Studying Nietzsche

It first occurred to me that I was not a natural fit in the church during my second year at university in 2000. I took the philosophy unit entitled ‘Morals and Modernity’ which included six weeks studying Friedrich Nietzsche’s (pronounced Neat-cha(s)) ‘Beyond Good and Evil’

One of the central tenets of Nietzsche’s philosophy was a division of human kind into the ‘master mentality’ and the ‘slave mentality’ (sometimes referred to as master morality and slave morality, but simply put as ‘the strong’ and ‘the weak’). (As I describe them I am trying not to place value judgments on them myself but let Nietzsche’s value judgments come through. I ask the same of you at this point, we can make our value judgments later on.) As Nietzsche characterised them people of the master mentality are masters of their surroundings, they have faith in themselves and are often self-righteous with an attitude to life that disregards the constraints usually applied by society. People of the slave mentality (who as Nietzsche saw it made up a substantial majority of the population) lack confidence in themselves, perceiving themselves as weak, and are slaves to their environment. They want the world to be a safe place and group together with others like themselves for strength in numbers. Nietzsche saw Christianity as being synonymous with the slave mentality, a people who worshiped a pitiful god, who died crucified on a cross; a god of self-sacrifice who taught vulnerability. A faith group who’s love for others was born out of pity which they used to imply superiority and prop up their own self image. Thus Nietzsche despised the slave mentality and Christianity along with it and perceived himself as being of the ‘good’ master mentality. It is important to clarify though, that for Nietzsche what was important was not people’s situations but their attitudes. For example he did not perceive suffering as inherently ‘bad’ but it was how one approached it that was important. If one underwent suffering in order to achieve something Nietzsche saw that as okay but he was very unsympathetic to those who wallowed in their suffering.

Many attempts have been made to say ‘there are two types of people…’ but most either describe unimportant characteristics or traits that do not fit neatly into two boxes. Almost by definition most simple human typologies are too simplistic to be of any use. However I found Nietzsche’s description of humanity (which pre-dates modern psychology and to which I cannot do justice so briefly) very compelling and most informative. I would go so far to say it is the best simple summary of humanity I’ve come across. It is a description of a fundamental part of human nature that I’d been subconsciously aware of but unable to articulate.

I do however take issue with Nietzsche’s prescription for humanity and the value judgments on which this is based. Ironically, and perhaps hypocritically in a book titled ‘Beyond Good and Evil’ where he argued for moving beyond moral judgments, Nietzsche made a clear judgment about the virtue of the master mentality over slave mentality and to oversimplify again took the general view that we should all adopt a master mentality. So I distinguish between Nietzsche’s description and his prescription and it is the description that has contained the most insight for me.