#slave morality

[ssjkamui-digitalphoenixug]

Now let's continue the analysis with the next character: Miki Sayaka

At first: I disliked her. I thought she was annoying and antisocial. But I liked her costume and it strongly reminded me on magic knight rayearth.

The first interesting thing about her is one specific thing in the german dub: there, one character (I think it was kyoko) calls her a Gutmensch. And that is VERY fitting.

The origin of the term Gutmensch is not completely clear. There are some things linking it to Nietzsche again. (Which fits.) Others found evidence that this term was a slur invented by German jews in the 19th century. Today, in germany, it is frequently used by conservatives and especially by libertarians against left liberals. And its common among boomers.

While it is often used similar to the words woke (by the way, here in germany, for the most terms, liberals mostly adopted the term woke and because of that, in germany, woke is often understand similar to what Americans call liberals or shitlibs. And a certain American form of left liberalism conquered german left wing parties and almost drove out genuine social democracy. This is why many Europeans dislike the term woke.) or SJW.

But the term virtue signaling is more close to what the term Gutmensch means. The term white knighting can also fit. And a Gutmensch does not have to be a left winger. A catholic priest who secretly hires prostitutes might also get called a Gutmensch.

The term Gutmensch basically is referring to a hypocrite who overemphasizes his or her moral superiority but whose morality is more a facade to degrade other people. (You see how that relates to Sayaka.) And these people tend to basically just adopt popular causes and are silent when something is not popular enough to score point. (Some people here in germany call that "TV dictated morality") And the Gutmensch loves to emphasize pity.

You definitely see how that fits to Sayaka. One interesting thing here is also how she treats Kyoko. Kyoko tells her that she is basically poor and likely homeless. Sayaka does not help her but assumes Kyoko acts criminal and scolds her for that and emphasizes her superiority. Sayaka has absolutely no Empathy for someone for Kyoko despite Kyoko possibly having far Worse living conditions than her.

But now back to philosophy. Sayaka has a lot to do with the ideas of Nietzsche as well as with Sartre and his wife, the feminist Simone de Beauvoir.

Friedrich Nietzsche wrote a theory about the development of morality. His theory had huge influences all over the spectrum. The left liked that it exposed Christianity as hypocritical, the right loved its emphasis on strength and Ayn Rand was influenced by it and used it as a way to ethically defend capitalism against the left.

But Nietzsche criticized everyone. He criticized communists, Christians, capitalists and others equally. For him almost everyone was a hypocrite. (More on that later.)

But now to the theory. His ideas have some similarities to intersectionality theory by the way.

The first thing to notice here is the idea of the will. Nietzsche was influenced by Schopenhauer and Schopenhauer was influenced by Kant. And both talked about the limits of perception. Basically, Kant and Schopenhauers theory says that people do not mentally recognize reality as it really is. They see the world and form an opinion about it. And instead of seeing the world, they only see their opinion about the world.

Schopenhauer added one thing here: the perception of the world starts with a desire to see the world. And for Schopenhauer, the desire making you want to see the world is your desire to survive in this world.

Nietzsche changed Schopenhauers definition and said not everything is about mere survival and people are often willing to risk their lifes. So, survival is not the end goal. The ultimate desire is power.

Now, there is a second important influence: Hegel. Hegel was a german philosopher who thought history was a fight between worldview opposites. He called it dialectics. One group has one worldview, gets power, spreads it. Then people with another viewpoint challenge them and in the end, they find a new position influenced by that struggle.

And one such dialectic is the dialectic between oppressors (or privileged people) and oppressed. This drives history forward. By the way. That theory also formed the basis for Marxist class theory.

How does this apply to morality? According to Nietzsche there are 2 forms of morality. The first one is master morality. This is more common sense than morality in the classical sense: the things that benefit me (or benefit me and society) are good and things making me/us sick are bad.

