Masters vs. Slaves | Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality Explained

[Music] the reason that startups work so well is because they're structured as dictatorships it was the mellian competition between rival Patron families that's what drove the Renaissance well the Masters they're yes Sayers I'm awesome I'm beautiful I'm strong I'm rich this is awesome the slaves they're naysayers power bad Beauty bad wealth bad privilege bad they don't stand for anything they only stand against them the Greco Roman myths are by Victors for Victors about Victors where Christianity is by victims for victims about victims the Tibetan Buddhists they can talk about egolessness they can talk about compassion

all they want look at the society they built ner thinks this book is going to be wasted on most of you but for his rightful readers it'll set you free n wrote his books to cultivate what he called higher men people like Beethoven like Napoleon and of course our friend Mr n himself and before you get a bit too excited n's got some bad news for you hire men are born to be hir men they are born with Noble aristocratic Natures which he thinks is incredibly rare if your highest aspirations are a beautiful house with

a nice car of doing well in your 9 to-5 then this book was not written for you in fact you might want to consider turning off this lecture because n thinks herd morality is good for the herd now if that doesn't sound like you if you aspire to a lot more n still got some bad news for you your your potential is being deliberately stunted by the herd and if you want to achieve greatness you're going to have to abandon everything you've learned to call morality altruism equality moderation these values are manufactured precisely to restrain

people like you but there is some good news amidst all this bad news and the good news is that this book will set you free what I'm going to do to easy in into nich's ideas is I'm going to share with you a bit about my first introduction to n in the genealogy when I first got into college all I wanted to be was an entrepreneur so I dropped out freshman year freshman spring to build a company and if you had ask me then and there why I was building the company I would have told

you something ridiculous like I want to make the world a better place that's complete nonsense okay to this day I've not met one single person actually motivated by that as their primary motivation I wanted to build the company for the same reasons that Achilles wanted to sack Troy Pride greed Glory maybe even a bit of lust it didn't work okay company failed I was very distraught I went back to school I got into philosophy because I wanted to figure out what had gone wrong and the type of thinkers that I was really attracted to were

the Tibetan Buddhists as well as the Christians people like Augustine people like Gerard and those thinkers pulled me so much because they tried to wean me off of these worldly desires pride and money and reputation and instead they tried to direct me to this other worldly set of desires compassion egolessness contemplation and so in the middle under their influence in the middle of my college career I started having this otherworldly phase I rejected technology I switched from computer science to philosophy I deleted all my social media I moved to Nepal to go and practice in

a Tibetan Monastery and I thought I was making tremendous progress until I encountered n's genealogy the genealogy exposed me as not only having made no progress but actually as having deepened in my perversion it exposed me that I was motivated by what n called resong resentment resentment is the state where you feel bad where you feel unpleasant but there's nothing you can do about the source of that unpleasantness and because you can't change the world you change your interpretation of the world so the classical example here is aso's Fox right the fox wants the grapes

the fox can't get the grapes what does the fox do the fox says well the grapes are sour anyways my sour grapes was my failed company I was mad at myself and I was envious of my peers who had dropped out who had buil successful companies and so even unbeknownst to me and this is this is why n was so important it's not like it's not like I was consciously planning this this fox-like maneuver even unbeknownst to me I had latched on to the asceticism to the otherworldliness of Buddhism of Christianity of philosophy itself in

order to more forcefully reject technology those silly entrepreneurs don't they know all desire is suffering and all ambition is Vanity n exposed me as being a little more than just a little resentful loser motivated by the same Pride the same desire for superiority but even more perverse because it was now packaged in this compassionate and eess shell and when he pointed that out to me I started seeing it everywhere in the social world so one example is that I had an acquaintance and in freshman year I thought he was the most selfless most moral person

