A report on Master–slave morality, Friedrich Nietzsche and Good and evil

Master–slave morality (Herren- und Sklavenmoral) is a central theme of Friedrich Nietzsche's works, particularly in the first essay of his book On the Genealogy of Morality.

Master morality judges actions as good or bad (e.g. the classical virtues of the noble man versus the vices of the rabble), unlike slave morality, which judges by a scale of good or evil intentions (e.

Prominent elements of his philosophy include his radical critique of truth in favor of perspectivism; a genealogical critique of religion and Christian morality and a related theory of master–slave morality; the aesthetic affirmation of life in response to both the "death of God" and the profound crisis of nihilism; the notion of Apollonian and Dionysian forces; and a characterization of the human subject as the expression of competing wills, collectively understood as the will to power.

Friedrich Nietzsche, in a rejection of Judeo-Christian morality, addresses this in two books, Beyond Good and Evil and On the Genealogy of Morals.

In these works, he states that the natural, functional, "non-good" has been socially transformed into the religious concept of evil by the "slave mentality" of the masses, who resent their "masters", the strong.

In Ecce Homo Nietzsche called the establishment of moral systems based on a dichotomy of good and evil a "calamitous error", and wished to initiate a re-evaluation of the values of the Christian world.