The Slave Revolt In Morality

The slave revolt in morality that Friedrich Nietzsche discuses reveals how a transvaluation of values comes about. The slave revolt in morality also helps reveal some of the contradicting and questionable things about the two great Christian Commandments. In addition to these beliefs that Nietzsche has, he also has a response to Descartes claim “I think therefore I am”. Descartes believes we are thinking things, but Nietzsche seems to believe otherwise.

The “slave revolt in morality” according to Friedrich Nietzsche is as follows: There once was an agrarian community in which farmers lived in peace until one day a group of warriors from the north came and took over their community. The blond beasts turned the farmers into slaves and lived

in luxury while the farmers lived in poverty doing all of the work for the warriors. The warriors were able to do this because they had greater power over the farmers and were willing to use it. The masters were considered to be the good kind of human beings and the slaves were considered to be the bad kind. The good were the wealthy, noble, happy, strong and powerful and the bad were the pitiful, weak, sad, humble, meek and oppressed. The farmers wanted to be like the masters and envied their lives. This caused ressentiment towards the masters to emerge. Ressentiment for Nietzsche is a mixture of powerlessness, envy, and hatred towards both the good people who are oppressing them and themselves for not having the power to change things. The slaves realized what the masters had done to them and hated them for it and were envious of their luxurious lives but understood they could not do anything to stop it because they were powerless. To offset the misery of their lives, the slaves began telling themselves stories to make themselves feel better. They would speak of a Great Hero that is on their side that will come and overthrow the blond beasts and make them the masters. After they became the masters they would then get revenge on the blond beasts and treat them the way that they are treating the slaves now. Over time the stories started to become more and more extravagant and were remembered and passed on to others. Eventually the farmers realized that they were the ones being oppressed and the masters were the ones that were oppressing them and making them suffer and they understood that this was wrong. They then decided to call the masters ‘evil’ and started to call themselves ‘good’. They decided to call themselves ‘good’ because they realized that what made the masters good was that they had power on their side, but the farmer’s Great Hero is stronger than the blond beasts are and he is on their side so therefore they are really the ‘good’ because they are the more powerful ones. This was the first step in the transvaluation of values to which the slave revolt in morality leads. In reality the masters were still the good and the slaves were still considered the bad but in the farmers fantasy world the masters are evil and the slaves are ‘good’.
The masters became lazier and lazier and involved the slaves more and more in their lives. This caused the slaves to become more and more intellectual through the completion of more complicated tasks for the masters and though the development of their minds through their story telling. They soon began teaching the master’s children because the masters did not want to do it themselves because they were becoming more decadent. The slaves began outwitting the masters, which increased their power and their will to use it. This allowed for the second step of the transvaluation of values that the slave revolt in morality leads to. Since the slaves were teaching the master’s children they began teaching them their definition of good and evil and once the master’s children heard about the hard lives of the slaves they felt bad for them. The third step of the transvaluation of values then came about. Eventually the children of the masters inherit their father’s estate and make the values of the slaves’ part of reality, not just in their fantasy world or imagination. So now the values of good are humble, weak, self-denying, sacrificial and meek, and evil is the opposition. The slave revolt in morality caused what was considered good before to become evil, and what was considered bad before to become good.
This transvaluation of values due to the slave revolt in morality make the two great Christian Commandments seem contradictory, problematic, and hypocritical.

