Nietchze and morality

Friedrich Nietzsche's approach on the idea of morality was very complex, as even though he believed morality to be damaging for society, he believed that it was inevitable for it to slowly but surely pervade the social order. From Nietzsche's perspective, individuals are wrong to look at the world and to attempt to categorize it using values like right or wrong, as these ideas have actually been artificially introduced as humanity experienced progress. The natural world is not good or evil in character and it would be wrong for someone to try to use such values when trying to understand it.

Even with the fact that Nietzsche emphasizes that morality is a divisive concept and that it needs to be regarded as an idea that is damaging humanity, he cannot help but to acknowledge that it has grown rapidly and that it has influenced the Western world in reforming most of its strategies. The German philosopher's "Genealogy of Morals" is largely meant to look at morality from a scientific perspective. "He was equipped to undertake it by his training in classical philology and by a keen amateur interest in the natural sciences, which led him to read widely and to conduct in his notebooks arguments with scientists that occasionally spill over into his published texts" (Ritchie).

Nietzsche was a perfectionist and this was reflected by his theories concerning the idea of 'good'. However, the German philosopher did not necessarily consider concepts such as pleasure or satisfaction of desires when taking into account this idea.

Instead, he believed that the idea was actually related to things like power and strength. Attempting to go through Nietzsche's writings is likely to provide one with the feeling that he concentrated most of his thinking on providing answers regarding the idea of perfection and on how it can shape people's thinking. It is almost that he dedicated most of his writings to providing readers with a theory discussing perfection (Leiter & Sinhababu 9).

Nietzsche most probably considered the idea of progress when he spoke about morality's negative effect on the social order. When considering that present-day ideologies such as capitalism are in disagreement with many moral principles, it actually seems that Nietzsche was right in saying that morality could harm society. Capitalism promotes competition and this makes it possible for the masses to experience progress at a faster pace. If the general public were to focus primarily on ideas related to morality progress would be seriously affected and individuals would feel less responsible for progress, taking into account that they would largely focused on turning the world into a better place where everyone would be able to experience little to no problems in achieving their dreams.

Many individuals today can be categorized as putting across slave morality as Nietzsche pictured this concept. "Slave morality is, for Nietzsche, clearly a decadent, unhealthy morality" and it is meant to relate to people putting across bitterness with regard to individuals controlling the social order. Slave morality is, in essence, focused on the well-being of humanity as a whole rather than just on the well-being of individuals in control.

Nietzsche devised the concept of master morality as a means to provide the world with a more complex understanding of morality types that would be beneficial for society when considering matters from a technological point-of-view. The Genealogy of morals actually reinforces this idea. "A genealogical account of the development of the slave morality that has triumphed in Europe is presented in order to indicate the decadence of that morality" (Smith).

One of the main reasons why Nietzsche came to believe that the morality will eventually come to be more common is the fact that slave morality is likely to influence the masses to successfully rebel against individuals controlling them. This will eventually lead to the majority of people becoming privileged and to individuals who were formerly in charge having to acknowledge that they are but equals to the masses. While most people would be happy with something like this happening, "for Nietzsche it is an historical and cultural catastrophe that has produced the herd morality" (Williams).

Nietzsche's answer is convincing when taking into account the idea of progress, as humanity is likely to experience a significant impediment in experiencing progress as long as morality comes to dominate most aspects of the social order. It is likely that the philosopher focused on a strategy that favored privileged individuals and thus made it difficult and almost impossible for underprivileged persons to be successful.