- Nietzsche and Moral Law
The German philosopher Karl Marx once stated that Christianity was “the opium of the masses.” Sure enough, religion in general, and Christianity in particular, has often been portrayed by nonbelievers as “a way to control society.” Friedrich Nietzsche concurred. Nietzsche considers that because society is composed of two classes of people: good and bad, or good and evil, there are two types of morality. The good class (of high value) is known as the master and is composed of noble, intelligent aristocrats. The bad or evil class (of low value) is known as the slave and is composed of the common or the lower class, which is directly antithetical to the master. For Nietzsche, this master/slave structure touches all aspects of society, but is most evident in what might be called the moral compass of a society. In the master-ruled society, moral boundaries and values are established in accordance with the master’s preference and then forced upon the slave. You see, master morality is the morality of the strong-willed who define good as “whatever is useful.” After all, Nietzsche said that the purpose of life itself was nothing more than “will to power.” Considering that the aristocrats are more often than not the rulers of power, it stands to reason (or so they say) that something needs to be put in place to “subdue the masses” in the slave class. In that way, Nietzsche not only agrees with Marx but also argues that Christian slave morality is actually destructive to all that is noble because it is against the powerful master by extolling weakness, suffering, kindness, and peacefulness, all the weak qualities of a society. In short, according to Nietzsche, slave morality (Christian morality) is hard against master morality because it “is a sort of tyranny against [human] nature” and is a “magnificent stupidity” because it represents a “narrowing of perspectives,” or so he believed. This narrowing, he argued, results in a belief that there is only one true morality rather than whatever the aristocrat wants. It is simply a herd morality that the slave clings to, and it hinders the aristocrats ‘will to power.”