Now. Here comes the other side: slave morality. Slave morality is basically the morality of oppressed people taking revenge on their oppressors (or on people who caused no harm but have simply been more successful than them in life) by harming their reputation and demonizing them. Slave morality is basically the position of "how dare you be more successful than me?" While master morality often boils down to "I deserve my privilege because I am such an awesome person"

And here is the important point: both sides are egotistical hypocrites who want a better position for themselves.

One key aspect of slave morality is also the glorification of suffering. Basically instead of "I suffer due to me having bad luck or doing something stupid", now it's "my suffering shoes that I am a superior person"

One interesting point here is also, Slave morality has a double meaning. On the one hand, it's the morality of oppressed people e.g. slaves. But on the other hand, it's a morality driven by resentment and hatred. The position is basically "I am a good person because I am not like these guys here." But this is not a free concept of the self but a definition in negation of someone else. So, if I am not like person X, if person X changes and I want to stay unlike him, his change forces myself to change. So, the persons I hate have literally the power to determine who I am if my goal is to not be like them. So, in an identity sense, slave morality turns people into slaves. (One example of how ridiculous that can get is the "hitler ate sugar" type of arguments. Some people say veganism is bad because Hitler was a vegan, or that green energy is bad because the Nazis had some research on renewable energy. These arguments are stupid because something is not inherently bad but something becomes bad because the wrong people did it.)

You see Sayakas way of thought is definitely slave morality and she definitely uses the "I am better than you because I suffer more" argument. Interestingly, some lyrics of her theme song decretum even stronger point that out.

And another trait of slave morality is often a position of "I was a victim so I have the right to act as a jerk towards others." And Sayaka is mean to everyone in the end, even if they never did anything wrong.

The other aspect of Sayaka relates to Sartre and to Simone de Beauvoir. According to both of them, you are fundamentally a free person with free will and all evil and most of your own suffering starts with denying your free will and agency. Basically to say "I have to do x" if that is not really the case. This is also why many oppressed people do not rebel. Their oppression gives them convenient excuses of "I could not do X because I am oppressed" or "if I would have done x I would have received punishment". According to both of them, you could still do x while avoiding to get caught and punished or you could accept the punishment, do it anyway and move on. But if you can deny your free will then you have another one to blame for your actions instead of yourself.

According to de Beauvoir, women are often raised to accept tons of personal sacrifices and deny their own Feelings and free will, for the sake of the common good and this fuels this mauvaise foi too. This also fits sayaka

But according to Sartre and de Beauvoir, this makes you mentally sick in the long run.

And you see that in Sayaka as well. In many many cases, she obviously had a choice (like saying to the boy she loves that she loves him). It was her own choice not to use her chances but she does not uses them, suffers and Lies about her situation leaving her no choice.

And some of her assumptions are not very logical. For example her assumptions that the boy she loves would reject her if he would know the truth. To be honest, if my girlfriend would Tell me she is basically a superheroine, that instead would instantly turn me on and make me horny.🤣 and I think I am not the only one here.

Interestingly, Kyoko frequently points out that Sayaka had far more choice than she admits and her suffering is due to making bad and/or dishonest choices. Like said, Sayaka is often associated with classical liberalism and objectivism and they share with the existentialists that they cherish personal responsibility.

In many aspects, Sayaka is a darker parallel to Nanami and her delusions. One interesting thing here: one of the witch world's where she Fights resembles the Statue of liberty. This is also a symbol of alchemy. The whole miss liberty symbol represents the end of the learning phase and the start of the acting right Phase. (This Phase is called citrinitas.) So in a way, Sayaka rejects both the truth and the need for right Action there.

[rauko]

The Anti-Christ | Friedrich Nietzsche (1888)

"The very word 'Christianity' is a misunderstanding—at the bottom there was only ever one true Christian, and he died on the cross."

"Christianity is the religion of pity. It stands in opposition to the tonic emotions which heighten our vitality: it has a depressing effect. We are deprived of strength when we feel pity. Pity thwarts the whole law of evolution, which is the law of natural selection."

