slave morality — Ross Campbell

What is "slave morality"? Sans religion, we're all- each of us- slaves to our bodies. Hunger, thirst, exposure, injury, etc. We're also all bound (or enslaved) to social truths/workings ie. if you go around making enemies and being despicable, it'll probably come back to bite you.

The argument behind religions that dictate morality is something along the lines of they show you the chains you think you're not bound to, as well as give you the key you think you don't need. Essentially, the freedom you think you have is really just enslavement to the least of what life has to offer (impulse, petty desire, negative emotion) and while it may seem the opposite at times actually restricts you from ever reaching the best life has to offer which transcends material gain, petty emotion and even pettier squabbles. That's what they say at least.

I was not aware that Nazism and Fascism were based on resentment. I had thought they were based on the concept that one identifiable group believed it was superior to others; the "I am better than you" theory. Which is not "I resent you therefore you suck" theory. Granted, I have not read much on Nazism of Fascism, so I could be way off.

I have frequently singled out Christianity for attack, not based on resentment, but because there are so many flaws that it is fairly easy to shine a light on them and ask for an explanation.

Ressentiment is a bit different from resentment. Ressentiment is the term existentialists use for saying "blaming an object for one's own misfortune and hating it for it." There is no envy involved, only blame. So if I resent a person, I envy him for his advantages over me and therefore hate him. If I have ressentiment against a person, I blame him for my misfortune, independently whether he is better-off or not than I am.

Nietzsche singles out Christianity for attack which he claims is based on ressentiment. But what about Nazism and Fascism. Aren't they also based on resentment. — Ross Campbell

I think Nietzschean resentment is a psychological stance embraced by those who have no avenue to overt power. It's for when, as a slave, you sing "We shall overcome someday", without knowing when that day will be, and accepting that it may only be in the next world, not this one.

Fascism doesn't seek solutions in some other world, so though it might be fueled by anger, disappointment, and demoralization, it's not slave morality.

where a certain class of people were filled with resentment about their bad predicament — Ross Campbell

List three examples of people who were faced wtith a bad predicament and who were not filled with resentment.

I think there is enough in Nietzsche's writings that suggest he would view fascism as an example of resentment, herd morality and what have you. In Beyond good and evil he writes about the silliness of anti-semitism for instance. No anti-semitism is not necessarily fascist, but the psychological attraction of fascism is that you can feel proud of the group you belong to without having any heroic trade of your own. That translates into casting some groups as superior and others as inferior. It is something not needed by the truly noble, but only by those who fear they really do not have anything to contribute on their own.

It is something not needed by the truly noble — Tobias

What does Nietzsche say about nobility: Is it something that one either has or doesn't have, or is it something that can be learned, developed?

I think, but I might be wrong here, it is in his last chapter of beyond good and evil. I see it as a discipline, a way to look at the world. Acceptance, so amor fati, not getting bogged down by what the people around you tell you to think or belief, but to proclaim your own values affirm that which gives you life, without letting yourself be molded as a useful cog for the group. But hey that is my understanding and it comes from reading it a long while ago. All these sentiments are antithetical to fascism. (Fasces meaning bundle, usually bundles of wood or arrows, so it celebrates the being part of a group. an unassuming twig but strong within a bundle)

Martin Luther King and Ghandi. All these people were battling against oppression but did not resent their oppressors. The main platform on which the Nazis gained popularity in Germany was they appealed to the widespread RESENTMENT of the German people at their harsh treatment in the Versailles Treaty. To say as Nietzsche does ( and I'm sure he has many followers) that Christianity is based on resentment I think it'd be more accurate to apply it to Nazism and Fascism and other such racist and hate filled movements. They both thrived amongst the dissafected, resentful elements in society, herd morality as Nietzsche calls it, and their leader Hitler was an outcast, a failed artist , a racist bigot, full of hatred, anger and resentment against the system, against jews, slavs, and anyone who disagreed with him. He even said he hated ordinary people. I would have to disgree with Nietzsche because Christianity preaches love, forgiveness, compassion and these are the behaviours of mentally strong people who have risen above their resentments, anger and so on not herd or slave morality which is closer to Fascism and Nazism.

