A/N: This is an essay based on Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil for one of my classes. Haven’t gotten my grade back yet, but I like it… LoL. Anyways, let me know what you think!

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It has often been a topic of debate as to whether or not Friedrich Nietzsche, with his ideas of master and slave morality, of the Übermensch (or overman), and of the good of tyranny, helped foster the rise of one of the most infamous dictators of the 20th century, Adolf Hitler. Some, including the Nazis themselves, have gone so far as to say that Nietzsche was the father of Nazism, and would have supported the cause, had he been alive. However, such statements generally result from a misunderstanding or a misinterpretation of Nietzsche’s writings. In this essay, then, I will examine what Nietzsche meant when he talked about the slave revolt in morality, and what sort of politics this would generate, not only immediately but also in the longer term.

According to Nietzsche, there has always been an inequality inherent in human beings, on both the mental and physical levels. Some are born strong, and some are born weak. Those who are the strongest, Nietzsche calls “overmen”. They are the great, the ones who are destined to stand above the mediocre masses.

However, both the weak and the strong have something in common – the will to power. Nietzsche believed that human beings are but a collection of different desires and urges that drive us to act and think the way we do, the strongest of which is the will to power – the desire to dominate, to rule over others. As he says, “he who wills adds in this way the sensations of pleasure of the successful executive agents, the serviceable ‘under-wills’ or under-souls – for our body is only a social structure composed of many souls – to his sensations of pleasure as a commander.” In the strong, this will was able to make itself manifest and find its true expression more fully, and to attain what it sought with greater ease. As such, the strong came to have more power than the weak, and thus have more freedom to do what it was they wanted.

Because of this, strength both physical and mental came to be regarded as desirable. Human society passed to a moral state, where people began associating strength with “good”, and weakness with “evil”. Those who were strong and whose will to power was particularly sharp became paradigms of virtue, and people sought to emulate them.

However, the fact remained that some people were simply too weak to be able to fulfill this will to power. They did not possess the same quality of greatness of the strong. They found themselves continuously frustrated and unable to satisfy their most fundamental desire. That is why, explains Nietzsche, Judaism and Christianity became so popular. Both these religions, as well as the entire Judeo-Christian tradition which developed as they spread, advocated a reversal of the moral connotations of strength and weakness – they associated the former with evil, and the latter with good, spawning what Nietzsche called the slave revolt in morality.

Nietzsche fingers Judaism and Christianity as major players in the slave revolt of morality for a number of reasons. First of all, both these religions tout doctrines such as the famous line “blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth,” and promote such virtues as humility while denouncing pride as vicious and sinful. That, for Nietzsche, is the core value of the slave morality – equality, and pulling everybody down to the same level, to the lowest common denominator. A question then is how this kind of morality plays itself out as a political system. In Nietzsche opinion, the slave revolt of morality engendered liberal democracy. Just as Christianity brought on the slave revolt, “the democratic movement inherits the Christian.” For Nietzsche, democracy was “not merely a form assumed by political organization in decay but also a form assumed by man in decay.”

Ideally, this is the kind of political system that advocates equality for all and gives each of them an equal vote, where the voice of one is heard as clearly as the voice of another. It reduces everyone to the most basic identifying trait: that of being an individual, in that sense no different from and equal to every single other person. Thus, every person has the same rights, and every individual life is worth the same. These core doctrines of liberal democracy are to be upheld no matter what, because otherwise the strong might be able to take over once more and oppress the weak, which would be a bad thing.

This leads to another characteristic of liberal democracy. It promotes safety and stability. It ensures the weak that they will not be oppressed, and that their rights will be respected. A liberal democracy guarantees the comfort of the masses. In doing so, it also seeks to avoid the conditions most conducive to the rise of the great. According to Nietzsche, the great thrive especially during situations of conflict and instability. He gives the examples of Napoleon and Leonardo da Vinci, who both accomplished their greatest works and acts in such uncertain times. While he says that they still would have had the same drive, the same will to power that led them to become such overmen, without the strife which they both experienced, the results would not have been the same. This is exactly why the weak seek to establish peace and comfort, to ensure that the great do not receive that spark to truly ignite their will to power and drive them to excel.