[grandpasessions]

According to Nietzsche, “slaves” and their “reign” do not in the least subvert or abolish the topography of mastery. They claim only that mastery should be deserved, that one has to be “qualified” to be a master (or that one has to “work hard” in order finally to become a master).

Even God should earn the right to be called God: He seems to be more and more incompetent at performing His job, and men have “reasonable grounds” for doubting that He is equal to His task.

This, for Nietzsche, is “slave morality” at its purest: we want a God/ Master, but a competent one! We want a Master, but a Master who will be dependent upon us, a Master whom we can approve of, and eventually replace with another one. In other words, we want mastery without the Master.

Just as, according to Nietzsche, Christianity perpetuates itself without God, mastery comes to perpetuate itself without masters. It perpetuates itself through knowledge that poses as objective, as absolutely foreign to the “irrational” and tautological dimension of mastery (“it is so, because I say it is so”). But this is still a form of mastery (“the new tyranny of knowledge”), and a very powerful one at that.

The Shortest Shadow Alenca Zupancic

[alephskoteinos]

The liberal/progressive and conservative/reactionary faces of Christianity convey the same slave morality.

[philosopherking1887]

Thor’s character development and types of morality

@foundlingmother, I’m making this a separate post instead of reblogging because this is getting well off the trail of the original post and I don’t want to keep dragging poor writernotwaiting into it. Here is the thread of discussion and here’s what you said in your reblog:

That’s an interesting distinction between compassion and respect. I think I would say, taking into account @illwynd‘s explanation of the ways Thor shows that he’s compassionate, or at least trying to be, that part of Thor’s character growth may be that he feels worthiness is tied to, to use the Nietzschean terminology, a slave morality (the contrast between being a good man and a great king, for instance).

That might be some of what’s going on; Thor is probably picking up some (post-)Christian moral ideas from all the Western-educated humans he’s hanging out with. And of course I don’t expect most of the MCU writers to have a very thorough understanding of when certain moral ideas developed and where they came from. So of course to most writers and audiences, “becoming morally better” is going to be more or less synonymous with “becoming more selfless and altruistic.” That said, a noble value system certainly doesn’t preclude caring about other people, and the kind of narcissistic selfishness we associate with people like Trump is still an ignoble mindset, a way of being bad or contemptible according to noble value systems like those of ancient Greece or feudal Europe.

As I’ve said before in discussions of various philosophical issues in the MCU, I think the “good man vs. great king” issue is actually more about deontological vs. consequentialist modes of moral reasoning (I discuss the contrast a bit in this post on Thanos and Ultron and a bit more in this follow-up; apparently I also touched on it in this weird exchange). That’s a distinction that mostly comes up within what Nietzsche calls “slave morality” -- the standard examples are Kantianism and utililtarianism, both of which are secular adaptations of Christian morality -- but it can actually cut across the slave vs. noble morality distinction. So there can be deontological or consequentialist ways of implementing a noble morality. The reason I think that’s what Thor was talking about is this line: “The brutality, the sacrifice, it changes you.” I think what he had in mind was Odin’s willingness to sacrifice many Asgardian lives (and Malekith’s willingness to sacrifice most of his people) for the sake of victory. The reason this is relevant to ruling is that when you’re making decisions about large numbers of people with different needs and interests, you’re always going to have to trade the well-being of some for the well-being of others. I think we all saw the stupidity of Steve’s “We don’t trade lives” claim in Infinity War, because he was trading lives: in order to buy time to save Vision, he knowingly risked a whole bunch of Wakandan lives. In trying to keep his deontologist conscience clean, to remain “a good man,” he just hid from himself that he was being a bad leader making an indefensible trade, sacrificing many lives for one instead of vice versa.

This got very long, so I’m putting most of it under a cut.