Although it's true Nazism doesn't appeal to an otherworld that's because it's a political movement. However Hitler was like a Messiah figure for his followers, the Fuhrer means saviour and there was an appeal to a kind of Utopia, a new Order, a racially pure Aryrian society. I think the same impulse to escape from a reality , a world they despise, for an other illusory reality supposedly better than this world is at work in Nazism similar to religious fanaticism. The difference is that Nazism as a materialist creed sees this Utopia as being attainable in this world.
I don't agree with Nietzsche that Christians hate this world. In all religions including pagani

I didn't finish
. In all religions including paganism there is a belief in another world of spirits. It derives from the human instinct to find meaning in this world. To believe that there exists something above and beyond mere material, meaningless, perishable, decaying reality which gives meaning and a sense of permanence and immortality to human life. Nietzsches view that it was a product of a slave morality is wrong.

To be precise, it was Judaism Nietzsche singled out as embracing slave morality; Christianity tagged along and turned it into polity. By approaching the matter as a Genealogy, the observation is not given as an explanation of present events. We live our lives over and over again, not those of our ancestors. From that point of view, it is a challenge to all self identification. His opposition to Christianity was not based upon a vision of a different identity but an objection to glorifying the mutilation of oneself as a spiritual advance.

I don't agree with Nietzsche that Christians hate this world. — Ross Campbell

I wouldn't point anyone toward Nietzche for an understanding of Christian history and values. You're right. But I think he knew that (considering his ideas about truth).

One way into his thinking is this:

Slave morality says poor people are more virtuous than the rich and powerful. The rich are vicious exploiters.

Master morality says poor people are wretched thieves and liars while the rich are educated, charming atheists.

Both of these brands of morality are all around you. There's one person on this forum who jumps back and forth between the two. He's an idiot.

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I don't believe that Christianity has ever given anyone true strength because the latter is not about ideas. Talking about love and forgiveness doesn't mean anything past a point

Nietzsche singles out Christianity for attack which he claims is based on ressentiment. But what about Nazism and Fascism. Aren't they also based on resentment. — Ross Campbell

It is hard to see Nietzsche as an analytical philosopher (as with Emerson), say, responding to Kant, because he seems to be only commenting on everyday life, social institutions, our culture, people's attitudes, religion, etc. But, to understand his deeper contribution to the philosophical tradition, we must take him for more than what just seems to be his opinion, social critiques, and apparent psychological claims or judgments about people or groups.

Nietszche tells stories; make-believe histories (part of what becomes the method of modern Ordinary Language Philosophy) and one insight of this is it shows a historicity to morality, that it has a past. This highlights that deontological morals in contrast appear dead, static (viewed positively: timeless, universal), but also that his stories have characters, which also implies that philosophical moral theory is constructed, but, importantly, by people--and people have reasons.

The search for certainty and prediction and normativity is based on a human desire to avoid the fear of uncertainty, of doubt; fear that we might not have any way of telling what is right and what to do. So this goal of deontological morality has an intent. The use of the word "ressentiment" is simply a placeholder for this philosophical perspective, this attitude (as Wittgenstein will say) to our moral life.

Much as we have to translate Plato's Republic into an analogy for the creation of ourselves (as much as a polis), try to imagine Nietzsche is analogizing a traditional philosophical argument into the psychology of a person (or persons); the philosophical argument that has rationally considered the matter and come to a judgment with justification--much as we think of knowledge of the world--personified in one judging the good; what we would call, in a person, moralizing. Basically, Christianity is just the straw man in an analytical critique of our philosophical tradition.

Now a lot of people take Nietzsche as just throwing out deontological morals entirely (which leads to a lot of trouble with the impression that everything depends on me--my "will", or "power"). But this impression of Nietszche comes from the fact there is a moment when the regular ways run out and we do not know what to do; we become responsible beyond our expected common acts. There is a time after the setting or following of rules, where we are subject to what we have done, that we must make ourselves known; he will refer to this as the "human" because we in sense create ourselves in that moment, stand for ourselves, define ourselves beyond (above he will say) our impersonal (universal) ethics, averse to them, if need be, says Emerson, but not instead of (Nietszche is not against morals).

