Beyond Good and Evil

Beyond Good and Evil is a book by philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, first published in 1886. It draws on and expands the ideas of his previous work, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, but with a more critical and polemical approach. The work dramatically rejects the tradition of Western thought with its notions of truth and God, good and evil. Nietzsche  tries to demonstrate that the Christian world is steeped in a false piety and infected with a 'slave morality.

 

Slave morality is a term coined by Friedrich Nietzsche to describe a value system that is based on the guilt and fear that comes from the inferior individual’s awareness of their own inferiority. According to Nietzsche, masters create morality; slaves respond to master morality with their slave morality. Unlike master morality, which is sentiment, slave morality is based on ressentiment —devaluing what the master values and what the slave does not have.

 

Nietzsche characterizes slave moralities as being “fundamentally anti-life”. This morality does not promote creativity and striving for excellence by the individual. Instead, it encourages self-sacrifice and putting the interests of others ahead of your own. For Nietzsche, slave morality is life-denying instead of life-affirming, and hence completely unnatural. Slave morality, as portrayed by Islamic, Christian or Judaic moralities, is all about a separation of the mind and body, and hate and contempt for the meek physical body.

 

Master morality is a term coined by Friedrich Nietzsche to describe a value system that is based on the pride, wealth, fame, and power of the individual. Nietzsche defined master morality as the morality of the strong-willed. He criticizes the view that good is everything that is helpful, and bad is everything that is harmful. For strong-willed men, the “good” is the noble, strong, and powerful, while the “bad” is the weak, cowardly, timid, and petty. The essence of master morality is nobility.

 

Other qualities that are often valued in master morality are open-mindedness, courage, truthfulness, trustworthiness, and an accurate sense of one’s self-worth. Master morality begins in the “noble man”, with a spontaneous idea of the good; then the idea of bad develops as what is not good. In master morality, people define the good based on whether it benefits them and their pursuit of self-defined personal excellence.