While reading Friedrich Nietzsche\u2019s account of the origins and nature of morality, I got to thinking about our contemporary political situation, specifically as it pertains to the left.<\/p>\n
Rejecting as he did the very notion of objectivity, Nietzsche believed that all moralities, far from being the products of rational discovery<\/em>, were creations<\/em>, assertions of what he called \u201cthe Will to Power\u201d\u2014the desire, that is, of their authors to impose themselves on their surroundings. Invocations of Reason, God, Truth, Right, Good, and the like, are the stuff of the rhetoric<\/em> of objectivity, smoke screens designed to conceal this desire.\u00a0<\/p>\n For example, a Christian, say, knows that he will convince no one to endorse his vision of the world by telling others that it would empower him if they too would become Christians.\u00a0 So, he must employ language from which first person or subjective references are as far as possible absent.\u00a0 And what is true of the Christian is equally true of all who endorse a \u201cslave-morality.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n The slave-morality is the morality of the masses, the morality of the herd.\u00a0 Not only Christian morality but its secular egalitarian posterity\u2014socialism, liberalism, democracy, communism, etc.\u2014are expressions of the slave-morality, for they presuppose both resentment <\/em>toward elites as well as denial of the radical in<\/em>equality of persons and classes of which those elites are a standing\u2014and painful\u2014reminder.<\/p>\n The elites or aristocrats <\/em>have their own morality, \u201cthe master<\/em> morality.\u201d\u00a0 The virtues that belong to it are the vices of the slave morality.\u00a0 Nietzsche writes that in the master morality, a person \u201chas duties only to\u201d his \u201cequals.\u201d\u00a0 That is, \u201cone may act towards beings of a lower rank, towards all that is foreign, just as seems good to one\u2026.\u201d\u00a0 From this perspective, an aristocrat\u2019s obligations \u201cto exercise prolonged gratitude and prolonged revenge,\u201d \u201cartfulness in retaliation and [refinement] of the idea of friendship,\u201d extend only as far as his equals.\u00a0<\/p>\n As Nietzsche says, matters are \u201cotherwise\u201d with the slave morality. The slave morality arose in response to the master morality and as a means by which to subvert it.<\/p>\n \u201cThe revolt of the slaves in morals begins in the very principle of resentment <\/em>becoming creative and giving birth to values\u2026.\u201d\u00a0 Adherents of the slave morality gave birth to the concept of evil, <\/em>\u201cthe original, the beginning, the essential act in the conception of a slave-morality\u2026.\u201d\u00a0 The evil one of the slave morality is \u201cjust <\/em>the good man of the other morality, just the aristocrat, the powerful one, the one who rules\u2026.\u201d\u00a0 The master morality\u2019s \u201cgood man\u201d is now \u201cdistorted by the venomous eye of resentfulness, into a new color, a new signification, a new appearance.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n In the slave morality, \u201cthose <\/em>qualities which serve to alleviate the existence of sufferers are brought into prominence and flooded with light: it is here that sympathy, the kind, helping hand, the warm heart, patience, diligence, humility, and friendliness attain to honor\u2026.\u201d\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 Such qualities \u201care the most useful qualities, and almost the only means of supporting the burden of existence.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n In short: \u201cSlave-morality is essentially the morality of utility.\u201d<\/p>\n Lacking the superior strength and intelligence of the adherents of the master-morality, the adherents of the slave-morality, via their resentment toward their betters, seek to vilify the latter while rendering themselves objects of \u201cpity.\u201d<\/p>\n One need not accept Nietzsche\u2019s account of morality, or even deny the insuperable incoherence to which it ultimately leads, in order to acknowledge the insights that it imparts.\u00a0 Not only am I not a Nietzschean, I enthusiastically embrace the very religious tradition with which he identified the much dreaded slave-morality.\u00a0 Still, it is hard for me not recall his analysis whenever I consider the frequency and ease with which leftists\u2014liberals, socialists, Democrats, and secular egalitarians of all sorts\u2014charge those with whom they differ with all manner of transgressions: \u201cracism,\u201d \u201csexism,\u201d \u201chomophobia,\u201d \u201cIslamophobia,\u201d \u201cageism,\u201d \u201cimperialism,\u201d and \u201cxenophobia,\u201d to say nothing of \u201cgreed\u201d and \u201cselfishness.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n In order to advance his egalitarian or \u201cprogressive\u201d vision\u2014an agenda that demands massive redistributive measures to which many are opposed\u2014the leftist relies upon these devices to veil his subjective needs.\u00a0 Like the proponent of the slave-morality who transforms the good man of the master-morality into \u201cthe evil one,\u201d the leftist demonizes his opponents.\u00a0 Thus, he who rejects race and gender-based preferential treatment policies, i.e. \u201caffirmative action,\u201d on the principled ground that our laws should be neutral with respect to such considerations is vilified as a \u201cracist\u201d and\/or \u201csexist.\u201d\u00a0 The person who rejects \u201csame-sex marriage\u201d is a malevolent \u201chomophobe.\u201d\u00a0 Those who believe that illegal immigration is destructive of our nation and who resist all efforts to enact another amnesty, whether it is de jure or de facto, are reduced to \u201cxenophobes.\u201d And so forth.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t mean to suggest that such leftists necessarily are disciples of Nietzsche. I don\u2019t believe that they are.\u00a0 But I wouldn\u2019t be at all surprised if Nietzsche, if he could observe in action the contemporary leftist, would see in him a prime example of exactly the sort of phenomenon on which he wrote.\u00a0 The psychological, emotional, and professional benefits of being on the left have long been noted by many an observer.\u00a0 The leftist, in order to continue reaping these fruits, conceals his desire to do so by conveying the semblance of being concerned, not for his own interests, but those who are victims of the sins of his opponents.<\/p>\n We may all be a little guilty of this, but considering that the disposition to demonize and moralize is most salient in the leftist, he is the first person to come to mind in connection with Nietzsche\u2019s exposition of morality.<\/p>\n Jack Kerwick, Ph.D.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" While reading Friedrich Nietzsche\u2019s account of the origins and nature of morality, I got to thinking about our contemporary political situation, specifically as it pertains to the left. Rejecting as he did the very notion of objectivity, Nietzsche believed that all moralities, far from being the products of rational discovery, were creations, assertions of what…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n