i' ever met because every time I would see him he would talk so passionately about welfare about socialism about communism helping the poor helping the little guy he confessed to me junior year sophomore year that what motivated that wasn't a love of the poor but it was a hatred of the rich so he had grown up in an upper middle class environment but he was in the middle class so he was always made to feel lesser than his richer peers and so his orientation away from wealth was not for its own sake but to get

back at the people he was envious and resentful of now the funny story is he's now an investment banking never had an issue with wealth inequality in the first place or the only issue he had was that he was on the wrong side of it so that was my first encounter with the genealogy but what I want to do now in the part one of this lecture is to properly introduce you holistically to n's project because resentment is only to be the tip of the iceberg with what n thinks is wrong with our culture n's

project is one of Liberation and what he wants to liberate you from is everything you've learned to call morality happiness altruism equality compassion aestheticism n isn't to call moralities that emphasize these values slave morality morality of the herd morality of the weak eal itarian morality morality with a concern for the victim and the poor and the little guy and he's going to associate that for reasons we're going to soon explore with the judeo-christian moral world what n wants to elevate instead is what he calls Master morality inegalitarian elius which he Associates with the Pagan World

okay the GRE Roman world so instead of Val happiness he just wants us to not only Embrace but see the uses of suffering instead of altruism he wants us to develop a severe kind of self-love instead of Tranquility he wants us to embrace danger have a taste for and instead of compassion he wants us to be not only indifferent to the suffering of others but be willing to use them as a mere instrument for our own ends and instead of aestheticism he wants us to indulge in our animalistic desires this is the core of nich's

project what he called a reevaluation values the obvious question is on what possible grounds can n make this suggestion right and the answer is quite simple because egalitarianism because slave morality for n produces mediocrity it limits the production of greatness and N has one orienting goal in all of his writing genealogy included the production of what he calls hire men when n says hire men you can have in mind people like Achilles people like Napoleon but what he really means are the creative Geniuses the beethovens the guras the Shakespeare and of course according to n

the niches of the world I read to you the chapter titles of n's autobiography chapter one why I am so wise chapter two why I am so clever chapter three why I write such excellent books believe it or not there's actually quite a humble and sober answer to those questions which I'll get to when we talk about free will today but there's a much more immediate question that presents itself to us which is why why in the world is egalitarian morality harmful for the production of greatness I mean the Greco Roman world is great they

had Sophocles they had escalus but think about the great Christian art right think about great Christian poetry music even look at democracy democracy which for n is an expression of egalitarianism equality produces greatness so this concern just seems to be empirically unfounded n's response is to say let's take a closer look at these Christian Great Men let's take a closer look at your Democratic greatness and what you're going to find is you're going to find people who pay lip service to compassion to equality in their words but in their life they're actually going to embody

Master immorality they're deeply elitist in their life and the best example of this is Beethoven bethoven nominally was a Christian this man did not live a Christian Life it wasn't love that motivated the production of his work it wasn't a concern for the victim of the poor it wasn't even abstract contemplation on the beauty of God through which he produced his music Beethoven was ruthless he was an [ __ ] he oriented his entire life around his work which he deified which he turned into an idol and through which he wanted to gain a form

of pagan immortality I quote to you Beethoven's biographer Beethoven was possessed of an unswerving sense of mission a vocation filled with a deep conviction concerning the significance of his art all else was subordinated to the Fulfillment of this Mission by 1798 an elitist almost autocratic element had entered his thought in that year he wrote to his friend the devil take you I refuse to hear anything about your whole moral Outlook power is the moral principle of those who Excel others and it is also mine and in 1801 he referred to two of his friends as

quote again Beethoven's own words merely instruments on which to play when I feel inclined I value them merely for what they do for me now n says let's let's look at your Christian great art the David the P the cistin chapel the cathedral in Florence was it Christian love that produced that not even close it was the mellian competition between rival Patron families like the medich and the equally agonistic forces the Pagan Psych ological forces of the artists themselves that's what drove the Renaissance n's point then is that Christian civilization only produces greatness when it

