Master Morality and Slave Morality

CORE DEFINITION

Introduced by Friedrich Nietzsche in On the Genealogy of Morality. Master morality originates among the powerful and evaluates in terms of good and bad, where good means noble, strong and life-affirming while bad means base or weak. Slave morality originates among the powerless and evaluates in terms of good and evil, where good means meekness and pity while evil means strength and domination. The core proposition is that moral judgements have genealogies and can be reactions to power rather than discoveries about it. The key qualification is that Nietzsche describes two tendencies coexisting within people and cultures, not two groups of people.