The history, origin, and meaning of Nietzsche’s slave revolt in morality

Dados Bibliográficos

ID23212910
AutoresAvery Snelson (0009-0004-9271-8905, Department of Philosophy, The University of California, Riverside, CA, USA, autor correspondente)
Ano2017
Volume60
Fascículo1-2
Páginas1-30
Data de publicação2017-02-17
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessNão
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoInquiry (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0020-174X • E-ISSN: 1502-3923
EditoraInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/0020174x.2016.1251167
OpenAlexW2550824447
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas9
Referências citadas16

While it is uncontroversial that the slave revolt in morality consists in a denial of the nobles as objects of value, Nietzsche’s account in the Genealogy’s first essay invites ambiguities concerning its origin, ressentiment’s relationship to value creation, and its meaning. In this paper, I address these ambiguities by analyzing the morality of good and evil as an historical artifact of Judeo-Christian tradition, and I argue for a two-stage, non-strategic interpretation of the slave revolt, according to which Judaism and Christianity each made essential and different contributions. The inversion of values began with the Jewish prophets, who claimed the poor were holy and ‘good’ and the rich ‘evil’ (BGE 195), and it was sustained throughout the Second Temple period by the Jewish priests in relation to a ‘priestly-noble’ (GM I 7) conception of the virtuous person as holy and pure. Christ, through his espousal of egalitarianism (A 27), negated the pathos of distance essential to noble values, thus beginning the second phase of the slave revolt where goodness became associated with a distinctly slavish conception of virtue.

Epistemology · Good and evil · Interpretation (philosophy) · Judaism · Meaning (existential) · Morality · Theology · Value (mathematics) · Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, and Hegel · Philosophical Ethics and Theory · Philosophy · Philosophy, Ethics, and Existentialism · Religious studies