actively subverts its own fundamental principles and he's going to make the same claim for democracy today democracy only produces greatness in spheres that actively reject its own ideal of equality let's look at two examples today in America Tech Athletics these are spheres that still produce a lot of Excellence that is very vivacious that has a lot of dynamism there's nothing egalitarian about Athletics it's the only domain in the west today that you can actively advertised and be rewarded for doing so I want to crush the competition I want to win I am the best tech

technology is also deeply inegalitarian the reason that startups work so well is because they're structured as dictatorships aristocracies at best it's because they don't operate by Democratic consensus it's because they don't decide on committees it's because they actively subvert rules and conventions sometimes the law itself that that they're able to innovate so fast so go read the biographies of the great entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs go read the biographies of the great uh athletes like Kobe Bryant and you're going to find the same maniacal f Focus the same ruthlessness the same disconcern for the feeling of

others that you saw in Beethoven so now that we have a better understanding of what n is trying to do let's revisit his revaluation of values and see if we can become just a little bit more sympathetic to what he's trying to do why does he Advocate severe self-love over altruism well these great projects require total devotion and they're your projects they might have some greater end greater ambition but at the end of the day they're your projects they're projects that you can throw your identity all behind this is why I said in the beginning

I've still not met a single person who has as their primary goal making the world a better place at best and even this is very rare it's I want to make the world a better place okay let's look at another set of evaluation why does nature Advocate against compassion in favor of treating others as instruments that's that's that's completely ridiculous right there immorality well this all-encompassing love that you have for your own great project this total devotion is going to put blinders on you okay so you're not going to be focused on other people you're

not going to have time to be compassionate to others even when you do focus on other people what total devotion means is that you treat everything in your life including those people as mere instruments again think back to Beethoven here people are I don't know a source of funding an employee a rival a faceless audience member in your awesome lecture series N reminds us that great teacher of compassion the Buddha himself ruthlessly ruthlessly abandoned his father his mother his wife his child his entire responsibility to his kingdom when his great project of Liberation was at

stake now let's look at the most important revalation what's grounding all of this is that you need to be an inegalitarian I quote to unicha every enhancement of the type man has so far been the work of an aristocratic Society a society that believes in the long ladder of an order of rank and differences in value between man and man and that needs slavery in some sense or other without that pathos of distance which grows out of the ingrained difference between strata when the ruling cast looks down upon subjects and instruments the other more mysterious

pathos could not have grown up either the development of ever higher human beings nich's Point here is that the very precondition to produce these higher men to undertake these great projects is to recognize that they exist in the first place okay it's to recognize that there's a vast Chasm of difference between Beethoven and and your average artist to recognize that some books are worth reading and rereading for your entire life and almost nothing else is worth touching for Nicha the tilos of humanity it's not the happiness of the majority it's not the development of some

World spirit it's not the satisfaction of the fundamental interests of each it's to produce a few inspiring individuals even if that comes at Great cost the majority Greek society needed Leisure to produce Sophocles and escalus that Leisure required a large slave class and N does not find that objectionable okay the next obvious question is why should any of us who don't share let's call n's highly extreme tastes why should any of us read the genealogy well the first reason is that even most egal Arians care deeply about having creative Geniuses in their societies we all

want to reach Shakespeare we all want to watch great athletes compete and the genealogy presents I think a really serious challenge is egalitarian morality compatible with the culture of Excellence but even if you didn't care about any of that you should read the genealogy because it's a Masterwork of understanding human psychology Sigman Freud himself said that I quote N had a more penetrating knowledge of himself than any other man who ever lived and Freud also said that he had to stop reading n lest he'd be left with no original ideas of his own that's how

highly he thought of n as a thinker and a psychologist but there's a final reason to read n there's a final and terrifying reason to read him even if we don't share his inegalitarian taste tastes can be changed and the point of this book is precisely to convince a few Noble Souls a few potential higher men who would have otherwise wasted their lives operating under slave morality and that's why n writes in the way he does not in a strict analytic philosophical form but through rhetoric through imagery through aphorisms it's because n's goal isn't to

