Without the Slave Morality, we wouldn't have the drive to uplift the species and move towards the next level of civilization. Without the Master Morality, we'd just become a bunch of indolent monks. With both, in tense conflict, we can expand our civilization to the stars.
Nah, not really. Nietzsche was wrong and slave morality is literally pure pathology which must be absolutely discarded out of the gene pool. We live in 2024 and is time to discard the opinions of philosophers who based their statements on pure assumptions without evidence and we should stick to the hard data that we can verify with our technological progress.
We’ve ‘expanded our civilisation’ to blindly steamroll us into causing the 6th mass extinction, so I’d posit progress wasn’t as progressive as we once thought.
i guess when viewed through the lense of "will to power"... then, yes... cruelty... but i think the resentment of the weaker for the stronger is the ultimate source of the mentality, no?
Right, like the idea that the master is incapable of true cruelty because cruelty requires some sort of awareness, which the master lacks. It's the slaves overabundance of awareness that renders him impotent and, therefore, ultimately resentful
@Iightbeing Yeah I've been thinking about that concept a lot lately and what the exact definition of cruelty is in that context. For example, how would you compare the masters "cruelty" to the slaves. I think Nietzsche believed that the slaves cruelty was resentment that was disguised as love and compassion, designed to shame the powerful. Whereas the masters "cruelty" isn't really cruel at all. It's only cruel from the perspective of the slave. Basically the master is incapable of cruelty and any perceived cruelty perpetrated by the master would be purely inadvertent
It's not, though. Christianity stole basically all their ideas from popular moral teachers at the time. People like the stoics and the cynics. If you insist on using these terms "slave" and "master" morality come from the same place. One was just adopted by an apocalyptic blood cult. Not that this seems to be true. Every Greek hero's tragic flaw was pride, so they probably didn't extoll arrogance. Like the "history" here is just kind of wrong.
It silently in my head blew my mind as I heard it, cuz it looked a twisted conspiracy to me since Mt family's jehovahs witnesses and I grew up as a kid one
An interesting thing I just realized while watching this video. Ever since I first read Thus Spoke Zarathustra, when I was 21 or so years old, I have never again portrayed myself as a victim to anyone. I have never again wanted other's pity, and I felt extremely embarrassed when, perhaps in very rare occasions, I have displayed weakness.
Innocence is the end of thinking. The end of thinking brings freedom from the past, from the burden of memory. Innocence cannot be attained through philosophizing; it is a quality of being that must simply be rediscovered, not invented. The only truly moral individual is one who does not know they are moral.
Great video once again, very rare to find RUclipsrs that actually have a deep understanding of Nietzsche, as opposed to just giving some cliched corny self-help misinterpretation of him. Thanks.
Voltaire’s quote is a great segue into Nietzsche’s notion of truth as error, yet a necessary valuation for the continuation (becoming) of will to power.
Yeah. I just remember, I stopped going to church when I was like, 12 or 13, I just didn't really believe in God, as such, and it didn't even feel like that big a deal, though my Mom was upset. If only I had known just how awful Christianity really was. I was ahead of the curve!
@Joeyjojoshabbadoo Yeah I became skeptical of Christianity at a pretty young age. It wasn't until I got into nietzsche that I truly realized why exactly I was skeptical
@zachurich5046 I think it's supposed to show us that it's possible that Christian "love" isn't exactly what it seems to be. It's possible that Christian love is really just repressed hate
The tension of the bowstring can be seen from a person such as Pascal, who was for Nietzsche a superb combination of a noble man who incarnates the slave morality par excellence. It also interesting that Nietzsche wrote that France is « the most christian country » in so far as because they were the most loyal christian’s, they are also it’s best adversary. See dawn. Here we have the premise in one of my favorite Nietzschean ideas that « He who attains his ideal, precisely thereby surpasses it. » And that is precisely why Nietzsche does not advocate for a return of a master morality.
I've come to similar conclusions after recently studying that Zarathustra section in Ecce Homo. I think it's my new favorite piece by him. He really lays everything out.
The tension between the unconscious innocence of the past and the conscious guilt of the present sounds remarkably similar to Hegel and even Mao (see: 'On Contradiction') with regards to the development of history, or "The Unfolding of the Absolute."
great video, NPG!!... i love your long-form lectures... but, honestly, your shorter ones are much better... i enjoy listening to them a few times in a row while performing other online tasks... love the visual content/classical artwork... much appreciated art thou thusly!
I'm reminded of a passage from Oscar Wilde's "The Soul of Man Under Socialism", but I couldn't find the exact quote. He talks about how the glorification of the hard-working poor was used to keep the poor in line, in the same way that glorification of the virtues of the fairer sex was used to keep women in line. Sure, the businessman and menfolk have the power over womenfolk and workers respectivally, but the downtrodden are better on the inside. It was a kind of tradeoff by the ruling classes.
You really do have an incredible talent for delving into the details of Nietzsche, whom I have always loved. You take a systematic approach, and I find your arguments so original and compelling. Thanks for another great video.
15:18 That passage makes clear he isn't attempting a change in the definition of decadence. He is pointing out the decline of the human condition. Man can take what is good and conflate a certain value (twisted into propaganda and cultish mantras) with the power of a social position, which, in his estimation, is contrary to good. He would be jumping up and down, asking why nobody understood him were he alive today to witness how many had read his books. He understood institutional propaganda before it was mass produced.
@@chrisvarva9847 the term "decadence" is sort of charged and can mean different things depending on who you ask. And Nietzsche does have a somewhat unique take on the phenomenon, why it occurs and how it affects civilization.
Thank you for your work on something you care about a lot. As an older man, working his way out of medieval catholic christianity, your videos have been an immense help.
The potential negative aspect of Nietzschian philosophy is that it can easily turn into something similar to the modern and corporate "wokeness" as well as revisionist wars it has caused in recent years.
does the acceptance of determinism nowadays prove that we have already entered the extra moral age? I think the acceptance of things like mental illnesses or sexual orientations are possibly the strongest example of how we implement this understanding of determinism, although we havent completed this application on everyone, since we still ascribe similar moralist claims towards bigotry or other things we still see as evil. That probably isnt so far away though, maybe a few decades more.
I would say that many people intellectually accept determinism without actually considering the way that they act against that knowledge in their daily lives. Often there is a big song and dance to somehow hold onto things like morality, guilt, the self, and so on. A desire to “prove” that we can still have these things even with determinism. Very misguided from Nietzsche’s perspective. The whole point of the free will superstition was to make moral guilt possible; if you get rid of free will but still operate from a mental framework that imputes guilt then it doesn’t really matter. You’re just moralizing with additional steps. But that’s what most determinists do, so until we overcome that it will not represent a real change.
@untimelyreflections I think a lot of the moralist beliefs that may be seen in determinists today are held in contradiction to their more determinist beliefs. In that sense i think the change is real, but that the change is happening unevenly, at the expense of consistency.
@@untimelyreflections This is the one thing that used to frustrate me when I was a Christian. They would advocate for essentially a deterministic world view when it suited them to do so. IE God was omnipotent and not one blade of grass dies without God's direct action and all of our lives go according to His divine plan. But when it came to your personal guilt for sins and moral imperfections then all of a sudden the blame was shifted 100% to you and they would say "you have free will to choose good from evil" and you will end up in hell for eternity if you make the wrong choices. Like you said they are intellectually able to grasp the concept of fate being intrinsically fixed within the construct of reality but they have a slave's Stockholm syndrome that prevents them from embracing the implications of that reality and truly freeing themselves from the yoke they place on themselves and embracing the eternal recurrence and Amor Fati.
So, here's what I'm getting from Nietzsche: Cruelty is inevitable? He's basically saying that people who are cruel do not make an active choice in being cruel, it's just the success of cruel instincts. Furthermore, when people cannot exhaust their instinct for cruelty, they turn it inward, causing the bad conscience. So, since cruelty is inevitable, we should not wish for no cruelty? Because that would be anti-life? Am I getting this right?
