Quote:
Originally Posted by drobertbaker
You know, they're going to yell at us if we do this again.  But at the risk...
What I was referring to as ressentiment and what I recall Nietzsche meaning was the myths and morality created by the slaves in the master-slave relationship whereby it's really good to be a slave and the slaves are morally superior to the master. According to Nietzsche, this is the geneology of morals.
Wikipedia sems to contradict itself on this point:
"Ressentiment is a sense of resentment...ressentiment is not to be considered interchangeable with the normal English word resentment...
...speaks to the special relationship between a sense of inferiority and the creation of morality"
I guess this is another illustration of how much we should depend on Wikipedia.
The mindwipe certainly gives him freedom from his past baggage, which I guess is why he did it again. That approach rubs me the wrong way. Experiences can confuse us, but in the end we're better off integrating all our experiences into a new and better understanding. You can't just forget about stuff you don't want to remember! Although people do it all the time.
p.s. Nietzsche is my favorite philosopher and I have all his stuff (including Kaufmann)! Unfortunately I have to move again and haul all that crap around once more. |
Actually Nietzsche had a point when you consider that most human conflict stems from socioeconomic disputes between rich and poor. To Nietzsche, Slave Morality comes off as the weak people's attempts to somehow justify their woes and find some dignity of sorts in their plight by exepmplfying the righteousness of their suffering and labelling the selfish power of the Masters as evil.
In contrast to the Master Morality who exemplifies their status as the ideal aim of man to reach. Here we see the results of having a dual nature of Morality: one moral direction creates an opposing moral direction. You end up with two conflicting moral compasses because not everyone can lay claim to belong in the same side of the spectrum.
This is paralleled by the opposition between Mononobe and Akira. If I had to make a really loose comparison, Mononobe somehow signifies the Master Morality that attempts to exert his powerful if violent will on the masses because he thinks it is the right thing to do. In contrast Akira could be the Slave Morality, standing with the weaker humans who think they have no say in the upheavals to come and trying to break down the oppression of the more powerful classes.
Edit - Might as well add that Nietzsche never really sided with either moral stances anyway. Even while the concept of the Overman is related more closely to Master Morality, he in his writings has leaned in sympathy for the Slave Moralities as well.