Lately, there has been a discussion between Bentham’s Bulldog, Scott Alexander and others about the nature of the slave morality. The outcome for me is that I no longer have any clue about what people meant by it, or, for that matter, what Nietzche once meant by it. To sow even more confusion, here’s my interpretation, which, I think, is different from those proposed so far.
Slave morality is a child-like assumption that when you clean up your room, you’ll get a cookie. An assumption, that if you follow the rules you are entitled to some kind of reward.
The opposite, the master morality, says that whatever you do, you are not entitled to anything. The world doesn’t care. It’s all up to you.
A nice and heart-warming example of master morality comes from American Declaration of Independence with its “life & liberty & pursuit of happiness”.
It does not guarantee happiness, however modest. It only guarantees the freedom to give it a try. If you fail and end up unhappy, too bad for you, Declaration of Independence has nothing to console you.
Wikipedia lists comparable mottos worldwide. Say “life, liberty, security of the person” or “life, liberty, enjoyment of property”. And you can see how those are a kind of anti-climax. Where the Declaraton of Independence boldly states that everyone is free to pursue happiness in their own way and leaves the resolution of the necessarily resulting conflicts for later, the alternatives give up on master morality and instead try to provide some kind of petty mundane guarantees, only suited to satisfy a slave.
As for slave mentality, a nice example comes from the book “Dune” by Frank Herbert. If you happen to not know, it’s a science fiction story in which the humanity lives in a feudal empire spanning thousands planets, with an emperor, noble houses, peons and all the other feudal paraphernalia.
The empire is based on faufreluches social system . The motto of the system is: “A place for every man and every man in his place.”
In the Dune world there’s no pursuit of happiness. No sir, there isn’t. But what you get instead is a guarantee that, as long as you fulfill your obligations, you are not going to be left alone. There’s a you-shaped hole in the society and you neatly fit into it.
It’s not the same heart-warming feeling as the one evoked by Declaration of Independence, but a heart-warming feeling nonetheless. Right-wingers dream about it, imagining the rural past where everyone was a part of village community, had their place and their obligations and was cared for by the others. Centrists have their welfare state. Left-wingers have their communes.
(A reddit commenter also helpfully notes that the faufreluches motto comes from the Fifth Annual Report of the Board of Managers of the Prison Discipline Society, Boston, 1830.)
Now that I think of it, the biblical story of Job is a morality play about slave mentality.
“God!” says Job: “I’ve been good. I’ve fulfilled my duties. I’ve followed the commandments. I’ve worked hard, worshipped you and separated waste. Yet, my dog died, my wife left me, my credit card got revoked and my kids hate me. Why, God? Why me?!?”
It’s slave mentality at its fullest. Job observes his duties and believes that God owes him for that.
Funnily enough, God completely ignores Job’s complains and gives a non-tangential speech about how great he, the God, is.
At the end Job gives up, accepts that God owes him nothing, embraces master morality, buys a new dog, gets a new wife, works hard once again, improves his credit score, has new kids and lives happily for ever after.
As a native German speaker I believe I can expand upon, and slightly disagree with, your definition.
I suspect that a significant portion of the misunderstanding about slave morality comes from the fact that the german word “Moral” (which is part of the Netzschean-term “Sklavenmoral”) has two possible meanings, depending on context: Morality and morale, and it is the latter which I consider to be the more apt translation in this case.
Nietzsche was really speaking about slave morale. It is important to understand that slave morality is not an ethical system or a set of values, rather it is a mindset which facilitates by psychological mechanism the adoption of certain values and moral systems.
To be more concrete, it is a mindset that Nietzsche suspects is common among the downtrodden, raped, unlucky, unworthy, pathethic, and unfit.
Such people, according to Nietzsche, value kindness, “goodness of the heart”, humility, patience, softness, and other such things, and tend to be suspicious of power, greatness, risk, boldness, ruthlessness, etc.
To the slave, the warmhearted motherly figure who cares about lost puppies is a perfect example of what a good person is like—in sharp contrast to an entrepeneurial, risk-taking type of person who wants to colonize the universe or create a great empire or whatever.
To the slave, that which causes fear is evil—to the master, inspiring fear (or, rather, awe) is an almost necessary attribute of something great, worthy, good.
So, returning to your definition: Slave morality gives rise to the idea that he who is a good boy and cleans his room deserves a cookie. That, I would agree, is a significant consequence of slave morality, but it is not its definition.
It’s funny how in the OP I agree with master morality and in your take I agree with slave morality. Maybe I value kindness because I don’t think anybody is obligated to be kind?
Anyways, good job confusing the matter further, you two.
At your service!
This is amazing to me, frankly. Thank you for your comment. I mean, good bless you, but I can’t view slave morality as I’ve described it as anything other than pathetic. I also value kindness, but, for instance, I admire people like Elon Musk infinitely more than the kind, soft person who’s life will ultimately be close to meaningless, and I’d still admire him if he was much crueller and sadistic than he actually is.
We are at the brink of changing the course of the universe forever, even thinking about the downtrodden too much feels outright immoral to me at this point.
This mindset has a failure mode of no longer being sensitive to the oughts and only noticing descriptive facts about the world.