Kaufmann would have argued that the best answer is the sublimation of drives such as cruelty. I didn’t really go into this in the video, but there is arguably a thread in Nietzsche’s work that contrasts emasculation of a drive versus its sublimation. Christianity emasculates/castrates by demanding “if they eye offend thee, pluck it out”: cruelty, sensuality, pride etc have to be condemned and have an inner war waged against them. They can never truly be rooted out so there’s perpetual guilt, but the drives can be “separated from what they can do” (made reactive in Deleuze’s coinage). This is seen in the etymology of ressentiment (contains the “senti”, to feel): drives are felt but not acted. Contrast this to sublimation: the recognition that the drives exist and must be propitiated, but coupled with the innovation that as conscious/intelligent beings we can redirect the drives or satisfy them in less direct ways. Freud and others would later take this idea from Nietzsche (without crediting him). There’s also the idea that the Greeks held festivals for their “all too human”, as Nietzsche put it. The drive is satisfied in a ritual context, within given boundaries, without letting it overwhelm the society by being satisfied all the time. See also Nietzsche’s passage on the six ways of dealing with vehement drives (covered in the podcast episode I did on self-control, Daybreak 102 iirc). That being said, can we fundamentally reshape human instincts in accordance with what our rationality tells us would be a “better” state of affairs? Nietzsche would argue no, or that it would take an incredibly long timescale, and that finally if we succeeded we might well make mankind worse. Hope this helps.
Ever gave some thought into looking into Thelema's connection with Nietzsche? There definitely is some resonance between Crowley and Nietzsche, maybe you are familiar with him through Messa.
The best quote about Nietzsches goals for any master morality is his comparison of the criminal to an ill person. It makes sense if by healthy in a sense is meant what is common and the standard. The only reason we think of between the two stems from our ideas of free will. They both are not guilty of hurting themselves and others, and do so against their own best interests. So therefore both need to be cured. As much as Nietzsche is considered an edgeord, this is one of the most humanistic ideas i have ever come across
"Premoral age", "Extamoral age." Terms that show more of the lack of understanding in the user than some insight gleaned of a period of time. Those terms only serve to denigrate a moral set that does not align to our current moral set. ... which may not align to a future moral set. It is a subconscious declaration of "good" and "bad". A declaration of what each individual "should" do. A way of separating a people, from a period of time, and getting people in the present time to align themselves to your moral set by appealing to their basic human need of having a social group they belong to. When the fact of the matter is that every human is capable of holding any moral set as dictated by our experiences and our societal group. From Hitler to Ghandi, each of us is capable of it given the right circumstances. I like reading Nietzsche, but I am constantly struck by the lack of insight of his time and how it plays out in his philosophy. And I am sure that in a few hundred years, people will be saying the same thing about us.
*Holy Qur'an* About the *Creator* of all worlds *42:5 Holy Qur'an* تَكَادُ ٱلسَّمَـٰوَٰتُ يَتَفَطَّرْنَ مِن فَوْقِهِنَّ ۚ وَٱلْمَلَـٰٓئِكَةُ يُسَبِّحُونَ بِحَمْدِ رَبِّهِمْ وَيَسْتَغْفِرُونَ لِمَن فِى ٱلْأَرْضِ ۗ أَلَآ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ هُوَ ٱلْغَفُورُ ٱلرَّحِيمُ ٥ The heavens almost burst apart above them [in awe of Him], and the angels glorify the praises of their Lord, and seek forgiveness for those on earth. Indeed, *Allah* is the All-Forgiving, Most Merciful. *2:136 Holy Qur'an* Say, O believers, “We believe in *Allah* and what has been revealed to us; and what was revealed to Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob, and his descendants; and what was given to Moses, Jesus, and other prophets from their Lord. We make no distinction between any of them. And to *Allah* we all submit.”
@ouch000u I'm not sure of why you think those quotes apply to the topic I was referring to, but ...sure. Also, I see no reason to submit to an idea, a concept, that evolved from a storm/warrior god. Though, I would be interested in your perspective on the reason the faith you referenced has literally spent hundreds of years and almost countless texts on mentally jumping through hoops to try and explain the gaps exposed by logic, in a concept of an all powerful god.
@@rodcameron7140 *19:35** Noble Qur'an* مَا كَانَ لِلَّهِ أَن يَتَّخِذَ مِن وَلَدٍۢ ۖ سُبْحَـٰنَهُۥٓ ۚ إِذَا قَضَىٰٓ أَمْرًۭا فَإِنَّمَا يَقُولُ لَهُۥ كُن فَيَكُونُ ٣٥ It is not [befitting] for Allāh to take a son; exalted is He! When He decrees an affair, He only says to it, "Be," and it is. *Glorious Qur'an* 19:36 وَإِنَّ ٱللَّهَ رَبِّى وَرَبُّكُمْ فَٱعْبُدُوهُ ۚ هَـٰذَا صِرَٰطٌۭ مُّسْتَقِيمٌۭ ٣٦ ˹Jesus also declared,˺ “Surely Allah is my Lord and your Lord, so worship Him ˹alone˺. This is the Straight Path.”
I love Nietzsche's psychological and societal analysis, but one thing I don't understand is his abolition of will to truth. Why does he not view this tension of the bowstring as an arrow trajectory towards a higher truth? How can we deny humanity's progress of understanding when compared to the past? When he says that the slave morality is damaging, what exactly is it damaging if all destruction has no purpose and is just a force for the sake of affirming itself? If our pursuit of truth is just will to power then how can we even question truth without proper premises?
"The strength of a person's spirit would then be measured by how much 'truth' he could tolerate, or more precisely, to what extent he needs to have it diluted, disguised, sweetened, muted, falsified." Oftentimes, the truth is ugly and people need lies in order to cope with reality. But it runs deeper than that; Nietzshce thinks that ever since Plato, Western philosophy has deluded itself thinking that we can find a "pure truth" or "truth-in-itself". In reality, people invent 'truth' in order to falsify reality to their advantage, or simply as to make things coherent out of an infinitely incoherent mess.
Nietzsche’s bias was that he didn’t recognize the ontological reality of objective transcendent principles such as truth, love, beauty, and the Good. Although he cherry-picked a few of these to bolster his attack on Platonism and Christianity. In his system, Master Morality takes on a pagan, Darwinian character, and he assumes this should be taken for granted, since there is no transcendence, only organisms vying with each other for physical space. Sly, but not very honest. Nietzsche wasn’t really a philosopher, he was more of a polemicist with an axe to grind. Some of his criticisms were valid though, and he was a great writer. Absolutely still worth engaging with his ideas, especially if you disagree with him.
If you start from "darwinist" assumption that all nature is just about survival through struggle, then "will to power" is all there is. All religion and ideology is just a tool for one class or nation to dominate over the other. Then Christianity is just a result of slves desire to usurp the masters. That is the only truth you need. But I fundamentally disagree with this. Christianity at the time made sense to people converting to it, it gave them answers to ultimate questions of purpose and meaning. So whether you are slve or master and you felt that these ideas make more sense to you then the ones you had before, you would convert. It doesn't matter if I or my class would gain "power". The morality just follows from people than changing behaviours according to this new purpose they are following. I like to view humans as conscious, rational begins, which darwinist-feudians obviously don't. They would say, there's always a hidden reason why someone would accept an ideology, and will to power is always behind it.
I have a lot of Christian friends that I love dearly but they struggle to grasp this concept when we debate with each other, I'm not trying to change their minds or win, but reach understanding between our different views on life. Not sure if I'm just bad at conveying it but now I can put all that work onto this video, kekw! Cheers!
I disagree with a lot of the assertations about Christianity. To begin with, most of the complaints are about the Roman Catholic empire, with Catholicism itself being a bastardized mix of Judeo-Christianity and the then popular Pagan religions, which had to be done after the Christian uprising. The Romans took the religion, bastardized it, then used it to further it's power and control over whoever they invaded next. This included killing *actual* Christians for "heresy," preventing the largely uneducated populace from actually reading the bible, and then also keeping literacy rates down. Eventually leading to Martin Luther reading and recognizing the bible is actually for the people, they don't need to tithe, they don't need to punish themselves, they can't be excommunicated from God, etc. and he left and started his own heretic movement where he actually taught the bible to people. As a big example, the "holier than thou" crowd are hypocrites and actively going against the book's teachings. The *entire* point of everything Jesus said is mercy, compassion, and forgiveness. He often condemned priests and "holy men" for their corruption. I thing the biggest thing is on both sides people haven't actually read the bible.
Hegel is lurking somewhere in the background, when you come to think of it. The master morality as thesis, the slave morality as antithesis and the (possible) dawn of an extra-moral age as synthesis. "German culture, [...] an elevation and a divining refinement of the historical sense". Indeed.
@@trambly611 If dialectics is a vehicle, then Nietzsche certainly keeps the engine running but fills it with a different type of fuel... to explore new horizons.
In the coldest environment it's the case. In the equatorial region it's the Alpha, and in the modern world it's professionallism, the art of enslaving self towards excellence!
hey not sure if you will read this (though anyone could help me here), but I've found Nietzsche to be extremely insightful on thousands of ideas/visions of course, yet one I idea (I suspect I gravely misunderstand it), seems straight up dumb to me. The idea of the Übermensch, where we create our own values, and as said in this video, is also one free from resentment etc. Even as an ideal, it strikes me completely against my most fundamental experiences in real life. I have never met anyone who could even get CLOSE to not having resentment: hence what is the utility of an ideal that's so far away from our nature? It'd be the same as saying: "Oh guys, just don't go to war, just be nice towards one another". It doesn't work that way, and saying this won't help (even if it woud be nice if it was like that).
