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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   26777 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 22, 2024

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Nietzsche specifically calls out Judaism as slave morality. Or, uh…

\195. The Jews—a people "born for slavery," as Tacitus and the whole ancient world say of them; "the chosen people among the nations," as they themselves say and believe—the Jews performed the miracle of the inversion of valuations, by means of which life on earth obtained a new and dangerous charm for a couple of millenniums. Their prophets fused into one the expressions "rich," "godless," "wicked," "violent," "sensual," and for the first time coined the word "world" as a term of reproach. In this inversion of valuations (in which is also included the use of the word "poor" as synonymous with "saint" and "friend") the significance of the Jewish people is to be found; it is with THEM that the SLAVE-INSURRECTION IN MORALS commences.

“Slave morality” describes a set of values, not a methodology. So Christianity and Judaism are both perfectly capable of dominating their surroundings. They just do so by convincing people that suffering is moral. This is an incredible competitive advantage against “master” moralities, which lack leverage on the have-nots.

Islam is a good example of how this gets weaponized. The general concept of jihad—struggle—fits slave morality. Fighting the good fight is supposed to be hard. More specifically, martyrdom for eternal rather than temporal reward is textbook slave morality. I’d argue that Western coverage of Islam in the GWoT era actually centers on eroding that moral high ground, mocking its abstract rewards to make them seem base and worldly. 72 virgins, huh?

But I digress. Nietzsche observes that slave morality wins, citing Judaism as well as Christianity. They won using their inverted morals, not in spite of them.

Slave morality can be exploited by non-slaves

There is no non-slave morality

Then why use the term at all?

Look, I don’t think Nietzsche had a very realistic model of history, either. But if you’re going to ignore everything else about his “slave revolt in morals,” maybe you should pick a different term.

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