A note on terminology, because it’s clearly very loaded: the “noble” and “slave” labels on moralities/value systems refer to whom the value system ultimately benefits. A noble value system is posited and maintained by the noble class (which may be either a knightly or a priestly caste) and works to justify and preserve their dominant position in society. A slave value system may or may not be invented by the lower classes of society (Buddhism, which counts as a slave morality in Nietzsche’s sense, was invented by a prince), but it definitely works to their advantage, because it protects the vulnerable and promotes social equality. The terminology is unfortunate in a context where the word “slave” immediately brings to mind the American system of Black chattel slavery; that is definitely not what Nietzsche had in mind. He was a classicist before he became a philosopher, so he’s usually thinking about slavery in the ancient world as well as serfdom in pre-modern Europe. This is definitely unorthodox, but I’m going to start using “serf morality” instead of “slave morality” to avoid irrelevant racial connotations.

The main difference between noble and serf morality, on the issue of caring for and helping others, has to do with the way you think about the obligation to do so. The type of serf morality that Nietzsche calls “the morality of compassion” or “the morality of suffering” says that you have an obligation to relieve all suffering, and to care about all others who suffer. (Sometimes an exception is made for those who make others suffer and you’re allowed to hate them and want them to suffer; sometimes you’re supposed to pity and help them too.) You’re supposed to make the happiness and/or well-being of other people your primary goal in life, and you’re supposed to care about everyone, regardless of their relationship to you. Some forms of (post-)Christian morality permit you to prioritize people to whom you have special relationships (family and friends), but the purest form of this morality requires you to care about everyone equally, and ascetic or monastic Christianity discourages forming special relationships because that will inject an element of selfishness into your desire to benefit certain people. The purer forms of this morality -- philosophical Christianity, with or without God -- also consider the salvation of one’s own soul to be an unacceptably selfish motivation for helping others. Ideally, everyone’s entire motivation is to eliminate the suffering of others, not because of anything particular about them or their relation to you, but simply because they exist and they suffer. The morality of compassion is universalistic, egalitarian, and outward-focused.

Noble value systems allow agents to be selective in whose well-being they care about. Special relationships are extremely important. Traditionally, this usually means family relationships and comradeship-in-arms because aristocratic societies have conventionally been very heredity-focused and martial. But it also includes what Aristotle scholars call “character friendships”: friendships formed with kindred spirits because of mutual admiration for each other’s qualities and abilities. The standards of a noble morality only apply to a small class of people, namely, the nobility; it’s largely silent on how non-nobles should behave, and different versions have different rules about how nobles should treat non-nobles. Respect is reserved for other nobles, but some noble moralities, especially medieval hybrids of Christianity and Roman/pagan noble morality, also encourage benevolence, generosity, and forbearance toward commoners. Under certain circumstances, nobles can be obligated to care about the well-being of certain non-nobles, but it’s virtually always a matter of regarding them as your own, as your responsibility. Lords are supposed to care about the commoners who live in their lands and are obligated to protect them and provide for them; Christian knights are supposed to care about other Christians. In the ideal city described in Plato’s Republic, the guardians (the warrior class) are compared to guard dogs who are friendly to their master’s family but hostile to strangers. Their responsibility is to all the citizens of their city, even the lower-class ones; to that extent, all citizens are their own in the same way family members are. Caring for others in noble moralities is selective and is always a matter of regarding certain others as an extension of oneself and, therefore, regarding their well-being as part of one’s own well-being. Noble moralities also don’t preclude sacrificing yourself for others -- that would be very silly in a warrior’s code of conduct -- but self-sacrifice is not selfless when you’re sacrificing a part of yourself (your life, your body) for another part of yourself: the people who matter to you, your family, your comrades, your countrymen. There’s also the understanding that those who sacrifice themselves in such a way will be remembered and honored; you exchange a brief life for long-lasting glory.