The Overman should not be regarded as a conception of what a human being from our time and place can become over the course of one lifetime. The Overman is a conception of what the entire species can become if we were shaped/guided by values that regard life as fundamentally good rather than fundamentally bad/unsatisfactory. Nietzsche never uses the language of becoming the Overman, he uses the language of sacrificing oneself ("going under") to bring forth the Overman. It's a goal in the distant future, a future for the entire species, not for one individual. You're correct that the idea of a human who is completely free of resentment is so outlandish that it is hard to even imagine. Nietzsche would say... that's why we have quite a lot of work to do.
I would say you're looking for a cure when what Nietzsche is offering you is a toolkit. You're never going to be free of resentment, and Nietzsche clearly held onto some resentment himself. What you do with that resentment, and understanding the culture that has impressed upon you how to manifest those emotions, is what Nietzsche has to offer. The Ubermensch serves almost as a replacement for Jesus Christ as a point of reference for people when we compare ourselves to a perfect standard. He wants us to imagine a new perfect standard. So he's not arguing for never feeling resentment, just what you choose to do with it post. Do you think people should direct it inward unto themselves with guilt and shame, believe in good and evil? Would you prefer that people see it as a natural and neutral phenomena instead, and at that one that a person can overcome either through the battle of the wills or acceptance? Where no one is suffering in damnation for eternity as a point of reference. I think we all desire for perfection, and a perfect solution to all of our problems but unfortunately it appears that everything is a work in progress, forever. I feel like Nietzsche out of a love for his people (and for himself) attempted to aid them by creating these works - such that maybe some could free themselves of the shackles of guilt that he saw had capture the whole of his culture. No philosophical system will ever be perfect and free of criticism, they are all created by man who will always be fallible in some way.
Opposites turn into eachother on the far ends of a spectrum, therefore if one goes far enough into guilt, he will be innocent and vice versa. It is not conscious innocence that Nietzsche wishes to cultivate, but a conscious and full acceptance of guilt, removing all hope for an innocent action. In admitting complete and total guilt and occluding the possibility of innocent conduct, the guilt/innocence conflict is transcended, freeing our conscience from the Christian dialectic all together, whilst gaining an intensification of self awareness that would not be possible without this-error-that indeed has the greatest of all merits. Great video as always, keep up the good work!
I feel guilty when I act cruelly to a person who doesn't deserve it because I don't want that happening to me and in the world in general because I do believe that the world would be much better for me and everyone without cruelty and with compassion. Is this guilt unhelpful and an expression of the slave morality in me? It seems to me that guilt has its benefits but perhaps I am misunderstanding something. Even though I may not have free will, just me noticing that I acted in a way against my values and mentally punishing myself for it(with reasonable intensity of course) makes it less likely that such an act will be committed by me in the future so my self allows guilt and shame as an emotion. Is this harming me somehow?
If you start from a darwinist notion that organisms do everything in their self-interest, then it follows that even if they are being compassionate, it's just because they want someone to be compassionate to them. I disagree with this. People have a need for purpose, meaning, completely rational desire for existence to be logical and purposeful in the most ultimate sense. So if you are being cruel to the weak for no reason it just doesn't makes sense. It doesn't fit in any ideas of a purposeful existence.
@@antun88 Should also note that natural selection doesn't only apply with individuals, but also species generally. A genetic lineage may gain advantage at the expense of the personal benefit of some or even all of it's individuals. The only fundamental rule is that whichever 'thing' self perpetuates more effectively, wins, irrespective of the means.
I wonder for the 'Euclidean' and 'Pythagoreans' of which they don't preface any god or man for their rules.... Can we reconcile them with Master & Slave morality; "Plato said God geometrizes continually" - Plutarch . Quaes. Conv. 8.2
If strength is in cunning that feeds upon weakness, then the strong can exist in and subsistence upon the weakest--and in fact seek a society in which moral weakness is utmost.
What good is morality if it does not prosper? If it has no power to effect change? What good is power if there is no morality? If power is not harnessed to effect change?
9:00 but, isn't that because of the mixing of slave morality and master morality? It's not as if it was a pure slave morality or Christianity back then, especially after Constantine.
huh, you're right I did misunderstand it. Thank you for the correction, sir. The reframing of the slave morality's "evil" as being rooted in a sort of psychological blind spot that it creates thus creating further immoralities downstream of it were key.
Would you ever consider exploring Nietzsche’s philosophy in relation to Buddhism? The channel Seeker to Seeker covers the overlap and I’d be interested in what your thoughts would be on it.
@@untimelyreflectionshey, I think you might be interested in a book on this topic called "Robert G Morrison - Nietzsche and Buddhism, a study in nihilism and ironic affinities" easy to find online
"Man is evil"-so said to me for consolation, all the wisest ones. Ah, if only it be still true today! For the evil is man's best force. "Man must become better and eviler"-so do I teach. The evilest is necessary for the Superman's best. It may have been well for the preacher of the petty people to suffer and be burdened by men's sin. I, however, rejoice in great sin as my great consolation.- Such things, however, are not said for long ears. Every word, also, is not suited for every mouth. These are fine far-away things: at them sheep's claws shall not grasp! Zarathustra, The Higher Man, stanza 5.
The drive of constant self motivation forwards towards perfection is true mastery. The cruelty of the two (impotent) sides of the same coin mentioned in Nietsche's critique spring of a lack thereof and as a sorry compensation, it seems. So you can guess what the next and last 'free from..' is
I struggle a bit to understand the details of Nietzsche's proposed morality. Could it be almost like Jungian psychology, but mapped onto a moral philosophy? *Psychology:* Integrate the shadow, rather than deny or fight it. Employ the shadow as a means of strength and confidence to make yourself and your world better. *Conscious Innocence:* Integrate Human propensity for cruelty, rather than hate it. Seek strength and beauty without being shamed, because strength and beauty are how our species prospers. I'm just curious how the ubermensche treats those he has disgust for. Is the ubermensche cruel, callous or disdainful?
Very Interesting! I cant wait for another podcast btw. I would love to find out more about how Christianity affected our worldview as well as our morality and in which way it still does. I wonder if theres a way of separating the morality that is in our nature and the biases that were implemented by our culture. Ever since I have discovered Nietsche I have been trying to observe each and every moral judgment I came up with in order to classify it. More questions were born and I feel like I am unable to satisfy my curiousity.
So is the idea of the conscious innocence that there's no such thing as free will, there's no evil subject, but that doesn't mean there aren't evil acts? Or is it only focused on the ascribing of guilt by slave morality and rejects seeing any acts as immoral altogether?
*19:35** Noble Qur'an* مَا كَانَ لِلَّهِ أَن يَتَّخِذَ مِن وَلَدٍۢ ۖ سُبْحَـٰنَهُۥٓ ۚ إِذَا قَضَىٰٓ أَمْرًۭا فَإِنَّمَا يَقُولُ لَهُۥ كُن فَيَكُونُ ٣٥ It is not [befitting] for Allāh to take a son; exalted is He! When He decrees an affair, He only says to it, "Be," and it is.
Your argument is flawed, the ascendance of Christianity did in fact reduce the amount of suffering in the world. Conditions before it's spread were so much worse in comparison and only continued to improve. Slavery was abolished, technology introduced to the 3rd world, modern medicine, railroads, electricity. To the extent that the spread of Christianity did increase suffering wasn't because of Christianity but because of the residual master morality that still existed and was carried along with it. A master morality that while in decline still struggles to reassert itself.
@@lukehunnable Abolition of Slavery was definitely product of Christianity and probably one of the reasons for anticolonial sentiment in the 3rd world, being looked upon as a foreign imposition and attack on local culture. While Christianity didn't create technology or technical innovation it created an atmosphere where it could thrive. A big reason there was no industrial revolution in pagan Rome was because slavery was so widespread, accepted, and made innovation unnecessary for the slave masters. Without slavery innovation became more essential for survival to say nothing of prosperity..
@@lukehunnable Even if one could not cite direct influences of devoted Christian doctors of the sciences and church, one could give indirect credit to Christianity for intitutionalizing higher education and continuing (if not proliferating) the Greek tendency to value truth and rationale (See scholasticism.)
It took more than a dozen of centuries to abolish a slavery. And the funniest part is that both sides of slavery debate justified their position with Christianity and God. After Rome has fallen conditions didn't improve at first even though christianity spread. Technological advances were lost and wisdom has vanished.