present some kind of abstract philos philosophical Theory it's to help a few become liberated from morality itself and the strategy of Liberation in this specific work the genealogy is to show you the Despicable Origins is to show you all the perverse ways that slave morality Rose to power the image I want you to have of nich in the genealogy is of a health inspector raiding the most disgusting kitchen that he can find and what he wants to report report back in this book is all the foul personalities is all the sickly chefs is all the

health code violations that he's discovered to get you change your taste I quote to unicha describing his projects in his own words would anyone like to go down and take a little look into the secret of how they fabricate ideals on Earth who has the courage to do so well then the view into these dark work workplaces is unobstructed here now wait just a moment Mr wanton curiosity and Daredevil your eyes must first get used to this falsely shimmering light he describes what he sees in this kitchen and he says I can't stand it anymore

bad air bad air this workplace where they fabricate ideals it seems to me it stinks of sheer lies he's trying to take you back into what he conceives to be the most disgusting Kitchen in all the human history that manufactured these slave morals and he thinks that that will be enough to get you change your taste which is why in this lecture I'm going to give you n raw and undiluted okay and I'm going to try to read you the man himself in his own words because more so than any philosopher in the western tradition

n's content is inseparable from his form the offensiveness the disturbing quality the unfair caricatures that is n and that is when n needs to get you to change your taste so for the next two parts of the lecture I'm going to try to reconstruct as authentically as I can n's own arguments in the genealogy even if I privately disagree with them and I'm going to leave my own issues I have with this book for the last part part four so let me summarize once again what n's project is in the genealogy his orienting concern is

the production of higher men he thinks what's holding back the production of higher men is slave morality and what he wants to do in the genealogy is to try to show you the perverse origins of slave morality so we can change that taste so in this next part part two what I'm going to do is I'm going to reconstruct one of the ways that slave morality Rose to power and that way we discussed it already is through this mechanism of resentment but before I do so I need to First make you guys appreciate the DraStic

different moral systems between the Pagan World Greco Roman in the judeo-christian world for the Christians the meek shall inherit the earth how does The Iliad begin it begins with an Ode to force sing Muse Wrath of Achilles the pagan gods from the perspective of the Christians are completely immoral they're envious they're jealous they're barely more mature than little children and they treat us Mortals like play things that they just kill and rape now the Christian God is completely incompetent from the Pagan perspective what's your superpower multiplying bread here's another example Chastity we're going to talk

a lot about Chastity today is a high value it's a high virtue in Christianity but it's sexual prow that is what is lionized in Pagan myths think about Hercules going to thespia and having sex with all 50 of the King's Daughters in one night right that's what's celebrated for n the history of the West is the history between these two sides Waging War against each other I quote to unicha himself Rome against Judea Judea against Rome so far there has been no greater event than this battle and it's a battle that has raged on for

Millennia according to n with Christian morality securing an early victory in the conversion of a Constantine and installation of the papacy in Rome but what you need to know about this battle is that the battle lines are not as clear as they first may seem for example the Renaissance and the Protestant Reformation both are nominally Christian events but the Renaissance because it emphasizes sensuality right think about all the nude Arch and the nude sculptures represents Rome ficha whereas Protestant Reformation which represents a tightening of the screw of of religious prohibitions that represents Judea so which

side you actually fall on is not going to be what sides you advertise you fall on but it's what kind of values you uphold if you uphold values of sensuality of power of elitism of appreciation for wealth and privilege you're with Rome if you emphasize equality egalitarianism compassion all those selfless values if you care a lot about victims you're with Judea and so the irony is need to think that most people and most movements in modernity are Christian through and through even if they don't realize it communism socialism feminism animal rights activism all of these

