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guidance with Nietzsche - master/slave as personality types

guidance with Nietzsche - master/slave as personality types

ground_of_being
be your own ground

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Posted 12/04/06 - 08:30 PM: Subject: guidance with Nietzsche - master/slave as personality types	#1
hello, I would like some guidance on writing an existentialism essay on nietzsche. I am not looking for anyone to give me any answers, but simply help me form an outline for my essay. It reads as follows: Write an essay in which you critically discuss Nietzsches analysis of the historical master/slave moralities as pure personality types of the "noble" and "common." How, for nietzsche, are more evolved spiritual types today a "battleground" of these opposed types and what do you think he means by insisting that we must "go under" and make our "evil" our own?

zjerome
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Posted 07/03/09 - 09:30 AM:	#2
Well this is a confusing question because he writes about the subjects differently depending what book it is, which is why I like N. He doesn't really say this is correct he forces you to question. The whole going under thing is kind of the theme of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and it basically means question your beliefs thoughts morals ect, so that you can then "rise above" the basic morals of the present age. He wrote about the master slave morality to show that when slavery was very prominent it was not "wrong". Execution for going against the church was not "wrong". The inquisition was not "wrong" to the people who were doing the killing. For me he's trying to say look beyond what the majority believes and think for yourself. Make your own good and evil. One Quote from Human All Too Human "The beast in us wants to be lied to; morality is a white lie, to keep it from tearing us apart. Without the errors inherent in the postulates of morality, man would have remained an animal. But as it is he has taken upon himself to be something higher and has imposed stricter laws on himself. He therefore has a hatred of those stages of man that remain closer to the animal state, which explains why the slave used to be disdained as non-human, as a thing" thats kind of the battleground thing. N talks a lot about the "beast in us" referring to our evolution from barbarians to civilized society as we are now or were in 1800's. He says that we have the need for adventure, "the hunt" ,exploration excitement danger etc but to be in a civilized society we had to give up some of our freedom. So instead we create a battleground in our minds. Battlegrounds of good and evil right and wrong religion etc. The master is civilized and wealthy the slave is animal and free. The master is jealous of the slave. The slave wants to be master(morally speaking).

van keister

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Posted 07/03/09 - 04:09 PM:	#3
Perhaps Nietzsche can not be reduced to a nice tidy answer in a nutshell. There are two critical things one must understand Geist and Ubermensch, both of which do not translate into mediocre cultural terms. Geist is spirit that forces man to overcome, to struggle to transcend it, to master it, to be greater than himself, to conquer, and to aspire to superhumanity.

Elston
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Posted 09/20/09 - 05:26 AM:	#4
Regarding making our evil our own; the main creative deed of slave morality is to declare a resounding No to everything that is "outside", everything that is different: this he deems Evil. Conversely, a noble morality says Yes to itself and above all deems itself to be Good. It is not necessarily worried about what others think. Now, the challenge is to reconcile a value-creating mindset that says Yes to ITSELF, with the reality that it causes other people to suffer hardships. The slave avoids being Evil, whereas the master does not accept he IS evil. The trick is to reconcile these, to believe in ourselves by discharging our strength, while also accepting that this is evil. That way we will be fulfilled and we won't have to suffer from endless guilt. Not an easy task, but perhaps a worthy battle.

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