Nietzsche was simply factually wrong about this, just as in most things. Christianity and the other non-killing religions were spread from top down, from the masters, because it offered them definite tangible benefits and relieved them of the responsibility of every village headman, every tribal chief, or every forager band-- the response of having to provide material benefits to his group. It allowed them to substitute afterlife or non-worldly rewards for actual material ones.
i haven't even watched the vid yet, but i think i intuitively get it. most of my ideas are intuitive currently, so take it with a grain of salt lol. you as an individual can be a slave to the system in a way that hinders you from reaching different stages of potential. so you have these inner barriers that you don't dare to confront, barriers which in and of themselves can be built by internal and external forces. basically i don't FULLY accept the "self-incurred immaturity" concept of kant, because of karl marx's introduction of material conditions (external forces). i say "fully" because of the fact that i think i understand "teleology", specifically when it comes to human actions. you have restricted "pathways" in life. some form of determinism? there's many ideas swirling in this head of mine that i'm still trying to mix and match where i think possible and "makes sense". but i think if i go to uni i will have definitive lingo and logical steps in making sure all of these concepts actually "interlink", for a lack of a better word. now to the video to see how wrong i was and how much i assumed just from the title 😁 edit: i'm so stupid i just skipped over morality part, and mostly thought about slave-master dynamic in hegelian sense probably in how you better yourself (the way i interpret that dynamic). but i think i get it. some people become leaders and other followers, no matter which "system" or a certain social bubbles within the system, a scientific field etc. but this isn't a barrier for "followers". they become their own leaders with time. now i'm specifically thinking in the terms of a scientific field. whoever becomes a leader first, is a teacher, who then passes on their understanding to followers who have "shed" the cult of revenge, in a post capitalist society. something like that?
I think that it would be a real innovation if we would be able to talk about what lies beyond good and bad AND good and evil in a strictly TRANSMORAL (not extramoral!) sense. If we are playing the master-slave dialectic in morality 1. we are still moralizing, 2. we are the slaves of certain values and ideals. Even the master morality can enslave people, just as the slave morality can liberate them. 3. If we stick to morality, then we should understand that the vertical hierarchy of master and slave is actually doesn't make sense here, and this is especially true today. The patriarchal, top-down relations of good and evil, noble and slave have been replaced by mechanical relations which have nothing to do with the concept of value at all!!! Rather, they are about the dynamics of forces and counterforces. They are purely physical and quantitative, materialistic and levelling. There can be no aesthetizing nobility, heroism or Nietzschean overmen here, but only consumers who are competing for resources and in showing-off, and who are only manifestations of hunger, just like the zombie is. The movie title Walking Dead was not a mere accident, because it contains this meaning too.
Am I wrong, but N. didn't say that masters are aristocrats, like being a ruler by bloodline. I see it the different way, as of the one who can, should ... Must. And hate me for it, but by all examples on hand, N. should be read an discussed in his original language, respecting his context...
Slave morality made us self concious? That's pretty much story of the garden of Eden and the Adam's fall described in bible. Neat. So first we had unconsious innocence, then conscious guilt, and next to come is consious innocence?
Funny that Nietzsche agrees on that with Apostle Paul. "by the law is the knowledge of sin". Interesting that only people condemned time and time again in gospels were moralizers who condemned others. Very interesting.
I think antinatalism, which is growing in popularity, sees this system as a whole in understanding the vast majority are slaves, and it would therefore be most merciful to not bring new beings into existence. What does the comment section think of this?
So we can practice master morality among competitors but treat those beneath us with a slave morality? Since they don’t have the resources(habits) to take the punishment the ones above can?
As an atheist or agnostic (don’t know which label is more accurate), I think that Christian morality definitely played a role in civilizing Europe. It eliminated slavery within Europe and likely made the rich more charitable with the poor, gave leaders the fear of judgement, enforced monogamy (less sexual competition to monopolize all the women, less intersex conflict, better cooperation with other men). You get folks in England like Josiah Wedgwood concerned with the well-being of his workers in a way that maybe in a non-Christian Europe would exist. You get people questioning slavery in a way that never happened in the Muslim world purely from a guilty conscience. You get people commuted to public service in ways that are exceptional. King George 3 was genuinely interested in talking to farmers and knowing how they lived to not be out of touch. Fredrick of Prussia was trying to get people on the potato because he genuinely cared about food security. When I watch rap videos and see this vulgar glorification of wealth and shit that even our billionaires don’t engage in, I wonder if our ancestors in the Viking age were similar, with their stupid jewelry and bragging about murdering more than someone else. Where would we be without Christian morality? Would we be as bad as the trashiest rappers?
Could you explain the part about Muslim world? Cause I thought you were talking about Christianity in Europe. Also, I have trouble understanding your sentence
And yet you don't see non-religious Norwegians of today behaving like rappers. Why? Due to different genetics. So no, Vikings would not have ever behaved as if they were sub-Saharan Africans, and it is ridiculous to suggest they would have.
I think there can be acts of true selflessness not just doing the right thing for the wrong reason but they're few and far between because most of the time we're using those Noble things to make us feel better and make us feel Noble it shouldn't feel Noble we should just be Noble and not care whether or not we are is my hot take
Without the Slave Morality, we wouldn't have the drive to uplift the species and move towards the next level of civilization. Without the Master Morality, we'd just become a bunch of indolent monks. With both, in tense conflict, we can expand our civilization to the stars.
Nah, not really. Nietzsche was wrong and slave morality is literally pure pathology which must be absolutely discarded out of the gene pool. We live in 2024 and is time to discard the opinions of philosophers who based their statements on pure assumptions without evidence and we should stick to the hard data that we can verify with our technological progress.
Cause thats seriously old pre world war integration dual continental empires - doesn't mean you do it now.
We’ve ‘expanded our civilisation’ to blindly steamroll us into causing the 6th mass extinction, so I’d posit progress wasn’t as progressive as we once thought.
Almost as if it's a Master-Slave dialectic. I wonder where we've heard that before?
...or into an early grave.
"Slave Morality is in fact rooted in cruelty" This is a great point that seems to get brushed over in a lot of other Nietzsche videos
i guess when viewed through the lense of "will to power"... then, yes... cruelty... but i think the resentment of the weaker for the stronger is the ultimate source of the mentality, no?
Right, like the idea that the master is incapable of true cruelty because cruelty requires some sort of awareness, which the master lacks. It's the slaves overabundance of awareness that renders him impotent and, therefore, ultimately resentful
and all cruelty springs from weakness
@Iightbeing Yeah I've been thinking about that concept a lot lately and what the exact definition of cruelty is in that context. For example, how would you compare the masters "cruelty" to the slaves. I think Nietzsche believed that the slaves cruelty was resentment that was disguised as love and compassion, designed to shame the powerful. Whereas the masters "cruelty" isn't really cruel at all. It's only cruel from the perspective of the slave. Basically the master is incapable of cruelty and any perceived cruelty perpetrated by the master would be purely inadvertent
It's not, though. Christianity stole basically all their ideas from popular moral teachers at the time. People like the stoics and the cynics. If you insist on using these terms "slave" and "master" morality come from the same place.
One was just adopted by an apocalyptic blood cult. Not that this seems to be true. Every Greek hero's tragic flaw was pride, so they probably didn't extoll arrogance.
Like the "history" here is just kind of wrong.
“To perceive the truth but be honest enough to admit the existential dangers of stripping away the lie upon which civilization is built”
“The tree of knowledge is not the tree of life”… but… “truth loves a warrior”
A powerful realization
A good reminder of a video. The Master and slave morality is perhaps one of the most delicate passages of genealogy of morals to understand.
Its simple the integration with of master and slave is reversed they just don't care
It silently in my head blew my mind as I heard it, cuz it looked a twisted conspiracy to me since Mt family's jehovahs witnesses and I grew up as a kid one
An interesting thing I just realized while watching this video. Ever since I first read Thus Spoke Zarathustra, when I was 21 or so years old, I have never again portrayed myself as a victim to anyone. I have never again wanted other's pity, and I felt extremely embarrassed when, perhaps in very rare occasions, I have displayed weakness.
I think you have a very distorted idea of what Nietzsche wrote in Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
Sympathie is not pity. Caring about people or people caring about you is not pity, its strength
You displayed weakness writing this post.
@@CriticallyRealist Sounds… healthy?
@@Mbonicor is it just an expression of your own power? 🤔
Innocence is the end of thinking. The end of thinking brings freedom from the past, from the burden of memory. Innocence cannot be attained through philosophizing; it is a quality of being that must simply be rediscovered, not invented. The only truly moral individual is one who does not know they are moral.
