Until Further Titling – Week Four: Proofs of God
at least, the anti-Christianity of Nietzsche, is more similar than most Christians and Nietzscheans like to admit. This thought struck me as I read Listen Little Man, by Wilhelm Reich, and a recent Ethika Politika column makes the same point about our call to be fully human and fully alive…
Nietzsche famously wrote that the “slave morality,” the ethical code of the weak, is established to overthrow the “master morality,” the ethical code of the strong.
Whereas the “master morality” originates in the strong as a spontaneous affirmation of what is good and noble, the slave morality inverts the values of the strong (values such as strength, a fervent desire for honor, and a desire for excellence and superiority) and enshrines the opposing values of submissiveness and false humility. Because these latter values originate in a derivative fashion, as a reaction to the more spontaneous values of the strong, Nietzsche is largely repulsed by them. Thus, he cries “bad air! bad air!” when he approaches the slave morality’s manufacturing of ideals and its false humility.
Further, Nietzsche argues that the same drive motivating the strong also motivates the weak: the will-to-power. By enshrining the “slave morality,” the weak are doing exactly what the strong do: They are aiming at eminence and superiority. However, the weak aim at these in bad faith; i.e., they seek them without admitting to themselves that they are seeking them—they don’t acknowledge that they too have this drive to superiority. Deceiving themselves, they invert the values of the strong in the name of “humility” or “lowliness,” but, like the strong, they are motivated by the will-to-power. The will-to-power, Nietzsche clarifies, is not only the drive to acquire eminence and superiority, but also the drive to exert and discharge one’s strength. Thus, as the weak rise in eminence, they seek to exert their strength on the strong by forcing them to conform to the ethical code of the slave morality.
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Read the rest here.
More to come on this topic soon…