that have as their orienting concern a concern for the victim are Christian through and through Christian morality success is so total that we're going to discuss today how even atheism and science for n are going to be shown to be Christian phenomenon through and through that would be getting a bit ahead of ourselves I want to return to our orienting question how did Christian morality secure such a total Victory and the clue is going to lie for n in the words that these two religions use to evaluate Christian morality slave morality evaluates things good and

evil Pagan morality evaluates things good and bad so N is a philologist that's that's the discipline that he received training at and philology is the study of the development of languages and what n finds when he looks at Master morality good and bad is that the word good has its roots very similar to the words Noble aristocratic high-minded privileged whereas the word bad is associated with words plain simple common for example the German word for bad is very similar to the German word for plain and simple and what that tells me is that Master morality

when they evaluate their First Act of evaluation is self-affirmation they are the Masters they look at themselves and they say I'm privileged I'm an aristocrat I'm beautiful I'm powerful I am good and then they turn to the slaves and they say well you're none of that so you're bad you're plain again bad is not the is not the presence of something in the way that evil is bad is the absence of something but the slaves slave morality does not evaluate in this way slave morality establishes the word evil first and n's key Insight is that

what the slaves label as evil is precisely what the Masters label as good because the slaves are jealous of the power of the Masters they're envious they're resentful again think back to my own example think back the example of my Progressive acquaintance and so they turn these virtues into vices ambition becomes greed appetite becomes gluttony sexual prowess becomes lust confidence becomes Pride strength becomes wrath okay so where does slave morality get its concept of good we know how it got its concept of evil it gets its concept of Good by simply flipping whatever the Masters

are so you're powerful and assertive I'm going to turn the other cheek you're beautiful and sensual well I value Chastity and virginity you're strong and vivacious well tough luck buddy the meek will inherit the earth you are wealthy and privileged it will be harder for you to enter Heaven than a camel the eye of a needle the slaves they don't hold values for their own sake but only as a moral weapon against the Masters again think back to my Progressive acquaintance what's core what's primary for him is his hatred of the Rich and so whatever

is the opposite of that it doesn't matter is it socialism is it communism is it welfare it doesn't really matter whatever is the opposite of that he's going to align himself to so for n this is the big difference between the master and the slave mode of evaluation the master defines good in himself whatever is not that is bad this the slave defines evil in the master and whatever is opposite of that is good and the slave mode of evaluation for n is going to be the or of both Christian morality and egalitarianism and he

wants us to see its perversion he wants to change our taste through three ways the first is by pointing out the internal psychology of the slaves the slaves they're negative they're naysayers right because their primary Act of evaluation is to say power bad Beauty bad wealth bad privilege bad they don't stand for anything they only stand against things and as a result their own internal psychology is of a seething hate it's of loathing it's of Envy so what about the Masters internal psychology well the Masters they are yes Sayers right their First Act of evaluation

is to say I'm awesome I'm beautiful I'm strong I'm rich this is awesome and what this surplus of confidence provides for the master is that the master becomes somewhat indifferent a cool nonchalant to the external world he Embraces danger he's not easily offended at all and even when he commits atrocities he he walks away cheerful I quote to unicha Masters step back into the innocence of the Beast of pre conscience as jubilant monsters who perhaps walk away from a hideous succession of murder arson rape torture with such high spirits and Equanimity that it seems as

if they have only played a student prank convinced that for years to come The Poets will again have something to sing and praise the picture that n paints of the master is of this joyful brute and he is a brute okay so he's very stupid partially because he's never had to use his intellect but what's positive here is his naive okay the fact that he doesn't overthink things and if you think n is exaggerating with that quote I just gave you that's literally how The Iliad begins Achilles commits murder arson rape and all he can

think about is his own reputation his own Immortal Glory so the best way to think about n's Master is your high school jock okay he's a physical specimen he's on top of the social pecking order he loves danger extreme sports drunk driving body checking people in hockey he bullies people not because he's mad but for him it's fun to shove someone into a locker and you can call all manner of obscenities to his face partially because he's so smug and confident partially because he's too stupid to realize what you're actually saying that might sound a

