Published on June 2, 2025 6:50 PM GMT
Lately, there has been a discussion between Bentham's Bulldog, Scott Alexander and others about the nature of the slave morality. The outcome for me is that I no longer have any clue about what people meant by it, or, for that matter, what Nietzche once meant by it. To sow even more confusion, here's my interpretation, which, I think, is different from those proposed so far.
Slave morality is a child-like assumption that when you clean up your room, you'll get a cookie. An assumption, that if you follow the rules you are entitled to some kind of reward.
The opposite, the master morality, says that whatever you do, you are not entitled to anything. The world doesn’t care. It's all up to you.
A nice and heart-warming example of master morality comes from American Declaration of Independence with its "life & liberty & pursuit of happiness".
It does not guarantee happiness, however modest. It only guarantees the freedom to give it a try. If you fail and end up unhappy, too bad for you, Declaration of Independence has nothing to console you.
Wikipedia lists comparable mottos worldwide. Say "life, liberty, security of the person" or "life, liberty, enjoyment of property". And you can see how those are a kind of anti-climax. Where the Declaraton of Independence boldly states that everyone is free to pursue happiness in their own way and leaves the resolution of the necessarily resulting conflicts for later, the alternatives give up on master morality and instead try to provide some kind of petty mundane guarantees, only suited to satisfy a slave.
As for slave mentality, a nice example comes from the book "Dune" by Frank Herbert. If you happen to not know, it's a science fiction story in which the humanity lives in a feudal empire spanning thousands planets, with an emperor, noble houses, peons and all the other feudal paraphernalia.
The empire is based on faufreluches social system . The motto of the system is: "A place for every man and every man in his place."
In the Dune world there's no pursuit of happiness. No sir, there isn't. But what you get instead is a guarantee that, as long as you fulfill your obligations, you are not going to be left alone. There's a you-shaped hole in the society and you neatly fit into it.
It's not the same heart-warming feeling as the one evoked by Declaration of Independence, but a heart-warming feeling nonetheless. Right-wingers dream about it, imagining the rural past where everyone was a part of village community, had their place and their obligations and was cared for by the others. Centrists have their welfare state. Left-wingers have their communes.
(A reddit commenter also helpfully notes that the faufreluches motto comes from the Fifth Annual Report of the Board of Managers of the Prison Discipline Society, Boston, 1830.)
Now that I think of it, the biblical story of Job is a morality play about slave mentality.
"God!" says Job: "I've been good. I've fulfilled my duties. I've followed the commandments. I've worked hard, worshipped you and separated waste. Yet, my dog died, my wife left me, my credit card got revoked and my kids hate me. Why, God? Why me?!?"
It's slave mentality at its fullest. Job observes his duties and believes that God owes him for that.
Funnily enough, God completely ignores Job's complains and gives a non-tangential speech about how great he, the God, is.
At the end Job gives up, accepts that God owes him nothing, embraces master morality, buys a new dog, gets a new wife, works hard once again, improves his credit score, has new kids and lives happily for ever after.
Discuss
