Nietzsche provides
the speculative and mostly convincing argument or the evolution of moral
values. Etymology and language are used as tracers to reach back in time and
extract our ancestor’s ideology of good and bad and the slave revolt that
upturned that classification system. In class Thursday, the story unveiled was
almost theatrical with divisions and back stabbings and power struggles.
Finally, we arrive at present day slave morality where the good are spiteful of
the evil who suffer simply by existing. It is the full revenge cycle. The nerds
lord over the jocks. With all of this and the foundation of Ressentiment, the wily, guile, glib
slaves make human existence interesting. The slave value system has been
charged with making us weak. We praise values that oppose the cultivation of
strength, of the ability to conquer, of evil. But is that true? Or have we just
been able to understand that a limit exists when conquering power stems from
physical expression? In nature, the most deadly creatures are not the
strongest, but the smallest. To protect themselves from predators and to slay
prey bigger than them, the smallest hunters, like the slaves, internalized
their will. Instead of expressing it in raw strength, they have cultivated it
internally, and it festers and concentrates; it is poison and it is more potent
than any bite. What the slave morality shows is not that we have condemned
strength, but we have introduced artificial selection. We want the nerd because
of the danger his mind holds. After centuries of resentment and hate for their
masters, the slaves cultivated their mind, their intellect, their poison.
Nuclear power, drones, space, etc., we have transcended physical strength and our
mental strength is almost as limitless as our imagination. We have the power
not to conquer any more, but to destroy. The Western powers are the new masters
and it is not the physical body that projects their right to rule, but the
products of our imaginations, our intellect, our hate.
I don't know if Nietzsche would equate slaves with being "nerds". I think his idea of the weak is much more general and inclusive. As Dr. J mentioned, according to Nietzsche, we would all be slaves. There would be very few masters in our society. So to specify Nietzsche's slaves as nerds might be erroneous, simply because "non-nerds" would also be included in this category.
ReplyDeleteYou also make an interesting point about the slaves cultivating their mind to make up for their weakness in strength. I don't know if Nietzsche would limit strength just to physical strength or leadership/political power. So these slaves with this extreme intellect actually could become masters for Nietzsche. I think it is important not to see Nietzsche's slaves and masters simply just as the weak "nerd" and the strong "jock". I think this could be a generalization that could hinder the deeper understanding of Nietzsche's philosophy and its implication in today's society.
Aron,
ReplyDeleteI think Nietzsche would completely agree in a sense.
It seems that you have separated a change in what strength is from a change is what that the moral system is. I am not sure you can do this. It seems that this idea of strength must go along directly with the moral system and vice versa. What is being condemned in the slave morality is the original, primitive view of strength. I will develop on strength as the masters view it and strength as the slaves view it below.
We have acknowledged an upturn in morality in class, but I think we have overlooked what gave rise to it. The slaves ability to be cunning. This clever approach to the perception of life—good and evil—is what makes humanity interesting. The thing of interest, I believe, is a redefinition of what good is according to a use of reason. However, just prior to this inversion, good and strong were very closely correlated. After the upturn, good is correlated with weak, but the slaves don’t view themselves as weak in every sense. They view themselves as “strong” or “good” in a different sense than the original, primitive meaning of “strength.” This view is held in a way that takes their weakness and redefines it as good (or strong). Remember, that Nietzsche’s ideal, the Ubermensch, would hold the master-ethic, while retaining the rationality and depth of soul that the slaves have developed. So Nietzsche does think that the slaves possess some desirable qualities, or at the very least have given rise to those qualities.
To develop on the idea of strength a bit more, he is using the term in a narrow and primitive sense. This is what I am calling the master-strength. The whole point of Nietzsche’s genealogy is to present a history of morality. It’s a little absurd, then, to try to apply modern notions of moral understanding and strength to a time when they did not even exist. Things were just simpler at that time. It is possible, then, that there existed only a primitive notion of strength, and that this is what Nietzche refers to when he talks about strength: the master strength. You and I, however, understand strength to be something else. We understand it in the slavish sense.
There seems to be a parallel between what is “good” in each system and what is “strong” in each system.