very negative ideal for us partially because we have been influenced by Christian morality but it's the naive self assurance okay it's the willingness to indulge in one's simple desires it's the natural Independence that's the first reason that makes this masterly mode of evaluation preferable to the slave the second reason that slave morality is Despicable for n is that they promote bad values and NAA wants to ask how can you not promote bad values you've simply taken what the master's like and you flipped it by the way that's also the the the answer to the question

why there are two competing moral systems in the west it's because the Christians literally took the Greco Roman way of evaluating things for n and flipped it on its head and N would say let's just look at the type of people associated with these different religions and that's going to tell you everything you need to know about them who created the GRE Roman myths well it was people was the aristocrats right aristocratic artists Virgil Sophocles escalus who created Christianity who wrote the Bible Well the Hebrew Bible is by a group of people who repeatedly suffered

enslavement and Exile and the New Testament is written by a group of persecuted Jews okay I need you to ask who is greo Roman Miss for who are they for well they're for the aristocrats right people like Caesar they claim direct ancestry from anas from these myths who's Christianity for it's emphatically it wasn't for the aristocrats right the Roman senatorial elite were the last to convert in the first 300 years the early adopters of Christianity the lower classes the middle midd classes marginalized people like women and slaves okay who were the Greco Roman myths about

well they were about these Larger than Life aristocratic Warriors Achilles odyusa people with Thunderbolts who's Christianity about it's about the victim it's about Moses not the Pharaoh it's about Abel and not Cain it's about Joseph and not his brothers Christianity is about a lowly carpenter whose defining moment was getting executed by the Roman State n would say the Greco Roman myths are by Victors for Victors about Victors whereas Christianity is by victims for victims about victims and he wants to ask you is there any doubt why such a religion would emphasize meekness Chastity poverty and

is there any doubt why why our culture that has been so sufficiently influenced by Christianity is so victim obsessed I mean today in political conversation how do you gain the moral upper hand you start by listing out all the ways you're a victim right as an immigrant I think this as a minority I think this as a working single mom of 20 I think that that's judeo Christian that's not GRE Roman how does Achilles introduce himself I'm Achilles son of pelus you start by listing your Noble ancestors right you start by listing all the ways

you're a Victor and not a victim but the even bigger issue for n is that when slave morality elevates things like Mercy like Chastity like poverty that's not what they're really advocating for I quote to you n in his own words the inoffensiveness of the weak one cowardice itself which he possesses in abundance his standing at the door his unavoidable having to wait acquires good names here such as patience it is even called virtue itself not being able to avenge oneself is called not wanting to avenge oneself perhaps even forgiveness FN the slaves aren't merciful

they're too weak to seek revenge they aren't Chast they're too ugly to get laid they aren't patient they're too cowardly to act n's point is that you can't confuse impotence from virtue I want to take a step back here and just point out something interesting because the Christian thinker Renee Gerard also came to the exact same conclusion that at the heart of Christianity what made it special was that it emphasized the victim it protected the victim but of course given that he's a Christian thinker he sees that as a reason that Christianity is true and

not as a reason to critique Christianity as n does here and it's actually structured as a a as a very brilliant and compelling critique of n which I'm not going to go into now but I'll link my lecture in the description below if you want to watch that later on we need to turn to the third issue that need to highlights with slave morality and that's hypocrisy and there's no better expression for n of this hypocrisy than Christian love n thinks that Christian love purports to be this voice of objective justice but is really just

the Pagan desire for vengeance in another form and the way that he's going to make this argument is quite clever he's going to latch on to a strand of theological thought that conceives of God's punishment even God's punishment as a manifestation of God's love that makes a lot of intuitive sense right we punish people all the time who want who we want to be better we punish our kids so that they morally improve we punish our employees because we want them to be better what nich is going to focus on is a specific type of