Great video once again, very rare to find RUclipsrs that actually have a deep understanding of Nietzsche, as opposed to just giving some cliched corny self-help misinterpretation of him. Thanks.
Hopefully this kind of content can inspire some of those people to dig into philosophy in all its complexity and nuance.
Fiending for these convos in real life
I don't think you understand Nietsche.
Voltaire’s quote is a great segue into Nietzsche’s notion of truth as error, yet a necessary valuation for the continuation (becoming) of will to power.
New essentialsalts folder: Core Nietzsche concepts in under 30 mins.
Get ready for more in the coming weeks.
Yes, I appreciate this content!
@@untimelyreflections x
I can see this series going viral already
well-urged!!... let's make this hypothetical folder a digital reality, Keeg!... (((lololo)))
Truly, thank you. Your podcast and posts have helped me grasp, and be grateful to, Nietzsche in a way I long felt I wanted to, but didn't.
I just want to say thank you for the quality content. PLEASE continue creating.
Did this evaluation come before or after the syphillis?
yeah before or after he went insane or a girl manipulated him and his friend into a love triangle before ditching them both lol
"The point is not to lament that mankind no longer celebrates cruelty, it is to show us that we never stopped" That just blew my mind 🤯
The tribe in the middle east are the cruel ones
Yeah. I just remember, I stopped going to church when I was like, 12 or 13, I just didn't really believe in God, as such, and it didn't even feel like that big a deal, though my Mom was upset. If only I had known just how awful Christianity really was. I was ahead of the curve!
@Joeyjojoshabbadoo Yeah I became skeptical of Christianity at a pretty young age. It wasn't until I got into nietzsche that I truly realized why exactly I was skeptical
Who said people aren't cruel? Certainly not Christians. People are inherently, naturally cruel.
@zachurich5046 I think it's supposed to show us that it's possible that Christian "love" isn't exactly what it seems to be. It's possible that Christian love is really just repressed hate
clarification not obfuscation, rather what I was hoping for. Nice video. Lots of nice long quotes
The tension of the bowstring can be seen from a person such as Pascal, who was for Nietzsche a superb combination of a noble man who incarnates the slave morality par excellence.
It also interesting that Nietzsche wrote that France is « the most christian country » in so far as because they were the most loyal christian’s, they are also it’s best adversary. See dawn.
Here we have the premise in one of my favorite Nietzschean ideas that « He who attains his ideal, precisely thereby surpasses it. »
And that is precisely why Nietzsche does not advocate for a return of a master morality.
I've come to similar conclusions after recently studying that Zarathustra section in Ecce Homo. I think it's my new favorite piece by him. He really lays everything out.
reminds me to my personal process:
WHOLENESS > LeftHandPath (Unholiness) > RightHandPath (Holiness)
I appreciate this shorter, focused format for core concepts!
The tension between the unconscious innocence of the past and the conscious guilt of the present sounds remarkably similar to Hegel and even Mao (see: 'On Contradiction') with regards to the development of history, or "The Unfolding of the Absolute."
great video, NPG!!... i love your long-form lectures... but, honestly, your shorter ones are much better... i enjoy listening to them a few times in a row while performing other online tasks... love the visual content/classical artwork... much appreciated art thou thusly!
you can read impressively fast when you want to, Keeg... and always at a rhythmic sonorousPRESTOtempo!!
I'm reminded of a passage from Oscar Wilde's "The Soul of Man Under Socialism", but I couldn't find the exact quote. He talks about how the glorification of the hard-working poor was used to keep the poor in line, in the same way that glorification of the virtues of the fairer sex was used to keep women in line. Sure, the businessman and menfolk have the power over womenfolk and workers respectivally, but the downtrodden are better on the inside. It was a kind of tradeoff by the ruling classes.
We're no less cruel, now we just feel bad about it. humans are indeed the cruelest of animals, truly.
based humans
Humans are the best.
most humans don't feel bad about it.
Fire ants are pretty cruel
It's more that we choose selective things to feel bad about in order to avoid having to think about all the other cruel things while feeling "moral"
You really do have an incredible talent for delving into the details of Nietzsche, whom I have always loved. You take a systematic approach, and I find your arguments so original and compelling. Thanks for another great video.
again i enjoy your show, only had time for a short one today, thanks for doing this
I like the idea of "build a society not knowing where you will be placed" THAT would be a kinder world
You should do one of these deep-dives on what exactly Nietzsche means by "décadence"
That is not a bad idea. It would have to also be a video concerning the relationship between drives/physiology and every other aspect of human life.
@@untimelyreflectionsdo you have a podcast episode covering this?
15:18 That passage makes clear he isn't attempting a change in the definition of decadence. He is pointing out the decline of the human condition. Man can take what is good and conflate a certain value (twisted into propaganda and cultish mantras) with the power of a social position, which, in his estimation, is contrary to good. He would be jumping up and down, asking why nobody understood him were he alive today to witness how many had read his books. He understood institutional propaganda before it was mass produced.
@@chrisvarva9847 the term "decadence" is sort of charged and can mean different things depending on who you ask. And Nietzsche does have a somewhat unique take on the phenomenon, why it occurs and how it affects civilization.
Thank you for sharing that! It was a really revealing insight into an idea that is often discussed very superficially.
this one gonna blowup homie
What does "Conscious Innocence" look like in practice? I would like to explore this in greater detail.
Thank you for your work on something you care about a lot. As an older man, working his way out of medieval catholic christianity, your videos have been an immense help.
The potential negative aspect of Nietzschian philosophy is that it can easily turn into something similar to the modern and corporate "wokeness" as well as revisionist wars it has caused in recent years.
does the acceptance of determinism nowadays prove that we have already entered the extra moral age? I think the acceptance of things like mental illnesses or sexual orientations are possibly the strongest example of how we implement this understanding of determinism, although we havent completed this application on everyone, since we still ascribe similar moralist claims towards bigotry or other things we still see as evil. That probably isnt so far away though, maybe a few decades more.
I would say that many people intellectually accept determinism without actually considering the way that they act against that knowledge in their daily lives. Often there is a big song and dance to somehow hold onto things like morality, guilt, the self, and so on. A desire to “prove” that we can still have these things even with determinism. Very misguided from Nietzsche’s perspective. The whole point of the free will superstition was to make moral guilt possible; if you get rid of free will but still operate from a mental framework that imputes guilt then it doesn’t really matter. You’re just moralizing with additional steps. But that’s what most determinists do, so until we overcome that it will not represent a real change.
@untimelyreflections I think a lot of the moralist beliefs that may be seen in determinists today are held in contradiction to their more determinist beliefs. In that sense i think the change is real, but that the change is happening unevenly, at the expense of consistency.
@@untimelyreflections This is the one thing that used to frustrate me when I was a Christian. They would advocate for essentially a deterministic world view when it suited them to do so. IE God was omnipotent and not one blade of grass dies without God's direct action and all of our lives go according to His divine plan. But when it came to your personal guilt for sins and moral imperfections then all of a sudden the blame was shifted 100% to you and they would say "you have free will to choose good from evil" and you will end up in hell for eternity if you make the wrong choices. Like you said they are intellectually able to grasp the concept of fate being intrinsically fixed within the construct of reality but they have a slave's Stockholm syndrome that prevents them from embracing the implications of that reality and truly freeing themselves from the yoke they place on themselves and embracing the eternal recurrence and Amor Fati.
@@corbentaylor7825Will have to read that a few times to fully understand, but I think you're onto something
@@untimelyreflections The only way that they can do that is by the doctrine of original sin that still holds sway in one form or another.
Beautifully succinct. Well done.
But what of love?
So, here's what I'm getting from Nietzsche: Cruelty is inevitable? He's basically saying that people who are cruel do not make an active choice in being cruel, it's just the success of cruel instincts. Furthermore, when people cannot exhaust their instinct for cruelty, they turn it inward, causing the bad conscience. So, since cruelty is inevitable, we should not wish for no cruelty? Because that would be anti-life? Am I getting this right?
Kaufmann would have argued that the best answer is the sublimation of drives such as cruelty. I didn’t really go into this in the video, but there is arguably a thread in Nietzsche’s work that contrasts emasculation of a drive versus its sublimation. Christianity emasculates/castrates by demanding “if they eye offend thee, pluck it out”: cruelty, sensuality, pride etc have to be condemned and have an inner war waged against them. They can never truly be rooted out so there’s perpetual guilt, but the drives can be “separated from what they can do” (made reactive in Deleuze’s coinage). This is seen in the etymology of ressentiment (contains the “senti”, to feel): drives are felt but not acted.
