Paste your essay in here…Nietzsche — On Christianity and Slave Morality
In contemporary moral discourse; compassion, love and pity are often celebrated and viewed favorably across the political and ideological spectrum. Through time, it becomes necessary to question the origins of such values, and the impact they have on the modern moral consciousness. Friedrich Nietzsche, a contemporary German philosopher, challenges our most common conceptions of morality and their implications. In his work On the Genealogy of Morality, Nietzsche provides an extensive development of his criticism on modern morality and its foundations in Christianity. Specifically, he criticizes the Christian conception of love, laid out by St. Paul in his First Letter to the Corinthians. This type of sacrificial love was foundational to the Christian community and its eventual transformation. Today, these values define Christian virtue and morality. Importantly, Nietzsche’s criticism of such Christian values extends beyond just the realm of religion. By criticizing religious value systems, he is ultimately questioning many central axioms of contemporary moral consciousness — such as altruism, compassion, and equality. Nietzsche bases the development of this contemporary morality in historical innovation, namely the aggressive power dynamic between what he terms “slave morality” and “noble morality.” Understanding the relationship between these types of morality is essential to decoding Nietzsche’s view on Christian love and its related values. Nietzsche challenges St. Paul’s account of love in a way that may seem unflattering at first glance. But upon deeper investigation it is evident that Nietzsche’s criticisms are valuable in their scope and implications for modern society. Ultimately, he forces us to question the very nature of our values and warns us of the dangers of failing to engage in value creation.
First, it is necessary to evaluate the methods by which Nietzsche approaches moral theory. His metaphysical claims about the nature of morality are central to his criticism of Christian values. He writes, “we need a critique of moral values, the value of these values themselves must first be called in question” (GM P, 372). Nietzsche writes the GM to question our moral code from outside our moral code. In other words, he hopes to stop looking at morality from “behind the world,” and instead look at it from a historical standpoint — which forces us to dismantle the facade of sacredness that has come to surround human morality. To look at morality historically is to look at it honestly and openly. Moreover, Nietzsche believes that such an examination will question even the values upon which the examination is based. It will ask if what is good is actually good for us. This perspective is important for his eventual criticism of Christian values. For Nietzsche, Christian values have had such a large impact on morality, that they essentially presuppose any moral discourse. Nietzsche hopes to change the way we look at morality by eliminating this presupposition — and starting over.
In his First Essay in GM, Nietzsche lays out the framework by which he evaluates morality historically. To do this he identifies two frameworks of moral assessment: a good/bad framework and a good/evil framework. The good/bad framework arises from a “pathos of distance,” due to the association of good actions with higher social class (GM I, 380). For instance, the wealthy elite were ultimately seen as generous because their place of privilege allowed them to develop philanthropic moral character. This is what Nietzsche defines as “noble morality” (381). In contrast, the good/evil framework is quite different. The good is concerned with altruism and the well-being of others, while the evil is associated with any action that undermines the well-being of others (389). What Nietzsche proposes here is that what is good can have different meanings, and this depends deeply on larger historical contexts of meaning. Nietzsche sees the transition from the good/bad framework to the good/evil framework as a “slave revolt in morality” (391). He claims that people who were victims of oppression at the hands of the nobles developed a type of resentful hatred of their enemies. Nietzsche coins this term ressentiment (387). This ressentiment drives the poor to despise the noble elite. The slave morality becomes concerned with undermining the powerful in society, rather than self-improvement or ascending in social status.
Nietzsche’s identification of slave morality and its development ultimately drives his criticism of Christianity and St. Paul’s adamant efforts to ground the Christian community in love. St. Paul’s conception of love as the highest of the Christian virtues is outlined in his First Letter to the Conrinthians: “If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing” (Corinthians, 28). For St. Paul, love is the strongest pillar of Christian faith. It means sacrificing a part of oneself to benefit others. Love “is not self-seeking” and “keeps no record of wrong” (28). The greatest example of Christian love is Jesus’s resurrection: “So it will be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body” (33). Jesus’s death and resurrection — his willingness to sacrifice himself for less powerful people — demonstrate that love is god’s nature, and that the goal of love is a type of transformation from the preoccupation with worldly values to the unconditional, sacrificial nature of love. And this love manifests itself at the very core of the Christian community. “Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it,” writes St. Paul (28). The Christian community is the physical realization of the life and death of Christ.
For Nietzsche, Christian love is born from the “triumphant crown spreading itself farther and farther into the purest brightness and sunlight, driven as it were into the domain of light and the heights in pursuit of the goals of that hatred…” (GM I, 386). Nietzsche believes that Christian love is just hatred in disguise. By this he means that the Jewish hatred, or the “profoundest and sublist kind of hatred,” has been twisted and reversed to form the “profoundest and sublimes kind of love” (386). Nietzsche continues his criticism and proclaims that “mystery of an unimaginable ultimate cruelty and self-crucifixion of God for the salvation of man,” is essentially a “dangerous bait” (386). Nietzsche likens Christian love to a representation of slave morality. Christ’s crucifixion is a loss of power, and represents forgiveness, compassion, and love. But this is exactly what has characterized Nietzsche’s definition of slave morality: the powerful giving up their power to help the less powerful.
Nietzsche writes, “To demand of strength that it should not express itself as strength, that it should not be a desire to overcome, a desire to throw down, a desire to become master, a thirst for enemies and resistances and triumphs, is just as absurd as to demand of weakness that it should express itself as strength (393).” Christ represents this loss of power, and his followers are the weak masses who believe that they are being strengthened by his essence. For Nietzsche, this expectation — that Christ is their savior — is the very downfall of Christianity. As the common people begin to expect compassion and love, they become “weak.” And this “weakness of the weak” becomes a “voluntary achievement, willed, chose, a deed, a meritorious act.” Nietzsche argues that
Ultimately, Nietzsche’s characterization of Christian love is shortsighted and overgeneralized. Jesus’s sacrifice and resurrection — which serves as a fundamental archetype for human nature and morality — was more an act of power and strength than an act of weakness. For one to give up his strength when necessary in service of the poor is the greatest virtue. And the concept of Christian love extends far beyond Paul’s First Letter — it was embedded in the very core of some of the earliest stories in the Old Testament. However, Nietzsche’s harsh criticism of Christian values forces us to consider our most common assumptions about our own values. It makes us question whether we should be so willing to accept a value system just because our religion proclaims it to be superior. Moreover, Nietzsche’s criticisms extend beyond just the realm of religion. In modern society, the rise of post-modern and neo-Marxist ideologies exemplifies at its very foundation the exact type of slave morality that Nietzsche was referring to. A whole new dialogue has been opened up — one concerning identity politics, privilege, feminist theory, and racial prejudice. As we traverse this complex landscape of political discourse, it is important that we remember not to fall victim to ideological certainty. We must remember Nietzsche’s observation that resentment and hatred for the more fortunate are not solid grounds upon which to build a moral framework. Being oppressed is not an excuse for not engaging in individual value creation and internal, introspective moral dialogue.