punishment punishment in the afterlife punishment in hell what the purpose of God's punishment are you going to still tell me it's love even if these people have no possible Outlet of improvement that's the wedge where n smells hypocrisy and he's going to cite three influential Christian writers to make his point the first writer that n cites is Dante who writes on his Gates of Hell I too was made by eternal love if you read The Inferno you know there's not a lot of loving going down there right it's a torturous hell and so why why

is that why is that love some theologians think that when you desire sin what you're Desiring is to be away from God and therefore The Inferno is really giving you what you want and so that's why it's love but n is not convinced at all n says you're telling me I'm getting impaled by a spike for all of eternity with no possibility of moral progress because God loves me what n reads instead into the structure of the Christian afterlife is the Pagan desire for vengeance and he cites his second thinker aquinus to make his point

Thomas aquinus the great teacher and Saint the blessed in the Kingdom of Heaven aquinus says meekly as a lamb will see the punishments of the Damned in order that their Bliss be more delightful to them n's reading here of aquinus is that the Saints in heaven are like Spectators in an otherworldly Coliseum eating popcorn and laughing and pointing out at all the the Sinners being punished in heaven now I think this is a terrible misreading of a Quin especially if you read the passages here around the Suma but the third thinker that n just cites

I think is the most compelling of them all and that's tulan so tulan did end up breaking from the church however he still remains one of the most influential early Christian writers he introduced the word Trinity and he's still considered by Christians today the father of Latin theology okay so this is this this isn't just some random guy that n just pulled out of a hat so what I'm going to read you now is n's selected quotation of tertullian talking about how excited he is in watching the Sinners be punished that last day of judgment

how vast a spectacle then bursts upon the eye what there excites my admiration what my derision which sight gives me joy which Rouses me to exaltation as I see so many illustrious monarchs whose deception into the heavens was publicly announced groaning now in the lowest Darkness with great job himself and those governors of provinces too who persecuted the Christian name in fires more Fierce than those with which in the days of their pride they raged against the followers of Christ what world's wise men besides the very philosophers in fact who taught their followers that either

they had no souls or that they would never return to the bodies which a death they had left now covered with shame before the poor ones as one fire consumes them poets also trembling not before the Judgment seat of ranth or MOS but of the unexpected Christ I shall have a better opportunity then of hearing the tragedians louder voice in their own Calamity of viewing the play actors much more dissolute in the dissolving flame of looking upon the charioteer all glowing in his Chariot of fire of beholding the wrestlers not in their gymnasia but tossing

in the fury Billows unless even then I shall not care to intend to such Ministers of sin in my eager wish rather to fix a gaze insatiable on those whose Fury vented itself against the Lord n wants to ask you does that sound like love so those are the three reasons why that n dislikes slave morality and elevates master morality slave morality is life- denying it promotes bad values and it promotes bad values that the Christians themselves don't even believe in now slave morality is indeed going to invert the values of Master morality but it

has one more trick up its sleeve which is that it invents the notion of Freedom free will to further blame the Masters and praise themselves and N makes this point by using the famous picture of birds of prey okay so Eagles and Hawks hunting little lambs so this is the famous sentence that describ Des cries the psychology of these Lambs how the Lambs react being hunted the Lambs say among themselves these birds of prey are evil and whoever is as little as possible of bird of prey but rather it's opposite a lamb isn't he good

what n is trying to do here is to show you how ridiculous it would be if Lambs blamed Eagles for hunting them and how even more ridiculous it would be if Lambs praise themselves for not hunting other Lambs why is it ridiculous n thinks it's because moral blame moral praise requires you to have been able to do otherwise it requires the idea of free will but of course it's in the nature of the eagle to hunt and it's in the nature of the Lamb to be hunted the lamb couldn't even hunt if it wanted to

so the lamb invents this idea of choice of free will to further praise itself and blame the eagle now of course in this this analogy and this metaphor in this imagery the Lambs they're the slaves the birds of prey they're the Masters and n's view is that slavish and M masterly humans are just as different from each other this is his in egalitarianism talking as Eagles are from lambs and just like animals it is our Natures it's not our free choice that determines our actions the Masters are naturally strong and they can't help but bully