Contrast this to sublimation: the recognition that the drives exist and must be propitiated, but coupled with the innovation that as conscious/intelligent beings we can redirect the drives or satisfy them in less direct ways. Freud and others would later take this idea from Nietzsche (without crediting him). There’s also the idea that the Greeks held festivals for their “all too human”, as Nietzsche put it. The drive is satisfied in a ritual context, within given boundaries, without letting it overwhelm the society by being satisfied all the time. See also Nietzsche’s passage on the six ways of dealing with vehement drives (covered in the podcast episode I did on self-control, Daybreak 102 iirc).
That being said, can we fundamentally reshape human instincts in accordance with what our rationality tells us would be a “better” state of affairs? Nietzsche would argue no, or that it would take an incredibly long timescale, and that finally if we succeeded we might well make mankind worse. Hope this helps.
This is so good, making Nietzsche more accessible to the general audience.
Ever gave some thought into looking into Thelema's connection with Nietzsche? There definitely is some resonance between Crowley and Nietzsche, maybe you are familiar with him through Messa.
That was awesome. I really needed this to continue my contemplation of what was meant by Uberman or an elite, what he thinks of egalitarianism.
The best quote about Nietzsches goals for any master morality is his comparison of the criminal to an ill person. It makes sense if by healthy in a sense is meant what is common and the standard. The only reason we think of between the two stems from our ideas of free will. They both are not guilty of hurting themselves and others, and do so against their own best interests. So therefore both need to be cured. As much as Nietzsche is considered an edgeord, this is one of the most humanistic ideas i have ever come across
Its simple really. Its a balance of power that ironically fleshes out to be secular in application. Religion, morality, is just a formality.
"Premoral age", "Extamoral age." Terms that show more of the lack of understanding in the user than some insight gleaned of a period of time.
Those terms only serve to denigrate a moral set that does not align to our current moral set. ... which may not align to a future moral set.
It is a subconscious declaration of "good" and "bad". A declaration of what each individual "should" do. A way of separating a people, from a period of time, and getting people in the present time to align themselves to your moral set by appealing to their basic human need of having a social group they belong to.
When the fact of the matter is that every human is capable of holding any moral set as dictated by our experiences and our societal group. From Hitler to Ghandi, each of us is capable of it given the right circumstances.
I like reading Nietzsche, but I am constantly struck by the lack of insight of his time and how it plays out in his philosophy. And I am sure that in a few hundred years, people will be saying the same thing about us.
*Holy Qur'an* About the *Creator* of all worlds
*42:5 Holy Qur'an*
تَكَادُ ٱلسَّمَـٰوَٰتُ يَتَفَطَّرْنَ مِن فَوْقِهِنَّ ۚ وَٱلْمَلَـٰٓئِكَةُ يُسَبِّحُونَ بِحَمْدِ رَبِّهِمْ وَيَسْتَغْفِرُونَ لِمَن فِى ٱلْأَرْضِ ۗ أَلَآ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ هُوَ ٱلْغَفُورُ ٱلرَّحِيمُ ٥
The heavens almost burst apart above them [in awe of Him], and the angels glorify the praises of their Lord, and seek forgiveness for those on earth. Indeed, *Allah* is the All-Forgiving, Most Merciful.
*2:136 Holy Qur'an*
Say, O believers, “We believe in *Allah* and what has been revealed to us; and what was revealed to Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob, and his descendants; and what was given to Moses, Jesus, and other prophets from their Lord. We make no distinction between any of them. And to *Allah* we all submit.”
@ouch000u I'm not sure of why you think those quotes apply to the topic I was referring to, but ...sure.
Also, I see no reason to submit to an idea, a concept, that evolved from a storm/warrior god.
Though, I would be interested in your perspective on the reason the faith you referenced has literally spent hundreds of years and almost countless texts on mentally jumping through hoops to try and explain the gaps exposed by logic, in a concept of an all powerful god.
@@rodcameron7140
*19:35** Noble Qur'an*
مَا كَانَ لِلَّهِ أَن يَتَّخِذَ مِن وَلَدٍۢ ۖ سُبْحَـٰنَهُۥٓ ۚ إِذَا قَضَىٰٓ أَمْرًۭا فَإِنَّمَا يَقُولُ لَهُۥ كُن فَيَكُونُ ٣٥
It is not [befitting] for Allāh to take a son; exalted is He! When He decrees an affair, He only says to it, "Be," and it is.
*Glorious Qur'an*
19:36
وَإِنَّ ٱللَّهَ رَبِّى وَرَبُّكُمْ فَٱعْبُدُوهُ ۚ هَـٰذَا صِرَٰطٌۭ مُّسْتَقِيمٌۭ ٣٦
˹Jesus also declared,˺ “Surely Allah is my Lord and your Lord, so worship Him ˹alone˺. This is the Straight Path.”
I love Nietzsche's psychological and societal analysis, but one thing I don't understand is his abolition of will to truth. Why does he not view this tension of the bowstring as an arrow trajectory towards a higher truth? How can we deny humanity's progress of understanding when compared to the past? When he says that the slave morality is damaging, what exactly is it damaging if all destruction has no purpose and is just a force for the sake of affirming itself? If our pursuit of truth is just will to power then how can we even question truth without proper premises?
"The strength of a person's spirit would then be measured by how much 'truth' he could tolerate, or more precisely, to what extent he needs to have it diluted, disguised, sweetened, muted, falsified."
Oftentimes, the truth is ugly and people need lies in order to cope with reality. But it runs deeper than that; Nietzshce thinks that ever since Plato, Western philosophy has deluded itself thinking that we can find a "pure truth" or "truth-in-itself". In reality, people invent 'truth' in order to falsify reality to their advantage, or simply as to make things coherent out of an infinitely incoherent mess.
Nietzsche’s bias was that he didn’t recognize the ontological reality of objective transcendent principles such as truth, love, beauty, and the Good.
Although he cherry-picked a few of these to bolster his attack on Platonism and Christianity. In his system, Master Morality takes on a pagan, Darwinian character, and he assumes this should be taken for granted, since there is no transcendence, only organisms vying with each other for physical space. Sly, but not very honest.
Nietzsche wasn’t really a philosopher, he was more of a polemicist with an axe to grind. Some of his criticisms were valid though, and he was a great writer. Absolutely still worth engaging with his ideas, especially if you disagree with him.
If you start from "darwinist" assumption that all nature is just about survival through struggle, then "will to power" is all there is. All religion and ideology is just a tool for one class or nation to dominate over the other. Then Christianity is just a result of slves desire to usurp the masters. That is the only truth you need.
But I fundamentally disagree with this. Christianity at the time made sense to people converting to it, it gave them answers to ultimate questions of purpose and meaning. So whether you are slve or master and you felt that these ideas make more sense to you then the ones you had before, you would convert. It doesn't matter if I or my class would gain "power". The morality just follows from people than changing behaviours according to this new purpose they are following.
I like to view humans as conscious, rational begins, which darwinist-feudians obviously don't. They would say, there's always a hidden reason why someone would accept an ideology, and will to power is always behind it.
excellent video. unparalaled quality on youtube!
I have a lot of Christian friends that I love dearly but they struggle to grasp this concept when we debate with each other, I'm not trying to change their minds or win, but reach understanding between our different views on life. Not sure if I'm just bad at conveying it but now I can put all that work onto this video, kekw! Cheers!
I disagree with a lot of the assertations about Christianity. To begin with, most of the complaints are about the Roman Catholic empire, with Catholicism itself being a bastardized mix of Judeo-Christianity and the then popular Pagan religions, which had to be done after the Christian uprising. The Romans took the religion, bastardized it, then used it to further it's power and control over whoever they invaded next.
This included killing *actual* Christians for "heresy," preventing the largely uneducated populace from actually reading the bible, and then also keeping literacy rates down. Eventually leading to Martin Luther reading and recognizing the bible is actually for the people, they don't need to tithe, they don't need to punish themselves, they can't be excommunicated from God, etc. and he left and started his own heretic movement where he actually taught the bible to people.
As a big example, the "holier than thou" crowd are hypocrites and actively going against the book's teachings. The *entire* point of everything Jesus said is mercy, compassion, and forgiveness. He often condemned priests and "holy men" for their corruption.
I thing the biggest thing is on both sides people haven't actually read the bible.
Hegel is lurking somewhere in the background, when you come to think of it. The master morality as thesis, the slave morality as antithesis and the (possible) dawn of an extra-moral age as synthesis. "German culture, [...] an elevation and a divining refinement of the historical sense". Indeed.
