Slave Morality, Socrates, and the Bushmen: A Reading of the First Essay of On the Genealogy of Morals

Caring as a slave morality: Nietzschean themes in nursing ethics

“…What we now think of as evaluation, then, had its origins in a set of descriptions used by the political masters to distinguish between themselves and the ‘herd’; and these descriptions incorporated a reference, not just to the difference in power – oppressors and oppressed – but also to the personal qualities attributed (by the masters) to each group. Recent etymological studies tend to confirm this picture (Migotti 1998).…”

“…His writings have been appropriated by people from every part of the political spectrum (Thomas 1983), and the errors of which commentators accuse each other range from the ‘Blond Beast Blunder’ to the ‘Bland Blather Blunder’ (Schact 2000). With respect to the Genealogy specifically, we have to negotiate competing claims – that it is intended as philosophy (Louden 1988), history (Migotti 1998), psychology (Solomon 1994), cultural anthropology (Leiter 1997), sociology (Richardson 2001), or something else entirely (Foucault 2001). The story Nietzsche tells clearly has many resonances; but this is precisely what makes a study of his work so fruitful – although it must be conceded that there has been little previous discussion of it in the nursing literature (Nolan et al .…”

“…It is, of course, true that this inversion involves a certain amount of self‐deception; and it is ‘unconscious’ in the way that acts of self‐deception usually are (how else could they be acts of self‐deception?). Accordingly, ‘the values that motivate the denial are the very values one ostensibly rejects’ (Reginster 1997, p. 296); and, to this extent, slave morality is, in Nietzsche's view, intrinsically dishonest (Migotti 1998, pp. 761–762).…”

“…The Genealogy is ‘intended, inter alia , as an historically serious reconstruction of the roots of modern Western ethical consciousness’ (Migotti 1998, p. 766), but it is not just that. The distinction between noble values and slave values is also to be taken as a ‘typology of morals’ (BGE, Section 186).…”

Nietzsche on the Decadence and Flourishing of Culture

“…Mark Migotti (2006) o ers an interesting alternative suggestion from the one I develop here. Drawing on Twilight of the Idols in particular, Migotti focuses on Socratic dialectic to explain how the nobles might come to give up their noble value system.…”