Slave Morality, Master Morality, and Transvaluation of Values - Tematik

Slave Morality, Master Morality, and Transvaluation of Values 1

Sabtu, 17 Okt '09 17:17

Slave Morality, Master Morality, and Transvaluation of Values

by; Guruh Dwi Rianto

Slave Morality, Master Morality, and Transvaluation of Values
Nietzsche divides human morality into two, master and slave morality, not according to their social position but by their moral characteristics. In Beyond Good and Evil he said that it was possible to find "relative nobility of taste and reverential tact..,among the lower orders and especially among peasants, than among the newspaper-reading demi-monder of the spirit, the cultured "(Nietzsche,1972:184). Nietzsche also prefers Socrates in jail to Nero, who was a king. (511)
Nietzsche offends slave morality and defends master morality. One of his goals is the transvaluation of values, turning "good and evil' into "good and bad." As the ideas of Master morality, slave morality and the transvalutations of values are highly related, it is worth to explain them in a part where those three concepts are defined and connected one to the others, including in historical perpective.
The first essay of The Genealogy of Morals examines historically the origin of slave and master morality and what Nietzsche calls as the "slave revolt in morals"(Nietzsche,1956:170). The master morality is the values belong to aristocrat. Nietzsche finds that the word good etimologically was related with noble and aristocrat class. The aristocrat stand in highest position in society and they are the most powerful class and the ruling class of society. However, they are the exclusive and small in number compared to the mob or mass. The superior, ruller, and the aristocrate class created the good to justify themselves. They can be powerful because they can affirm natural drive, exercise and expand their power. Nietzsche argues that "all noble morality grows out of triumphant self-affirmation"(Nietzsche,1956:170).
They value the world base on good and bad which they created. Good for the aristocrats mean "noble in hirearchal sense, class sense,(Nietzsche,1956:162), mighty, highly placed,....high minded (Nietzsche,1956:160)" , "powerful/beautiful/happy/favored-of-the-gods, and maintain" (Nietzsche,1956:167), and "spiritual distinction while bad meant "base, low-minded, plebelian (Nietzsche, 1956:160), common (ibid).
They are "fully active, energetic people"(Nietzsche, 1956:172). Hence, they educate the next generation firmly. As the result of the exuberant of energy, health and power, they love combat, war game, competition, adventures, the dance, chalenge, and live dangerously. By doing so, they exercise their power and expand it.
When the aristocrate class is also the priest class, their domination of standard of good and bad is unshakeable. Yet, when the priest class is out from the aristocratic class, the priests feel envy and resentiment toward the power of the aristocrat. They began to revolt against the aristocratic class. Nietzsche argues that their revolt are dangerous and intellegent,
"As we all know, priests are the most evil enemies to have-why should this be so? Because they are the most impotent. It is their impotence which makes their hate so violent and sinister, so cerebral and poisonous. The greatest haters in history-but also the most brilliance of priestly vengeance all other brilliance fades"(Nietzsche, 1956:167).

The priests convert the aristocratic values upside down, standardize altruism as good, and create the term evil to replace bad. First, The priests valued their impotence, reactive, passivity, which considered bad for aristocratic values, as good, and, therefore, "only the poor, the powerless, ..., only the suffering, sick, and ugly"(Nietzsche,1956:167), "who does not outrage, who harms nobody, who does not attack, who does not requite, who leaves revenge to God, who keeps himself hidden as we do, who avoids evil and desires little from life, like us, the patient, humble, and just" (Nietzsche,1956:179)" are good. The priest's goodness for the aristocrate is bad because it does not expand and exercise their power. The aristocrat's goodness which expand and exercise their power such as war game, live dangerously, competition, for the priests are evil because they are harmful due to the priest's impotence. Second, as a protection, they gather in a community and value everything useful and practical for the community as good. In one. Thus, Nietzsche sometimes also call slave morality as the morality of the mob or the herd, depends on the translators, because the morality are hold by most people. Third, while the master morality oppose good with bad, they create the term evil to oppose good. As the result, their opposition is "good and evil" instead of "good and bad."
The slave revolt in morals by the slave triumphed when Jesus, the Jew, and his discpline such as Peter, and Paul grew Christianity up and co-opted romans culture. They converted the Rome aristocrat's values and, thus, poisoned its culture. From this point, the slave morality spread and defeat the master morality, and, thus, the "good and evil" gains the triumph and replaces "good and bad."
Deleuze explanes Nietzsche's ideas of slave morality by relating ressentiment and reactive as the key concepts. Both concepts are connected one to the other to explain the origin and the characteristics of slave morality. The reactive type originates ressentiment, which characterizes slave morality. Reactive type is not a type composed of a completely reactive forces. Deleuze writes that "a reaction alone cannot constitute ressentiment "(Deleuze, 2005:111).
Nietzsche distinguishes two systems within the reactive apparatus, the conscious and the unconscious. (Deleuze, 2005:111). Both work hand in hand with active force in human memory. The unconscious reactive works in unconscious memory by attaching themseleves to invest the traces of memory. In simple word, the job is to sublime or repress certain memory inside unconscious condition. The conscious reactive's job is highly related with conscious memory. This is a room in which reaction is directed toward perceivement directly instead of traces of memory. It is a dynamic room where there is always space for new things. Between those two apparatus, there is an active force working to determine wether an idea will be forgoten or remembered still in consciousness. The active force also renews the consciousness while separating from the unconscious. Henceforth, the unconscious cannot invade the conscious.
Ressentiment originates in a strong unpleasant experience. The man of ressentiment receives too great pain without being able to react because he does not have enough power to form a riposte, or a quick sharp reply. Thus, he keeps the pain inside without being able to forget it. The man of ressentiment only uses his reactive type to relate the stimulus from outside. The man of ressentiment cannot "react" to the outside world no matter what the excitations are. He cannot by active force produces reaction because the man of ressentiment's reaction is based on reactive force (unconscious reactive) and the ressentiment inside him. The revenge haunts the man consciously or not in memory, like the case of bloodhound which can only recognize the smell of trace, and he confusses it with other stimulation.
The ability to forget, to separate conscious and unconscious and keep renewing the consciousness, according to Nietzsche, is an active ability which always keeps the conscious memory fresh. When an active force cannot act upon the reactive force to forget from the conscious, ressentiment, from the reactive unconscious, appears in the conscious. The ressentiment people react toward their traces instead of the world. His wound lies deeply in his memory that effects his attitude. He is paasive since he is determined by the ressentiment.
The passivity which marks slave morality goes further in attitude, judgement, and behaviour. Deleuze says that
"The man of ressentiment does not know how to and does not want to love,
but wants to be loved. He wants to be loved, fed, watered, caressed and put to sleep.
He is the impotent, the dyspeptic, the frigid, the insomniac, the slave. Furthermore
the man of ressentiment is extremely touchy: faced with all the activities he cannot undertake he considers that, at the very least, he ought to be compensated by benefiting
from them. He therefore considers it a proof of obvious malice that he is not loved,
that he is not fed. The man of ressentiment is the man of profit and gain"(Deleuze,2005:118)