Precisely, Nietzsche actually fits into Hegel's dialectic as a contradiction and negation of the status quo of Christian dominance
@@trambly611 If dialectics is a vehicle, then Nietzsche certainly keeps the engine running but fills it with a different type of fuel... to explore new horizons.
If this video can be premise for “slave morality is a form of envy” then Zizek is right: “Don’t underestimate envy.”
Indeed. Reactive power is still power, and for some reason many people who get infatuated with Nietzsche tend to forget that.
Insightful response, thank you for that
In the coldest environment it's the case. In the equatorial region it's the Alpha, and in the modern world it's professionallism, the art of enslaving self towards excellence!
Thank you for doing this podcast, it really means a lot.
Wow! Sooo much information packed into this video.
Wonderful as always. Thank you.
Tension of the soul, indeed (well done, my friend)
hey not sure if you will read this (though anyone could help me here), but I've found Nietzsche to be extremely insightful on thousands of ideas/visions of course, yet one I idea (I suspect I gravely misunderstand it), seems straight up dumb to me. The idea of the Übermensch, where we create our own values, and as said in this video, is also one free from resentment etc. Even as an ideal, it strikes me completely against my most fundamental experiences in real life. I have never met anyone who could even get CLOSE to not having resentment: hence what is the utility of an ideal that's so far away from our nature? It'd be the same as saying: "Oh guys, just don't go to war, just be nice towards one another". It doesn't work that way, and saying this won't help (even if it woud be nice if it was like that).
The Overman should not be regarded as a conception of what a human being from our time and place can become over the course of one lifetime. The Overman is a conception of what the entire species can become if we were shaped/guided by values that regard life as fundamentally good rather than fundamentally bad/unsatisfactory. Nietzsche never uses the language of becoming the Overman, he uses the language of sacrificing oneself ("going under") to bring forth the Overman. It's a goal in the distant future, a future for the entire species, not for one individual. You're correct that the idea of a human who is completely free of resentment is so outlandish that it is hard to even imagine. Nietzsche would say... that's why we have quite a lot of work to do.
@@untimelyreflections nice, appreciate the detailed response, love your videos
I would say you're looking for a cure when what Nietzsche is offering you is a toolkit. You're never going to be free of resentment, and Nietzsche clearly held onto some resentment himself. What you do with that resentment, and understanding the culture that has impressed upon you how to manifest those emotions, is what Nietzsche has to offer. The Ubermensch serves almost as a replacement for Jesus Christ as a point of reference for people when we compare ourselves to a perfect standard. He wants us to imagine a new perfect standard. So he's not arguing for never feeling resentment, just what you choose to do with it post. Do you think people should direct it inward unto themselves with guilt and shame, believe in good and evil? Would you prefer that people see it as a natural and neutral phenomena instead, and at that one that a person can overcome either through the battle of the wills or acceptance? Where no one is suffering in damnation for eternity as a point of reference.
I think we all desire for perfection, and a perfect solution to all of our problems but unfortunately it appears that everything is a work in progress, forever. I feel like Nietzsche out of a love for his people (and for himself) attempted to aid them by creating these works - such that maybe some could free themselves of the shackles of guilt that he saw had capture the whole of his culture. No philosophical system will ever be perfect and free of criticism, they are all created by man who will always be fallible in some way.
Overman achieves conscious innocence, yes?
This is a great nuance that is rarely discussed in Nietzsche videos Great video!
Amazing dude, very good video.
I feel like this ended very abruptly...?
What else should I have talked about?
Opposites turn into eachother on the far ends of a spectrum, therefore if one goes far enough into guilt, he will be innocent and vice versa. It is not conscious innocence that Nietzsche wishes to cultivate, but a conscious and full acceptance of guilt, removing all hope for an innocent action. In admitting complete and total guilt and occluding the possibility of innocent conduct, the guilt/innocence conflict is transcended, freeing our conscience from the Christian dialectic all together, whilst gaining an intensification of self awareness that would not be possible without this-error-that indeed has the greatest of all merits.
Great video as always, keep up the good work!
I feel guilty when I act cruelly to a person who doesn't deserve it because I don't want that happening to me and in the world in general because I do believe that the world would be much better for me and everyone without cruelty and with compassion. Is this guilt unhelpful and an expression of the slave morality in me? It seems to me that guilt has its benefits but perhaps I am misunderstanding something. Even though I may not have free will, just me noticing that I acted in a way against my values and mentally punishing myself for it(with reasonable intensity of course) makes it less likely that such an act will be committed by me in the future so my self allows guilt and shame as an emotion. Is this harming me somehow?
If you start from a darwinist notion that organisms do everything in their self-interest, then it follows that even if they are being compassionate, it's just because they want someone to be compassionate to them. I disagree with this. People have a need for purpose, meaning, completely rational desire for existence to be logical and purposeful in the most ultimate sense. So if you are being cruel to the weak for no reason it just doesn't makes sense. It doesn't fit in any ideas of a purposeful existence.
@@antun88 Should also note that natural selection doesn't only apply with individuals, but also species generally.
A genetic lineage may gain advantage at the expense of the personal benefit of some or even all of it's individuals.
The only fundamental rule is that whichever 'thing' self perpetuates more effectively, wins, irrespective of the means.
Excellent summary. Thanks so much :)
There’s no hiding the fact that the master mentality is that of most psychopaths, they can rationalize away their power and your weakness.
Just like you do. Living in a higher civilization using a device that came from exploiting.
Love your content and narration. Thank you !
I’ve been under the impression that the quote actually from Tertullian was from Aquinas, thanks to Rick Roderick’s series Masters of Suspicion
I wonder for the 'Euclidean' and 'Pythagoreans' of which they don't preface any god or man for their rules.... Can we reconcile them with Master & Slave morality;
"Plato said God geometrizes continually" - Plutarch . Quaes. Conv. 8.2
If strength is in cunning that feeds upon weakness, then the strong can exist in and subsistence upon the weakest--and in fact seek a society in which moral weakness is utmost.
What good is morality if it does not prosper? If it has no power to effect change?
What good is power if there is no morality? If power is not harnessed to effect change?
9:00 but, isn't that because of the mixing of slave morality and master morality? It's not as if it was a pure slave morality or Christianity back then, especially after Constantine.
huh, you're right I did misunderstand it. Thank you for the correction, sir. The reframing of the slave morality's "evil" as being rooted in a sort of psychological blind spot that it creates thus creating further immoralities downstream of it were key.
How would Rust Cohle explain this to Marty?
A Beautiful ending to a wonderful video! 🤟
Would you ever consider exploring Nietzsche’s philosophy in relation to Buddhism? The channel Seeker to Seeker covers the overlap and I’d be interested in what your thoughts would be on it.
I've considered this topic for another short-form video.
@@untimelyreflectionshey, I think you might be interested in a book on this topic called "Robert G Morrison - Nietzsche and Buddhism, a study in nihilism and ironic affinities" easy to find online
Bro saw one tenth of what Darwin did, and it made him go insane.
"Man is evil"-so said to me for consolation, all the wisest ones.
Ah, if only it be still true today! For the evil is man's best force.
"Man must become better and eviler"-so do I teach.
The evilest is necessary for the Superman's best.
It may have been well for the preacher of the petty people to suffer and be burdened by men's sin.
I, however, rejoice in great sin as my great consolation.- Such things, however, are not said for long ears.
Every word, also, is not suited for every mouth. These are fine far-away things: at them sheep's claws shall not grasp!
Zarathustra, The Higher Man, stanza 5.
The drive of constant self motivation forwards towards perfection is true mastery. The cruelty of the two (impotent) sides of the same coin mentioned in Nietsche's critique spring of a lack thereof and as a sorry compensation, it seems.
So you can guess what the next and last 'free from..' is
I struggle a bit to understand the details of Nietzsche's proposed morality. Could it be almost like Jungian psychology, but mapped onto a moral philosophy?
*Psychology:* Integrate the shadow, rather than deny or fight it. Employ the shadow as a means of strength and confidence to make yourself and your world better.
*Conscious Innocence:* Integrate Human propensity for cruelty, rather than hate it. Seek strength and beauty without being shamed, because strength and beauty are how our species prospers.
I'm just curious how the ubermensche treats those he has disgust for. Is the ubermensche cruel, callous or disdainful?
Just subscribed. Thank you so much
thanks... dig your work, sir.
Very Interesting! I cant wait for another podcast
btw. I would love to find out more about how Christianity affected our worldview as well as our morality and in which way it still does.
I wonder if theres a way of separating the morality that is in our nature and the biases that were implemented by our culture.
Ever since I have discovered Nietsche I have been trying to observe each and every moral judgment I came up with in order to classify it.
More questions were born and I feel like I am unable to satisfy my curiousity.
