Having the Power to Favor a Morality

In class on Monday night we were asked to raise our hands in favor of slave morality or master morality, and I raised my hand for master morality. The most basic reason I chose master morality was because it just seemed more positive. I don’t want to favor a morality that considers itself kept down and bullied; I like to believe I can do anything. You may consider my reasoning thus far to be different then the complexity of the two moralities but this is how I feel. To back me up on this Nietzsche makes a statement in the beginning of from Beyond Good and Evil referring to the way we look at different moralities. I don’t think that everything he says about the two moralities is necessarily true to them. What I’m trying to say is that he could be off with some of his descriptions of the moralities, after all who is he to give a definition to something when we have already discovered that existentialism cannot be defined.

I bring up this last point because of the case brought up in class about Hitler. It seemed that the majority of the class considered him to be in the category of master morality, and a lot of it was based off of his empowerment. But when I was thinking about it I felt that Hitler could have been a lamb at one point. As I said I raised my hand in the beginning in favor of master morality, upon being asked again I kept my opinion. However, some people were swayed in favor of the other morality. If we could make this choice then why couldn’t Hitler, I think it is possible that he could have made the switch from slave morality to master morality. At this point I am stuck because the guidelines of these moralities is that it can only be one or the other, and I feel that Hitler is under a whole different class of a fucked up morality. I think the pressures of the slave morality got to Hitler to the point where he had to break away from its bonds and rise up. I don’t believe what we follow a specific morality all of our lives, I think our morality can change from situation to situation just as easily as we can raise our hands.

Having said that I would just like to say that in no way do I feel that anything that Hitler had done was good and in no way do I support him.

I would now like to talk about a different subject that won’t raise as much frustration and sensitivity as discussing Hitler. I enjoyed the topic of power that was brought up; unfortunately we weren’t able to spend much time on it. I think the best way to talk about power is to try to identify what it means. I know that my explanation is may be disagreeable, but don’t forget that you have the power to write a response. I think power is not simply having the capabilities to do something (some exceptions) but others must be aware of your capabilities as well. I think we make choices like earning a college degree not just for our own self gain; we flaunt that degree to let others know that we have the power to do something.  I think we are constantly trying to see a higher position in life and I also think that everyone in our class should agree. Though some might say they aren’t in school for the better job after graduating and just want the education because the information is interesting. Nonetheless they are still seeking a higher position because they wanted more than what they knew before college.