However, Nietzsche believes that there will come a point when the doctrine of stability and equality of liberal democracy will produce exactly the opposite effect. It will eventually put such a burden on the great that they will simply explode. In this case, the strife is not external, but internal. While there is stability in the society, and the masses are comfortable, the great man will feel a terrible pressure on him to deny his own abilities, and to perceive his own will to power as something wrong, because they do not conform with the morality of the majority, of the masses of slaves. This pressure will build until, Nietzsche believes, the great man will be unable to deny and ignore his drives, and will choose to follow them, no longer perceiving them as evil. He explains this phenomenon, this pressure, as a sickness:

“Supposing, however, that someone goes so far as to regard the emotions of hatred, envy, covetousness and lust for domination as life-conditioning emotions, as something which must fundamentally and essentially be present in the total economy of like, consequently must be heightened further if life is to be heightened further – he suffers from such a judgement as from seasickness.”

Indeed, Nietzsche explains that the true master, the true overman, is the one who understands that all morality is merely imposed on the world. He will understand that good and evil are social constructs, and therefore that they are not to be naturally and automatically associated with anything, let alone weakness and strength, which he will understand to be natural. This comprehension will enable the great man to forget what he has learned about the evil of tyranny and the supreme good of humility and equality. He will realise that the values which have been inculcated in him are entirely arbitrary, and will thus be able to freely choose his own values.

This is what Nietzsche calls the master revolt of morality, and this is that for which he hoped. It is the opposite of slave morality, which was universal – master morality is specific. It says that there is a separate morality for everyone, particular only to the one who chooses it. Indeed, the great man’s only duty is to his own greatness, to his own will to power, and he must do whatever is necessary to create the conditions most conducive to the proper expression of these, even to the point of exploiting an entire people.

To Nietzsche, then, the concepts of tyrants and tyranny did not carry the negative baggage they have come to take on. A tyrant, for him, is a good thing – the fullest and most perfect expression of the most fundamental human urge, the will to power, doing whatever is necessary to foster this drive. A tyrant is a creative force, questioning and reinventing morality, in the same way that the true master of music or painting is a creative force. Indeed, it is only in politics that society begrudges the overman his innate superiority. Nobody demands equality in the arts, and rightfully so – inequality is natural. This was recognized on all levels in the pre-moral state, when strong was simply strong and weak was simply weak. Then moral connotations became associated with each, good and evil respectively.

Eventually, though, there was the slave revolt of morality, when the weak began associating themselves with good, and the strong with evil. Armed with their doctrine of equality, and their superior numbers (perhaps their only natural strength), they successfully established a political system – liberal democracy – based on ensuring stability and comfort for all, reducing everyone to the lowest common denominator. The strong were thus forced to deny their natural supremacy and their will to power, putting a pressure on them that will eventually prove to be destructive for the system which originally produced it.

Then the master revolt of morality will occur, and the great will once again be able to assert themselves as superior. They will choose their morality for themselves, and this, Nietzsche hopes, is what will allow humanity to move beyond good and evil – when human beings realise that these are merely social constructs. Once again, strong will merely be strong, and weak will merely be weak, and the natural order will be re-established in a post-moral world.

As a final point, I would like to say that, while Nietzsche would not have condoned a man such as Adolf Hitler, who pandered to the lowest common desire of the people – that is, their comfort – it is clear to see how his words could have been twisted to suit Hitler’s message. Furthermore, one must wonder what kind of impact a master revolt of morality would have on society as it is. Nietzsche prized the individual – his urges, his desires, and particularly the will to power which dominated the rest and the idea that all morality was specific to the individual who chose it – but only the strong individual. He rejected the equal rights of each individual, the idea that each individual life was equal in worth to all others. He thus sets up an interesting dichotomy as pertains to the individual, one which is highly disturbing – but also highly important – especially for those in a liberal democracy. The tension between the two sides, between the will to power and the ingrained slave morality, is something which is still felt, to this day.