slave morality
Meekness becomes virtue
Slave morality is Nietzsche's term for a value system that emerges among the powerless, elevating humility, patience, and meekness as virtues while casting strength and ambition as vices.
It inverts what Nietzsche called master morality—the values of the strong who define "good" as what benefits themselves.
In slave morality, resentment toward the powerful transforms weakness into righteousness: The meek shall inherit the earth.
Nietzsche saw Christianity as its primary expression, though the concept applies to any ethics rooted in the perspective of the oppressed.
- ethicsStudy of right conduct
- resentmentPersistent bitter displeasure
- NietzscheGerman philosopher of will
- beyond good and evilOutside moral categories
- priestlyOf ordained clergy
good and evil · guilt · Christianity · turn the other cheek · transvaluation · altruism · oppression · asceticism · humility · victimhood · hierarchy · communal values · self-sacrifice · egalitarianism · moral relativism · herd mentality · herd instinct · inferiority complex
- German PhilosophyKant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Heidegger
- Nietzschewill to power, overman, superman, Zarathustra, Dionysian
- philosophyethics, logic, metaphysics, ontology, epistemology
slave moralitymaster morality
Values exalting strength over weakness
will to power · warrior ethos · self-affirmation · self-overcoming · value creation