Thoughts on Ideology and Master-Slave Morality

“Suffering and hardwork are necessary for a good life”, “We should learn to adapt easily to fit in different environments” and other statements like these are examples of flawed ideological beliefs which are believed by a significant number of people. The first statement fetishizes suffering and normalizes exploitation under, in the present context, the capitalist system. The second statement turns people’s dissatisfaction with the system into the fault of the individual, making people believe that if one doesn’t fit in, then it is only them who is at fault, not the society or the socio-economic system. These, especially the belief, “learn to fit in or learn to adapt”, are also reflections of what the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche called "slave thinking" or "slave morality". In general, most ideological beliefs would also be good examples of slave morality.

The word Ideology is used here, not in the general sense, but in the context of critical theory, as a set of beliefs that uphold the status quo. You can know more about the concept of Ideology here.

"There are problems with me because I can't fit in society or can't adapt to certain social environments; I will recognise the things stopping me from fitting in society and then fix them", this is an obvious sign that one has now fallen into slave morality. I try to interpret Nietzsche’s concept of slave morality as anything opposite to his concept of master morality. Slave morality, in my interpretation, is anything which is not master morality, so it is better to first understand master morality (and slave morality would be just the opposite of master morality).

Unlike slave thinking, master morality starts from the proposition that I am good, hence, everything else that doesn’t fit me is bad. 

In Nietzsche’s own words (Nietzsche uses words like “Noble person”, “Noble man” to refer to a person with master morality):

“The noble human experiences himself as a person who determines value and does not need to have other people's approval. He makes the judgment "What is harmful to me is harmful in itself." He understands himself as something which in general first confers (grants) honor on things, as someone who creates values. Whatever he recognizes in himself he honors. Such a morality is self-glorification.” 

In master morality, people define the good based on whether it benefits them and their pursuit of self-defined personal excellence. Insofar as something is helpful to the strong-willed human, it is like what he values in himself; therefore, the strong-willed human values such things as good because they aid him in a life-long process of self-actualization (highest stage of one’s psychological development).

Master morality doesn’t tell you that you are “perfect” or shouldn’t work on anything about yourself; you can, through self-reflection, find imperfections and work on them, but self-reflection shouldn’t come through the logic of slave morality. One example of recognizing actual imperfections in yourself through master morality might be to recognize what aspects of your thinking are victims of slave logic, and then replace that logic with the logic of master morality. For example, one might recognize that they care a lot about “what people think”, this belief is a feature of slave morality, which should be discarded if they want to become a person of master morality.

Ideology and slave morality almost go hand-in-hand. This would strike as absurd to many people because mainstream “pop-Nietzscheans” like to assign master morality to capitalism, but, on the contrary, it is capitalism and the ideological beliefs it generates, which make individuals the victims of slave morality. Moreover, master and slave moralities exist in individuals-themselves living under a particular socio-economic environment, but can’t be assigned to socio-economic systems as a whole, that is, no particular socio-economic system is master moralist or slave moralist but a particular socio-economic system might generate a certain kind of dominant morality. 

It should be noted that both of these moralities only exist under the current social environment, they have not always existed and will not exist for eternity, they are the products of the material basis of society. For example, in primitive societies, both of these moralities didn’t exist because primitive societies had a radically different material (economic) basis than modern societies.