Oh and please excuse my very topical treatment of Nietzsche and his "philosophy." After all, I only care enough to have read him to the extent I can write a proper essay of him and hopefully respond to his key arguments, but if I have missed something that would provide crucial insight, please, again, let me know.
First, the part that I can understand. The distinction between Master and Slave morality seems relatively intuitive. I'm not saying it's right, but I think its intuitive as the basis for my disagreement. For those who don't know, Master morality is the championing of natural strength, of wealth, and of power and the distaste of weakness and the like. Slave morality is born of ressentiment which is French for resentment but isn't necessarily being used in the same fashion. Ressentiment in this manner means building a moral code and value system based on a frustration towards an authority you don't respect. Thus we can see where we get the term slave morality (because it comes from the "slaves"). Slave morality is characterized by Nietzsche as self-denying the pleasures of life such as money, sex, and the like as well as adapting strong opposition to killing, stealing, lying etc. because those are things that the Masters do and is therefore bad because they treat us wrong.
He uses the example of lambs and birds of prey. The birds feed on the lambs and the lambs get mad and adopt a no killing policy as part of their moral code. This, Nietzsche says, is part of their ressentiment towards the birds and is not a justifiable moral... thing. Nietzsche says that the birds are just doing their bird thing and cannot be blamed for seeking to conquer and feed on the lambs. (Here, Nietzsche also is falsely attributing cognitive states to animals which I certainly don't approve of.)
Here's where I start to disagree, obviously. You can't blame someone for subjecting someone else? You can't blame the bully for beating up the nerd? You can't blame a murderer for killing? You can't blame someone for just being a general jerk? Really? Really Nietzsche?
Nietzsche adopts the argument that what is natural is right. As I was recently enlightened to, there is no arguable conceptual connection between what is natural behavior and morally correct behavior. Additionally, animals are NOT moral agents and therefore cannot make more judgements! THE LAMBS DON'T HAVE A MORAL CODE. Sorry. I digress. It seems that Nietzsche supports the Darwinian idea of might makes right and whatever behavior promotes oneself is good behavior to have. But again, these ideas in and of themselves are not necessarily moral. Again, since humans are capable of moral action, we are not on level with animals in our moral choices and thus what is necessarily natural is not necessarily moral.
Going back to slave morality: it is in this moral viewpoint that Nietzsche claims that religion is born from. He primarily attacks Christianity and, by extension, Judaism, but he really is attacking the moral framework of all religions. He says they are self-depriving and wrong because they are based upon this championing of the meek and lowly and weakness and the like which is not something that we should be okay with. My issue is that A) while that might be a possible source for morality in religion, that doesn't make it wrong. In fact, seeing injustice and forming a moral code around NOT doing that is what's right, in my opinion. B) To have a very Darwinian society is much like having an anarchist society in that no one abides by laws they feel they can physically overcome. It's a dangerous spiral.
Nietzsche wants a resurgence of Master morality which I think is dangerous to society. Moreover, he wants people to reconsider their morals. Because they might be grounded in falsehoods of slave morality, we should reconsider them. I think we should reconsider our morals for the same reason we should reconsider our beliefs about the world and other values that we hold dear. They might be grounded in false reason or misconceptions. Point is, I think instead of having a strict set of rules, we should have guidance systems that help us come up with rules as we need them. I suggest utilitarianism as just one of the many ways one can establish a frame of reference for these things. Nietzsche says utilitarianism sucks because it treats everyone as equals. REALLY? What kind of elitist is he that he can say that some people's pain or pleasure counts for more or less than other's? It's outrageous to say that one person is inherently better than another. It blows my mind.
Finally, on top of all this absurdity, Nietzsche spends a TON of time talking about why there is no truth. Mainly, he says that any proposition of so-called "truth" is just an assertions of someone's "Will to Power." That is, whoever says, "Hey I've got some truth for you," is really just saying, "Hey I want to be better than you and so here is something you should accept as truth because I said it is and I want to be better than you..." or something. This too seems outrageous for a few GLARING reasons. A) There HAS to be objective, empirical truth about the universe. It abides by laws and any positing of these laws cannot merely be an assertion of power. B) A priori truths are not necessarily false by the virtue of their coming to be. There is a definite possibility of some things being known without having to be experienced or without the need for definitive evidence.
and of course, C) HOW CAN NIETZSCHE SAY THERE IS NO TRUTH WHEN HE IS TRYING TO TELL US THERE IS NO TRUTH? By saying there is no truth, he is trying to convince us of something he believes is true. He's contradicting himself completely and entirely and it bothers me. His claim of untruth fails on so many levels. Additionally, I can't tolerate skepticism in general. Mainly epistemological skepticism because it's not practical in the slightest. It doesn't do us any good to sit around and try to think of reasons why we can't know anything because that's contradictory in itself. Descartes can get away with it because he at least makes an attempt at moving away from his starting point of complete skepticism. All Nietzsche is doing is whining in a corner saying we can't know anything while telling us what to think.
It's not okay.
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