Now the fear of this responsibility is the wish to deny its part in our human condition, to desire to take "us" out of the picture entirely by trying to decide everything up front with rationality. If we have already decided, than we do not see the "world" (the context) that will matter at a moral moment; we kill it before we get there, so never reach it--everything is taken care of for us already without having to look at the situation at hand. This is the "person" characterized by Nietszche who believes that being right in their morals absolves them of further responsibility, allows them to skip straight to judgment. And so the "ressentiment" is to ignore our human position, to flee from ourselves, stuck within a moral picture drawn by others (a slave to it), walled off from the world of a moral moment.

Nietzsche appreciated how we are animals who, like others, use our muscles and wits constantly. He admired this effort and thought that spiritual at the level of the divine is not effort at all and so is inferior. If divine activity lacks effort and we disqualify goodness as possessed "stuff", then what is left of the godhead? Life is hard and "there is no easy way to be free", unless of course you're the deity at the top. I along with Nietzsche find the concept of God empty and not in the way Buddhists use that word

We are part animal but we are also human with consciousness and intellect which differs us from the rest of the animal kingdom. We are the only species who are capable of constructing a moral system and exercise control over our animal instincts through our reason. I think Nietzsche has a bias against Christianity and indeed the whole tradition of Western morality even secular morality stemming from Socrates He sees it as a product of Ressentiment. I disagree it is a natural human instinct to try to create a better society through the exercise of human reason and to develop a system of Ethics which began with Socrates. Nietzsches critique of the otherworldlynes of Christianity may have a point but what about secular morality which is not otherwordly.

Aristotle's Ethics which is one of the most influential in western thought is not otherwordly, it is secular and it has experienced a revival in the 20th century. Nietzsche seems to overlook that. Maybe Nietzsche was reacting to the puritanical Victorian society he lived in which is why he came up with such radical ideas about morality and culture generally. Nietzsches historicity in his approach to all ideas which was common in the 19th century is now, like Marx's approach regarded today as mistaken.

How I see Nietzsche, he held Western religion as self-congratulatory since it obsessed with the alleged rational aside of ethics.instead.of with doing, acting, creating.

My summary of Nietszche's proof that the traditionalist theist God is non-existent goes like this:

God can be seen in 3 parts. His essense, his free will, and his necessary will to love his nature. Now moral goodness doesn t flow from essense. A baby is good but its not the same thing as Aristotle's virtuous person. So set essence aside. To love freely and necessarily without the human compatibility scheme seems impossibls, but let's grant a mystery and say God loves both ways and can't sin but is free at the same time. Now this free but bound will of God is always happy. He doesn't face struggle then finds happiness. His act.of existing is blissful.

There we have:

1) an infinite deity that loves infinitely but does so with bliss and necessity

2)Nietzsche posits the human animal as that which earns its way in life

It's easy to see the divinity as below the rational animal which is human. Since he is said to create and have provenance over us, he can't possibly exist

I don't agree with Nietzsche that Christians hate this world. — Ross Campbell

Jesus preaches against Pharisaic materialism. The emphasis of the Pharisees was on the world, or as they would have put it, balancing divine obligations with material ones. But Jesus will have none of this -- "If your right eye causes you to sin, take it out and throw it away. It is better to lose one part of your body than to have your whole body thrown into hell."

Jesus is a dualist and what is of ultimate importance is the final destination of the soul; not the health or longevity of the body. Jesus never tell his followers how to lengthen their natural lifespan or attain a stronger body, rather it is about attaining eternal life in the hereafter. Jesus dies at 33 and in a very fitting way given the message he preached.

Could you clarify your claim here? Are you saying that he rejects the idea of sin? Or that there is no sin in Heaven? Or that all Jewish claims of sin he rejects?

Resentment and Ressentiment are not the same. For Nietzsche, ressentiment is a reactionary generating of new values and a normative re-evaluating of existing values within a hierarchical context.