> And this is how Nietzscheans have continued to use it: master morality is everything they like and slave morality is everything they don’t - at least in the moral realm.
True enough for contemporary Nietzscheans, but Nietzsche himself is a bit subtler, I think. He's interested in your M2 to the point that it begins to undermine M1, and maybe even starts to wrap around to something a bit universalist (though definitely not benevolent in the usual sense). For instance, section 367 of The Will To Power:
> My "pity."—This is a feeling for which I can find no adequate term: I feel it when I am in the presence of any waste of precious capabilities, as, for instance, when I contemplate Luther: what power and what tasteless problems fit for back-woodsmen! (At a time when the brave and light-hearted scepticism of a Montaigne was already possible in France!) Or when I see some one standing below where he might have stood, thanks to the development of a set of perfectly senseless accidents. Or even when, with the thought of man's destiny in my mind, I contemplate with horror and contempt the whole system of modern European politics, which is creating the circumstances and weaving the fabric of the whole future of mankind. Yes, to what could not "mankind" attain, if——! This is my "pity"; despite the fact that no sufferer yet exists with whom I sympathise in this way.
I agree that M2, S1, and S3 are all pro human flourishing and therefore good.
As for M1 and S2, they can both be useful in small measure -- think of a Steve Jobs or Elon Musk creating a business empire, or someone having epistemic humility in order to understand the world better. But in large amounts M1 leads to tyranny (e.g. Stalin, or contemporary North Korea), and large amounts of S2 are simply anti-human, e.g. the woke hostility to the Github meritocracy rug.
Very well-written and thought provoking. Thank you
Hilarious how many on the right, like Jordan Peterson, sort of promote Nietzsche and also somehow Christianity. Still not sure how that works...
> And this is how Nietzscheans have continued to use it: master morality is everything they like and slave morality is everything they don’t - at least in the moral realm.
True enough for contemporary Nietzscheans, but Nietzsche himself is a bit subtler, I think. He's interested in your M2 to the point that it begins to undermine M1, and maybe even starts to wrap around to something a bit universalist (though definitely not benevolent in the usual sense). For instance, section 367 of The Will To Power:
> My "pity."—This is a feeling for which I can find no adequate term: I feel it when I am in the presence of any waste of precious capabilities, as, for instance, when I contemplate Luther: what power and what tasteless problems fit for back-woodsmen! (At a time when the brave and light-hearted scepticism of a Montaigne was already possible in France!) Or when I see some one standing below where he might have stood, thanks to the development of a set of perfectly senseless accidents. Or even when, with the thought of man's destiny in my mind, I contemplate with horror and contempt the whole system of modern European politics, which is creating the circumstances and weaving the fabric of the whole future of mankind. Yes, to what could not "mankind" attain, if——! This is my "pity"; despite the fact that no sufferer yet exists with whom I sympathise in this way.
I agree that M2, S1, and S3 are all pro human flourishing and therefore good.
As for M1 and S2, they can both be useful in small measure -- think of a Steve Jobs or Elon Musk creating a business empire, or someone having epistemic humility in order to understand the world better. But in large amounts M1 leads to tyranny (e.g. Stalin, or contemporary North Korea), and large amounts of S2 are simply anti-human, e.g. the woke hostility to the Github meritocracy rug.