slave morality

is a morality that is poor, sick, unhappy, and which sees life as something bad and wrong.

Slave morality The morality of the slave caste, who are poor, sick, and unhappy, and are oppressed and made to suffer by their masters. They see life as something bad and wrong, and identify the masters as 'evil' for enjoying life in all their health and riches. Consequently, they come to see themselves and all their sickly characteristics as 'good.' Also see master morality.

is a set of servile, self-abasing values where pity, humility, guilt, self-flagellation, voluntary deprivation, self-sacrifice and weakness are 'good'. This exaltation of weakness and hostility, of life, a refusal to life, bodily pleasure and natural drives has provided man with a justification and motivation for an easier path to a social order that not through strength but through an amplification of weakness.

's modern residue is found not in Christianity, or even in religion, but in the nineteenth-century movements for democracy and socialism.

Nietzsche, the child of a Lutheran pastor, radicalized this argument, painting all of Christianity—indeed all of Western religion, going back to Judaism—as a slave morality, the psychic revolt of the lower orders against their betters. Before there was religion or even morality, there was the sense and sensibility of the master class. The master looked upon his body—its strength and beauty, its demonstrated excellence and reserves of power—and saw and said that it was good. … The modern residue of that slave revolt, Nietzsche makes clear, is found not in Christianity, or even in religion, but in the nineteenth-century movements for democracy and socialism ...

slave morality, n.Definitions

slave morality