SLAVE MORALITY

Slave Morality

Slave Morality

Introduction

In this study we try to explore the concept of 'Slave Morality' in a holistic context. The main focus of the research is on slave morality and its relation with on the culture of countries around the world. The research also analyzes many aspects of slave morality and tries to gauge its effect on individuals that have a privileged status in society. Finally the research describes various factors which are responsible for slave morality and tries to describe the overall effect of morality of slaves on the cultural aspects of a country (Grey, 1999, 561-85).

Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm (1844-1900)

Friedrich Nietzsche is a provocative thinker who, although largely neglected during his lifetime, now exercises a wide influence in many areas of the humanities. His legacy for the study of politics is, however, hotly contested. This entry reviews central concepts in Nietzsche's thought, as well as controversies concerning them, and then examines the significance of Nietzsche's work for political theory.

Nietzsche was born on October 15, 1844, to a Lutheran pastor and his wife in Röcken, Prussia; his father died when Nietzsche was 4 years old. Nietzsche's academic training was in the discipline of philology (classics) rather than philosophy, and he achieved considerable academic success at a young age. However, at the age of 34 he took early retirement from the University of Basel due to ill health. He spent the next decade moving around Europe in search of affordable accommodation in a climate conducive to his well-being. Despite proposing to (at least) two women, Nietzsche never married. In 1889, he suffered a mental breakdown while in Turin, Italy, from which he never fully recovered. The last decade of his life was spent in the care of his mother Franziska and sister Elisabeth. During those years he lapsed in and out of lucidity and was incapable of writing (Erben, 2007, 955-68).

Apart from a brief stint in the Prussian army, which ended when Nietzsche injured himself while trying to mount a horse, and his friendship as a young man with the composer Richard Wagner, Nietzsche's life was relatively uneventful? However, if he is correct that “the greatest thoughts are the greatest events”, then by this standard, his life was full of events. Each of the works produced from The Birth of Tragedy (1872) to his last, including his quasi-autobiography Ecce Homo is original, challenging, arresting, exacting, and unsettling.

Nietzsche's readers continue to debate the meaning of each of these key ideas—and of many others from his fecund texts—as well as trying to determine whether and how his various ideas relate to one another. The continuing puzzle of Nietzsche's legacy for philosophy in general and political theory in particular can be linked directly to the innovative and demanding nature of his ant systematic philosophical style. In an aphorism from The Twilight of the Idols (1889/1968), Nietzsche proclaims his mistrust of all systematizes: “The will to a system is a lack of honesty”. His inveighing against “all systematizes” need not, however, mean that Nietzsche's thought ...