So is the idea of the conscious innocence that there's no such thing as free will, there's no evil subject, but that doesn't mean there aren't evil acts? Or is it only focused on the ascribing of guilt by slave morality and rejects seeing any acts as immoral altogether?
Nietzsche rules. You rule. Thank you sir 🙏🏻 You do a great service with this work.
*19:35** Noble Qur'an*
مَا كَانَ لِلَّهِ أَن يَتَّخِذَ مِن وَلَدٍۢ ۖ سُبْحَـٰنَهُۥٓ ۚ إِذَا قَضَىٰٓ أَمْرًۭا فَإِنَّمَا يَقُولُ لَهُۥ كُن فَيَكُونُ ٣٥
It is not [befitting] for Allāh to take a son; exalted is He! When He decrees an affair, He only says to it, "Be," and it is.
In this existence as a separate being, you have but two choices, go with the rest or go against it.
Your argument is flawed, the ascendance of Christianity did in fact reduce the amount of suffering in the world. Conditions before it's spread were so much worse in comparison and only continued to improve. Slavery was abolished, technology introduced to the 3rd world, modern medicine, railroads, electricity. To the extent that the spread of Christianity did increase suffering wasn't because of Christianity but because of the residual master morality that still existed and was carried along with it. A master morality that while in decline still struggles to reassert itself.
While I would like to agree with your argument, none of the innovations and improvements you cited are in any way influenced by Christianity.
@@lukehunnable Abolition of Slavery was definitely product of Christianity and probably one of the reasons for anticolonial sentiment in the 3rd world, being looked upon as a foreign imposition and attack on local culture. While Christianity didn't create technology or technical innovation it created an atmosphere where it could thrive. A big reason there was no industrial revolution in pagan Rome was because slavery was so widespread, accepted, and made innovation unnecessary for the slave masters. Without slavery innovation became more essential for survival to say nothing of prosperity..
@@lukehunnable Even if one could not cite direct influences of devoted Christian doctors of the sciences and church, one could give indirect credit to Christianity for intitutionalizing higher education and continuing (if not proliferating) the Greek tendency to value truth and rationale (See scholasticism.)
It took more than a dozen of centuries to abolish a slavery. And the funniest part is that both sides of slavery debate justified their position with Christianity and God. After Rome has fallen conditions didn't improve at first even though christianity spread. Technological advances were lost and wisdom has vanished.
Technology is the thing that has reduced suffering
Man what a great video really summarized a super important concept
I think woke/critical theory/post modernism perfectly shows his genius & transvaluation of values
Nietzsche was simply factually wrong about this, just as in most things. Christianity and the other non-killing religions were spread from top down, from the masters, because it offered them definite tangible benefits and relieved them of the responsibility of every village headman, every tribal chief, or every forager band-- the response of having to provide material benefits to his group. It allowed them to substitute afterlife or non-worldly rewards for actual material ones.
Anakin would appreciate Nietzsche's work.
i haven't even watched the vid yet, but i think i intuitively get it. most of my ideas are intuitive currently, so take it with a grain of salt lol.
you as an individual can be a slave to the system in a way that hinders you from reaching different stages of potential. so you have these inner barriers that you don't dare to confront, barriers which in and of themselves can be built by internal and external forces.
basically i don't FULLY accept the "self-incurred immaturity" concept of kant, because of karl marx's introduction of material conditions (external forces).
i say "fully" because of the fact that i think i understand "teleology", specifically when it comes to human actions. you have restricted "pathways" in life. some form of determinism?
there's many ideas swirling in this head of mine that i'm still trying to mix and match where i think possible and "makes sense". but i think if i go to uni i will have definitive lingo and logical steps in making sure all of these concepts actually "interlink", for a lack of a better word.
now to the video to see how wrong i was and how much i assumed just from the title 😁
edit: i'm so stupid i just skipped over morality part, and mostly thought about slave-master dynamic in hegelian sense probably in how you better yourself (the way i interpret that dynamic). but i think i get it. some people become leaders and other followers, no matter which "system" or a certain social bubbles within the system, a scientific field etc. but this isn't a barrier for "followers". they become their own leaders with time. now i'm specifically thinking in the terms of a scientific field. whoever becomes a leader first, is a teacher, who then passes on their understanding to followers who have "shed" the cult of revenge, in a post capitalist society.
something like that?
That’s very ubermensch of you.
“I don’t even need to watch the video - I know what it’s saying by instinct” 🤣
Keep it up King
I think that it would be a real innovation if we would be able to talk about what lies beyond good and bad AND good and evil in a strictly TRANSMORAL (not extramoral!) sense. If we are playing the master-slave dialectic in morality 1. we are still moralizing, 2. we are the slaves of certain values and ideals. Even the master morality can enslave people, just as the slave morality can liberate them. 3. If we stick to morality, then we should understand that the vertical hierarchy of master and slave is actually doesn't make sense here, and this is especially true today. The patriarchal, top-down relations of good and evil, noble and slave have been replaced by mechanical relations which have nothing to do with the concept of value at all!!! Rather, they are about the dynamics of forces and counterforces. They are purely physical and quantitative, materialistic and levelling. There can be no aesthetizing nobility, heroism or Nietzschean overmen here, but only consumers who are competing for resources and in showing-off, and who are only manifestations of hunger, just like the zombie is. The movie title Walking Dead was not a mere accident, because it contains this meaning too.
One can understand more about another then they may know about themselve
Am I wrong, but N. didn't say that masters are aristocrats, like being a ruler by bloodline. I see it the different way, as of the one who can, should ... Must. And hate me for it, but by all examples on hand, N. should be read an discussed in his original language, respecting his context...
This channel is intellectual gold
Slave morality made us self concious? That's pretty much story of the garden of Eden and the Adam's fall described in bible. Neat. So first we had unconsious innocence, then conscious guilt, and next to come is consious innocence?
Funny that Nietzsche agrees on that with Apostle Paul.
"by the law is the knowledge of sin".
Interesting that only people condemned time and time again in gospels were moralizers who condemned others.
Very interesting.
I think antinatalism, which is growing in popularity, sees this system as a whole in understanding the vast majority are slaves, and it would therefore be most merciful to not bring new beings into existence. What does the comment section think of this?
So we can practice master morality among competitors but treat those beneath us with a slave morality? Since they don’t have the resources(habits) to take the punishment the ones above can?
As an atheist or agnostic (don’t know which label is more accurate), I think that Christian morality definitely played a role in civilizing Europe. It eliminated slavery within Europe and likely made the rich more charitable with the poor, gave leaders the fear of judgement, enforced monogamy (less sexual competition to monopolize all the women, less intersex conflict, better cooperation with other men).
You get folks in England like Josiah Wedgwood concerned with the well-being of his workers in a way that maybe in a non-Christian Europe would exist. You get people questioning slavery in a way that never happened in the Muslim world purely from a guilty conscience. You get people commuted to public service in ways that are exceptional. King George 3 was genuinely interested in talking to farmers and knowing how they lived to not be out of touch. Fredrick of Prussia was trying to get people on the potato because he genuinely cared about food security.
When I watch rap videos and see this vulgar glorification of wealth and shit that even our billionaires don’t engage in, I wonder if our ancestors in the Viking age were similar, with their stupid jewelry and bragging about murdering more than someone else. Where would we be without Christian morality? Would we be as bad as the trashiest rappers?
Yes Future and T Grizzley = master morality unironically
Could you explain the part about Muslim world? Cause I thought you were talking about Christianity in Europe. Also, I have trouble understanding your sentence
Jeff Bezos literally has Dic shaped rocket 🚀 to stunt on YOU and you are whining about a rapper with a gold chain 😂 ….
The new testament endorsed slavery. What are you yapping about? You're also obviously racist for hating hip-hop.
And yet you don't see non-religious Norwegians of today behaving like rappers. Why? Due to different genetics. So no, Vikings would not have ever behaved as if they were sub-Saharan Africans, and it is ridiculous to suggest they would have.
Daoism is a fine example of that conscious innocence.
Thank you for the upload
Outstanding lecture
I think there can be acts of true selflessness not just doing the right thing for the wrong reason but they're few and far between because most of the time we're using those Noble things to make us feel better and make us feel Noble it shouldn't feel Noble we should just be Noble and not care whether or not we are is my hot take
Bruh what do you think about these “warrior philosopher” neech dudes on RUclips. I think it’s neurotic lol. Great video.
I’m listening to this a second time 10:46 and still left with the question. What is the meaning of life?
Stupid question. It assumes everybody’s life has one universal meaning. Meaning is found in the individual.
@@astrikos4011is there no happy medium?
we knew this was gonna be made sooner or later