Nietzsches Critique of Judeo-Christian Values free essay sample

Nietzsches critique of Judeo-Christian values As perhaps one of the most important pieces of work written by Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morality contains some of his most complex and provocative thoughts on the nature of morality and its origins. It is evident throughout his essays that Nietzsche has a profound discontent with modern society and its values, a discontent that Nietzsche attempts to explain through a thorough critique of the modern values that have stemmed from the rise of Judeo-Christianity values that have shaped todays civilization. In his analysis of concepts such as morality and guilt, he explores he history of the deformation of the once noble and animalistic human society that succumbed to its death at the hands of Christian morals. Through an unforgiving critique of Judeo-Christian values, Nietzsche argues that the loss of the human animal comes as a result of the slave revolt that destroyed the once pure and idolized form of living characterized by the ancient nobles. In this essay, I will evaluate and deconstruct Nietzsches analysis of why and how he associates the rise of Jewish and Christian morality with the uprising he aptly names the slave revolt in orality, and to what extent these Judeo-Christians values differ from that of the nobles. In Nietzsches philosophy, the slave revolt in morality develops as a direct result of the emergence of Judeo-Christian morality. In order to fully understand why Nietzsche so adamantly correlates the two, one must first understand the origins and the essence of the terms good and bad through the lenses of Master Morality and Slave Morality. The idea of good was originally a term created and implemented by the good themselves, that is to say, the noble, the mighty, the high-placed and high- inded, who saw and Judged themselves and their actions as good (Nietzsche 11). In contrast, those who possessed the undesirable traits of being common, plebian, and low-minded were considered to be the opposite, and therefore bad, in the eyes of the nobles. This understanding of good and bad developed from what Nietzsche calls the pathos of distance, which is the unquestionable feeling of superiority that the ruling class possessed over those below, the plebeians. In essence, the notion of good was associated with the privileged and superior, while bad became associated ith the common and the lowly, thus characterizing master morality (12). This association of good and bad in relation to nobles and the slaves set the stage for resentment between the classes, and ultimately served as the catalyst for slave morality to develop in opposition of master morality through the advent of Christian and Jewish values. Nietzsche argues that the concept of slave morality itself first emerges through the rise to power of the clerical, or priestly, caste, and essentially the rise of Judeo-Christianity as a whole. It is here, for the first time, that we see the ressentiment that Nietzsche identifies as the driving force behind slave morality and the beginning of a reversal, or revaluation, of morals and values. Nietzsche explains that the priestly caste began this process by associating the words pure and impure with the concepts of good and bad. The priestly caste considers themselves completely renouncing many of the characteristics that defined the noble class, therefor aligning themselves with the notion of good (15). Nietzsche characterizes this rise of the priestly caste as the first instance where mankind became an interesting animal in the sense that it was through these priests that the human soul became deep in the higher sense and turned evil for the first time (16). As a result of this ressentiment, the priests became vengeful and hateful in their powerlessness under the nobles, and their hatefulness made their intelligence shaper and made the soul more evil, thus making their hate more powerful than any of the physical, warlike virtues that characterize the nobles. Essentially, their intelligence became their weapon against the nobles. Nietzsche expresses this when he states priests make the worst enemies ecause they are the most powerless. Out of this powerlessness, their hate swells into something huge and uncanny to a most intellectual and poisonous level (17). Among all of the priestly caste, however, Nietzsche identifies the Jews to be the most hateful, and characterizes them as being the most entrenched with priestly vengefulness (17). The desire of the clerical caste to effect their revenge on the nobles in the form of a revaluation of the their moral code was the embodiment of their ressentiment turning itself from thought and into action. Nietzsche expresses this when he states The beginning of the slaves revolt in morality occurs when ressentiment itself turns creative and gives birth to values: the ressentiment of those beings who, denied the proper response of action, compensate for it only with imaginary revenge (20). Nietzsche associates the slave revolt in morality with the priestly castes, namely the Jews, dedicated and deliberate desire to implement their revenge through the creation and revaluation of morals, stating with regard to the huge and incalculably disastrous initiative taken by the Jews with this most fundamental of all declarations f war the slaves revolt in morality begins with the Jews: a revolt which has two thousand years of history behind it (17).