(To be clear: Nietzsche was not in favor of going back to a Homeric-style warrior noble morality; he was very aware of the many cultural changes that have made that both impossible and undesirable, mostly involving the internalization and intellectualization of human life and activity. He was imagining communities being constructed and battle lines drawn on the ground of ideas, not geography or ethnicity, which can no longer defensibly be said to have the significance they once did. Nationalism, he thought, was a spasm of an outdated worldview. But he also questioned the value of selflessness and wondered about the end goal of a moral system whose primary motivation is the alleviation of suffering.)

So... I’m not sure if Thor’s moral improvement was a matter of moving toward serf morality or just becoming a better representative of noble morality. I definitely think Odin’s goal was the latter. “Humility” considered as an absolute value, as in the more of it the better, definitely belongs to serf morality, but there is a place for humility as a balancing quality in noble morality: Aristotle places magnanimity, or “greatness of soul,” as the virtue at the mean between vanity or arrogance -- claiming more honor than you deserve -- and an excess of humility or “smallness of soul,” which is effectively meekness, laying claim to less honor than you actually deserve. Thor was arrogant and vain; he invited adulation, he overestimated his own abilities and (as we saw in the deleted scene) the amount of credit he deserved for victories he shared with others. He needed to be shown that he isn’t invincible and that he sometimes has to rely on others, but the goal wasn’t for him to become self-effacing. His maturation also involved a greater awareness and sensitivity to the needs of others: contrast his complete obliviousness to the danger his friends are in during the Jotunheim battle with the slow-motion sequence in the Puente Antiguo battle where Thor looks around and really takes in how much his friends are struggling. That -- along with his acknowledgment that he might have done something to wrong Loki and his attempt to apologize -- might be considered an increase in empathy and/or compassion; in any case, it’s definitely doing a better job of caring for the people with whom he has a relationship, and for whom he is responsible. Making friends in Midgard does seem to have done something to widen the scope of his compassion and/or benevolence, since he now sees a problem with wiping out the Jotnar.

[howieabel]

The slave who opposes his master is not concerned, let us note, with repudiating his master as a human being. He repudiates him as a master. He denies that he has the right to deny him, a slave, on grounds of necessity. The master is discredited to the exact extent that he fails to respond to a demand which he ignores. If men cannot refer to a common value, recognized by all as existing in each one, then man is incomprehensible to man. The rebel demands that this value should be clearly recognized in himself because he knows or suspects that, without this principle, crime and disorder would reign throughout the world. An act of rebellion on his part seems like a demand for clarity and unity. The most elementary form of rebellion, paradoxically, expresses an aspiration to order.

Albert Camus, The Rebel (1951) - 25

[footnotestoplato]

Hiya Conor ! Any chance I could get a Nietzsche meme (in regards to morality/immorality perhaps?) up in here when you have the time ? Thanks xx

the views held by nietzsche do not represent those of this blog.

[grandpasessions]

'Just as 'evil' can be considered as exaggeration, disharmony, disproportion, 'the good' may be a protective diet against the danger of exaggeration, disharmony, and disproportion. Hereditary weakness as the dominant feeling: cause of the supreme values. One wants weakness: why? Usually because one is necessarily weak. - Weakness as a task: weakening the desires, the - feelings of pleasure and displeasure, the will to power, to a sense of pride, to want to have and have more; weakening as meekness; weakening as faith; weakening as aversion and shame in the face of everything natural, as negation of life, as sickness and habitual weakness - - weakening as the renunciation of revenge, of resistance, or enmity and wrath. The error in treatment: one does not want to fight weakness with a system fortifiant [fortified system], but rather with a kind of justification and moralization; i.e., with an interpretation. - - Two totally different states confounded: e.g., the calm of strength, which is essentially forbearance from reaction (type of the gods whom nothing moves) - and the calm of exhaustion, rigidity to the point of anesthesia. All philosophic-ascetic procedures aim at the second, but really intend the former - for they attribute predicates to the attained state as if a divine state had been attained.'

Vicious Circle // Klossowski [per Nietzsche]