Previous
Master Morality
The slave morality is the morality developed by the enslaved masses in Nietzsche’s conception of a caste society and is therefore also the origin of the morality of Christianity. Utterly disempowered, the slave morality attempts to justify itself rather than act on the world and therefore associates its own qualities, such as weakness, hard work, and deference, with “good,” and invents the category of “evil” to refer to the powerful, the strong, and the aggressive. With the coming to power of Christianity and, eventually, humanism, Nietzsche finds that the slave morality has transcended its origin and even captured the minds of the most powerful rulers in modern Europe.
Slave Morality Quotes in Beyond Good and Evil
The Beyond Good and Evil quotes below are all either spoken by Slave Morality or refer to Slave Morality. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
8. Peoples and Fatherlands
Quotes
What Europe owes to the Jews? Many things good and bad, and above all one thing that is both of the best and of the worst: the grand style in morality, the terribleness and majesty of infinite demands, infinite meanings, the whole romanticism and sublimity of moral questionabilities—and hence precisely the most attractive, captious, and choicest part of those plays of color and seductions to life in whose afterglow the sky of our European culture, its evening sky, is burning now—perhaps burning itself out. We artists among the spectators and philosophers are—grateful for this to the Jews.
Related Characters:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire Beyond Good and Evil LitChart as a printable PDF.
Slave Morality Term Timeline in Beyond Good and Evil
The timeline below shows where the term Slave Morality appears in Beyond Good and Evil. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
9. What Is Noble
...Nietzsche finds in the diversity of moralities two basic types: the master morality and the slave morality . These moralities often appear together, either in hybrid forms or simultaneously within the same...
(full context)
The slave morality , on the other hand, derives from the suffering and oppression of those who believe...
(full context)
...the vanity of others. Concern for the opinions of others, rather, is characteristic of the slave morality , as slaves historically could not create values for themselves but had values attached to...
(full context)