Here, Deleuze describes the man of ressentiment as completely want to consume instead of producing.
The man of ressentiment, or the slave morality, is symbolize by camel in Zarathustra's three methamorphosis. Camel is animal that "longs for the heavy, for the heaviest..and wants to be laden"(Nietzsche, 1969:54). For the chamel, all values are received instead of created through his power. Camel submits to "all values has already been created"(Ibid). Camel bents in front of tradition and, thus, he bents down receiving the command "thou shalt." In "thous shalt" there is no individuality, only the herd exists and individuality is repressed.
Fear,"the feeling of the absence of power "(Nietzsche,1969:24), also dominates the feeling of slave morality. Fear motivates their attitude. For example, the concept of afterworld and God create fear in the heart of Christians.
Drive and desire are taboo for slave morality. This herd morality opresses desire and drive, and, hence, discourage creativity and spontanity. People holding slave morality will be tame instead of energetic.
People of slave morality also constitute themselves by negating others and the world. Deleuze denses the idea into a dictum "You are evil, therefore I am good; this is the slave's fundamental formula"(Deleuze, 2005:119). He explaines furhter that they are not created by acting but by holding back from acting, not by affirming but by denial. They attempt themselves by negating the others. It is not, at first, that they are good, but because they accuse others are evil, so that they are good.
Slave morality take the people to say "no" to an outside world because they are dominated by the ressentiment. Nietzsche writes "slave ethics...begins by saying no to an "outside," an "other," a non-self, and that no is its creative act "(Nietzsche, 1956:171). Because of their denial toward the world, they live in the "afterworld," promise of the Judgement day, austere life, and ascetism that dwarf their power. In short, the no does not maximize the human potential. They, in fact, deny the drive of power inside them.
In contrast with slave morality which denies the world, the master morality accept the world and say yes to life. They affirm their fate and love it, amor fati. By affirming their life, they enjoy bliss. When tested by eternal reccurance, they would take the doctrine as a bless. Related to their desire, they express it and act what they want. They say yes to the world in all its sense. When he wants one joy, he will accept all the pain that go with the joy as the consequenses.
However, doing their drive to expand and exercise their power does not mean that they just do anything they want. Sunardi describes Nietzscheian sublimation as a meeting between passion and geist, patient and self-overcoming principle. (Sunardi,1996:70). When doing all the desire without geist, people turn into animal. In the contrary, when people repress all the desire, like in asceticism, they cannot express themselves. Nietzsche states that the meeting is never in peace but turbulance and strain. Yet, in that condition the creativity emerges. Here, the instinct drive is managed into creative act used to turn back to organize the drive.
Nietzsche in Zarathustra uses child as metaphor of the master morality characterized as "innocence and forgetfulness, a new beginning, a sport, a self-propelling wheel, a first motion, a sacred Yes"(Nietzsche,1969:55). Innocence refer to the conscious succeees to free itself from ressentiment, hatred, and envy. Here, forgetfulness denotes the ability to forget which shows the active type. In active type, the reactive forces and active forces work in their own proper part where the reactive can be acted by the acive. This results in self that can perpetually refresh itself and get rid of from contamination of ressentiment. Thus, there is always becomes a new beginning. The phrase a new beginning might also means the ability to destroy values when those value signify tendency to be absolute. A sport points the playfulness characteristics of master morality where "thou shalt" is replaced with "I will." Sport reflects joyfulness and will to play. Nietzsche explains the sport as "the sport of creation"(Nietzsche,1969:55) in which the child create values and "wills its own wills"(Ibid). The self-propelling wheel and first motion show how master moralitiy determines oneself. The master, since being active instead of reactive, influences and creates instead of being influenced and formed. When the camel says yes to its burden, the yes is not a sacred yes because the camel does not know how to say no. The ability to say no consequenses to the ability to say the sacred Yes. The child affirms life completely including the will to power in the self.
The transvaluation that Nietzsche offers means a re-reversal of the priests's revolt on morals. Nietzsche suggests to revers the good into "bad" and the evil into "good." Otherwise, human will not be able to expand the power and potency in maximum degree. He urges master morality to gain the thriumph agaisnt slave morality.

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