The two great Christian Commandments are as follows: one must love God with their whole heat, soul, mind, and strength and one must love their neighbor as they love themselves. These two great commandments seem contradictory for many reasons. Firstly, if God is the Great Hero that the slaves fantasize about in their story than God is the most powerful being and therefore more powerful than the blond beasts. However, how are the slaves supposed to love God with their whole heart, soul, mind, and strength when they created the transvaluation of values that made the possession of power to be considered evil? Everyone is supposed to value the humble, weak, self-denying, sacrificial, and meek and regard the powerful as evil. Yet, the slaves’ savoir, God, is the most powerful being. This makes following the first great commandment very impractical. If God is telling us to avoid power, but telling us to love him, the most powerful being, at the same time how could this make sense? God has the values of what is considered ‘good’ due to the success of the slave revolt that is, as long as God is the Great Hero that the slaves spoke of in their stories. If God does consider good to be those who are humble, weak, self-denying, sacrificial, and meek and he is powerful then is God evil? Is God telling us to love a being with our

whole heat, soul, mind, and strength even thought that being is considered evil in regards to the morality brought upon by the slave revolt? This makes this commandment very hypocritical and contradictory.
The slave revolt also demonstrates how the second great commandment, love your neighbor as you love yourself, becomes questionable as well.

The slaves invented a God on their side and essentially gave power to themselves, which they claim to think of as evil. The slaves actually wanted to be the masters because they were envious of their rich, satisfied, and powerful lives; the slaves sought what they shouldn’t have, they desired what they considered to be evil. The slaves felt ressentiment towards their masters and wanted to be masters so they could get revenge and treat them they way that they were being treated. So, the second great commandments says that one should love their neighbor as they love themselves, but what if your neighbor is ‘evil’ like the masters? Is one supposed to hate the masters like the slaves did? Or are they supposed to secretly strive to be their neighbors like the slaves did as well? This makes the second great commandment very problematic. It appears that this commandment is conditional, and one is really only supposed to love their neighbor if their neighbor is good and doesn’t fall into the path of evil things. Or perhaps this commandment is contradictory, and one is supposed to love their neighbor and strive to be them whether or not they are considered evil. If the first is true, does this mean that God is telling us to hate those that aren’t ‘good’ under his values? If this were so, God would be telling us to hate him as well, which doesn’t

make much sense. If the latter is true, is God telling us to love both the evil and the good? These definitions of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ and the two great Christian Commandments cause us to develop a questionable attitude towards ourselves. We’ll find ourselves with appetites for food, drink, and riches while we believe these things are wrong and evil. So we repress our desires because we are unclear what we are supposed to do due the ambiguousness of the second great commandment. The two great Christian Commandments appear to be confusing and do not seem to fully coincide with the values brought upon by the slave revolt.
In Descartes’ Meditations he comes to the conclusion “I think therefore I am” after the use of radical doubt, assuming nothing is true unless it can be proved so. Nietzsche does not believe that this can be known with certainty. Nietzsche believes that Descartes’ declaration makes too many assumptions even though he claims to have denied everything that did not have any proof. Nietzsche claims that the statement ‘I think’ is more complicated than just immediate experience of suggesting a mental state or durable self, the statement itself actually involves a contradiction. Firstly, Nietzsche brings up the point that the statement ‘I think’ claims that it is ‘I’ that does the thinking therefore implying that there must necessarily be something that thinks. However, thinking is an activity by a being that supposedly comes about due to thinking. How can
‘I’ that’s doing the thinking imply that there is a being that thinks while thinking supposedly proves that an ‘I’ exists? They are both somehow implying each other, which does not make much sense. Furthermore, Nietzsche asks how do we even know that it is ‘I’ that does the thinking? We cannot even conclude with certainty that there is an ‘I’ Descartes just assumed this during his meditation. There does not necessarily need to be an ‘I’ to complete an action like thinking. For example the action “the tree falls” does not involve an ‘I’, however, an action still takes place. Nietzsche claims that ‘it’ does the thinking not ‘I’ because we cannot conclude with certainty what is doing the action of thinking; even ‘it’ contains an interpretation of the process. In addition to this Nietzsche brings up the fact that ‘I think’ also has a grammatical error. Since we can not determine what is doing the thinking Nietzsche calls it something, or ‘it’, therefore since there is something that is doing the thinking the proper way to say the claim would be there is something that thinks, not something that think. Nietzsche does not agree with Descartes conclusion “I think therefore I am” due to the many fundamental errors.