Nietzsche's Genealogy Of Morality
On the Genealogy of Morality the word ‘ressentiment’ is possibly one of the key concepts in Nietzsche’s ideas about the psychology of ‘slave-morality’, the birth of morality, and the way it reassigned morality as we know it today. The word meaning itself is very close to the word resentment in English but is slightly different. The context in which Nietzsche uses the word ‘ressentiment’ is a psychological state of people that are conscious of their own inferiority and turn it to hatred towards external anger. It is a feeling that arises from the incapability of one’s success and hence finding external factors to blame for this incapability. Nietzsche aligns this concept with the weak people or slaves which are inferior to the noble, strong
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The more powerful, noble men saw themselves as good when they observed the contrast between themselves and those inferior to them: the weak, poor, and common people. Here Nietzsche introduces the contrast between master morality and slave morality and how the first concept of good and bad arose. As I mentioned earlier, the masters, nobles, and stronger people defined good as a reflection of themselves. Now when they came to contact with the weak, the slaves, the poor, and the common people, they attributed the concept of bad to them as the opposite side to what they saw on themselves. Their position of power is what also gave them control over language the power label things such as what is good and what is bad. On the other hand when the weak side came into contact with the nobles, after realizing they were inferior to the nobles, the feeling of ressentiment arose, which as we will later see, rearranged the concept of good and …show more content…
Firstly, Nietzsche is assuming that there is an already pre-determined will of the bird of prey, and that will is to kill the lamb. He thinks of will, fundamentally, what one is. Therefore the bird is its own will that wills him to kill. That might be the case for animals as they rely on their instincts to survive, and the birds instinct is to kill. However, when it comes humans things can be quite different. The idea of Nietzsche’s will and free will complicates our analysis. Does the strong oppresses the weak because of the will that he is, which is to oppress the weak, or because he chooses to? I’m am not going to discuss whether there is such thing as free will because that’s a debate that has been going on since the beginnings of philosophy, but it would be an objection to the naturally arisen oppression of Nietzsche. Secondly, another thing that is worth taking into consideration is the level of consciousness of human compared to other animals’. I don’t believe that the analogy of the bird and the prey is the right fit for humans because humans don’t rely only on their instincts, but also on logic, rationalism, and subjectivism. What Nietzsche is suggesting, might be the case for the primitive human which was basically just another animal and lived in caves, but things have changed since human started seeing
The more powerful, noble men saw themselves as good when they observed the contrast between themselves and those inferior to them: the weak, poor, and common people. Here Nietzsche introduces the contrast between master morality and slave morality and how the first concept of good and bad arose. As I mentioned earlier, the masters, nobles, and stronger people defined good as a reflection of themselves. Now when they came to contact with the weak, the slaves, the poor, and the common people, they attributed the concept of bad to them as the opposite side to what they saw on themselves. Their position of power is what also gave them control over language the power label things such as what is good and what is bad. On the other hand when the weak side came into contact with the nobles, after realizing they were inferior to the nobles, the feeling of ressentiment arose, which as we will later see, rearranged the concept of good and …show more content…
Firstly, Nietzsche is assuming that there is an already pre-determined will of the bird of prey, and that will is to kill the lamb. He thinks of will, fundamentally, what one is. Therefore the bird is its own will that wills him to kill. That might be the case for animals as they rely on their instincts to survive, and the birds instinct is to kill. However, when it comes humans things can be quite different. The idea of Nietzsche’s will and free will complicates our analysis. Does the strong oppresses the weak because of the will that he is, which is to oppress the weak, or because he chooses to? I’m am not going to discuss whether there is such thing as free will because that’s a debate that has been going on since the beginnings of philosophy, but it would be an objection to the naturally arisen oppression of Nietzsche. Secondly, another thing that is worth taking into consideration is the level of consciousness of human compared to other animals’. I don’t believe that the analogy of the bird and the prey is the right fit for humans because humans don’t rely only on their instincts, but also on logic, rationalism, and subjectivism. What Nietzsche is suggesting, might be the case for the primitive human which was basically just another animal and lived in caves, but things have changed since human started seeing