Nietzsche, There Are Two Basic

¶ … Nietzsche, there are two basic types of morality -- noble morality and slave morality. Noble morality is essentially a 'yea-saying' attitude wherein good and bad are equivalent to 'noble' and 'bad.' It is the noble that creates the value. Slave morality, on the other hand, is a 'nay-saying' attitude, which can also be thought of as a herd morality and it is used because it is beneficial to the weak, which will be explained further in this paper. In the slave morality, the virtues are thought to be kindness and humility. People who put themselves forward as independent or strong are thought of as bad people (the noble morality). The origin of morals is the conflict between these two different ways at looking at morals. The noble type creates his own values out of strength while the weak create theirs out of resentment and, in general, an inability to act. Nietzsche thought that it was impossible for these two types of morals to coexist.

To further explain Nietzsche's views on morality, he claims that in a noble morality, 'good' picks out exalted and proud states of mind, and it refers to people, not actions. 'Bad' means 'despicable,' and refers to individuals who are petty or cowardly and they are only concerned with what is beneficial to them as opposed to what is considered great (Nietzsche 2011, p. 113).

The first aristocratic morality worked on the basis of a distinction between 'good' (its own health and strength) and 'bad' (sickness, weakness, and ressentiment of the lower classes). The 'slave revolt' reversed this idea by naming the weak as 'good' and the strong as 'evil' (Nietzsche 2009, p. xvi). For Nietzsche, the "slave revolt in morality" starts when ressentiment becomes creative and gives birth to values. Nietzsche believed that the well-bred felt happy as humans and so they didn't have to learn to find happiness in an artificial way by looking to their enemies or by persuading themselves that they were happy as men of ressentiment do. The slave revolt happened through creativity and through the desire for the once-weak and lowly to find happiness.

In the parable of the lambs and the bird of prey, Nietzsche begins by explaining that it is understandable that lambs, being weak, would hate birds of prey because they know that birds of prey kill and eat lambs. So for the lambs, everything that is not a bird of prey can be thought of as good. All the birds of prey, however, are thought of as bad or evil. Nietzsche reiterates that this is completely understandable; it makes sense. However, can we really hate all birds of prey because they kill lambs? Nietzsche says no because birds of prey are doing what they are created to do. It would be just like hating lambs because they do not kill. Killing is something that the strong do to survive and Nietzsche blames language on the way that we see these things as bad or as good. We can say because a prey kills it is bad because killing is bad (and kill is a 'bad' word), but what if we were to look at killing as a sign of great strength? If we use the term 'great strength' then birds of prey sound heroic. Just like if we call lambs weak we get a different idea about lambs than if we were to use the word gentle. This parable illustrates the differences between slave and noble morality by showing us that in slave morality (in this case the lambs), we are saying that everything that doesn't kill is good (the herd mentality "all of those who don't do something are good). Here it is the ones who cannot do anything because they lack strength who are seen as good. In general, it shows that by not doing anything one is good.