal misconception that landowning is the fundamentals

Postmodern epistemology denies the presence of a binary relationship between good and evil. Due to the lack of an absolute truth, good and bad must be relative. In “The Genealogy of Morals: Good and Evil,' 'Good and Bad’", Nietzsche compares what he calls a slave morality, with an apposing master morality. Master morality is the philosophy of the strong and healthy free people, who see their own happiness as good, while seeing those who are weak, unhealthy or enslaved as "bad," because of their deficiencies. On the other hand, oppressed slaves, called those who ruled "evil," and themselves "good". The words evil and good in affect are employed in order to frame a social hierarchy that distinguished the powerful and the weak in a way that could

Humanity’s natural aggression means that civilization is “constantly threatened with disintegration” and it must make every effort to ensure these urges are curbed, in order for its continued existence. He continues in this vein, by stating that, in order for people to “forgo the satisfaction of their tendency to aggression” civilization encourages us to form into groups, however for this to work their must continue to be “outsiders,” that the aggression can be turned towards. This is in accordance with On the Genealogy of Morals, where it is the Slaves ascetic nature that forces them to also control their instincts. Likewise, both Freud and Nietzsche assert that these restrictions cause people to internalise their aggressions, turning inward.

For example, it shapes the nature of religion, law, education, the state and so on. According to Marx, capitalism sows the seeds of its own destruction. For example, by polarising the classes, bringing the proletariat together in ever-increasing numbers, and driving down their wages, capitalism creates the conditions under which the working class can develop a consciousness (or awareness) of its own economic and political interests in opposition to those of its exploiters. As a result, the proletariat moves from merely being a class-in-itself (whose members share the same economic position) to becoming a class-foritself, whose members are class conscious – aware of the need to overthrow capitalism. The means of production would then be put in the hands of the state and run in the interests of everyone, not just of the bourgeoisie. A new type of society – socialism developing into communism – would be created, which would be without exploitation, without classes and without class conflict. Marx’s work has been subjected to a number of criticisms. First, Marx’s predictions have not come true. Far from society becoming polarised and the working class becoming poorer, almost everyone in western societies enjoys a far higher standard of living than ever before. The collapse of so-called ‘communist’ regimes like the former Soviet Union, and growing private ownership and capitalist growth in China, cast some doubt on the viability of the practical implementation

Marx’s primarily aims to explain how communism will free men, end the class struggle. The work argues that class struggles, and the exploitation of one class by another is the source of all inequality. Marx’s theories become one the motivating force behind all historical developments. The work strongly advocates the freedom of the proletariats which Marx’s claims can only be achieved when property and other goods cease to be privately owned. He see’s that private property has been a problem through out history, capital that aids the ruling class to maintain control. Marx argues that the lower class come together in a revolution and gain power and eventually take the power away from the upper class.

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

Nietzsche is widely known as a critic of religion. In fact, he talks in depth about morality in regards to religion in his essays about the genealogy of morals. But the problem is not within religion itself or within morals. The problem is involved in the combination of the two to create society’s understanding of morality through a very religious lens. In fact, Nietzsche has criticism for almost any set of morals constructed by a group of individuals and meant to be applied to society as a whole. True morality, according to Nietzsche, requires a separation from these group dynamic views of morality- or at least a sincere look into where they originated and why they persist- and a movement towards a more introverted, and intrinsically personalized understanding of what morals mean in spite of the fact that “the normative force to which every member of society is exposed, in the form of obligations, codes of behavior, and other moral rules and guidelines, is disproportionally high” (Korfmacher 6).