people people rape burn and pillage and the slaves they're naturally weak again don't confuse incompetence impotence for virtue and so they couldn't even do that if they wanted to the strongest reading of n here is that he doesn't believe in Free Will at all remember when I said in the beginning of the lecture that there's actually quite a humble and sober answer to his questions in his autobiography why I'm so clever why I'm so wise this is that answer NE thinks that he was faded to do this and that's humble again because Nisha doesn't praise

himself for being so clever he's just fortunate so in the master mode of evaluation without this idea of free will people are fortunate or they're pied they're pitiful which is why the master actually has a lot of compassion for the slave it's only when you add in Free Will there this idea of uh blame come into play nich's attack on free will whole other can of worms and it's super interesting how does n reconcile his agential theory with no free will how does the will to power guy not believe in Free Will I'm not going

to go into that right now but I filmed an interview with one of the world's leading n Scholars which again I'll link in the description if you're interested the key Insight I want to emphasize here is that free will again is what makes something praiseworthy or blameworthy vegetarians don't blame lions and Eagles for eating meat they blame us because we can do otherwise and that's what n is getting at here so the slaves not only invert the system of morality they add this notion of Free Will and I really want to emphasize just how significant

this is okay that n thinks that resentment or psychology not only can determine our position on values is chassity good is chassity bad it can actually determine our metaphysics is there free will or not so I quote unicha every great philosophy so far has been the personal confession of its author in a kind of involuntary and unconscious Memoir in short that the moral or immoral intentions in every philosophy constitute the true living seed from which the whole plant has always grown in fact to explain how the strangest metaphysical claims of a philosopher really come about

it is always good and wise to begin by asking at what morality does it does he aim what Nisha is saying here is that it is our interests it is our psychology it is things like resentment that affects philosophy that determines our philosophical worldview the example we already discussed it's because the Lambs want to blame the Eagles that's why they invent this notion of free will it's not because they started from first principles and reason that Free Will is true this I think is one of the most important insights of this book because the implication

is AD hominin arguments where you criticize not the thought but the thinker or at the very least you look at the Thinker for how the thought was formed is not only valid but it's necessary they're necessary again because we don't reason from first principles because we don't start from empiricism but because our ideas are helplessly shaped by our interest by our psychology and this is why n had to spend so much time discussing Who the Master was what his Psychology was and who the slave was what his Psychology was and I want to suggest that

this extends even to the most philosophical of Minds so n asks not in the genealogy but another book called Twilight of the idols he asks why does Socrates like ideas so much why does Socrates devalue the material world why does socres elevate an abstract realm of forms nich's answer is that Socrates is ugly I quote to unicha Socrates was a plea we know we can even still see how ugly he was the anthropologists among criminologists tell us that the typical criminal is ugly monster in face monster and soul when a foreigner who was an expert

on faces came through Athens he told Socrates to his face that he was a monster that he was harboring all the bad vices and desires to which Socrates simply replied you know me sir what n wants to say here is this if I had the ugliest nose but the biggest brain in all of Athens I too would spend all my time thinking I too would devalue the material world and Elevate this world of abstract ideas I too would rank beautiful bodies as less beautiful than contemplating the idea of beauty I too would suggest the philosopher

king that's How Deeply this runs for nature that even the shape of Socrates thought is determined by who he is his ugliness and that's why again the ad hominin isn't just valid it's necessary for us to properly understand the thought all right let's summarize what we've covered so far in part two slave morality inverts the value system of the Masters and it introduces this idea of Free Will which further blames the Masters Praises themselves and that's the answer at least one of the answers for why n thinks Christianity won it's by inverting the Greco Roman

value system the Pagan value system that they were able to appeal to the resentment of the vast underclasses that felt disenfranchised from Pagan religion I don't find this totally convincing and I want to start laying the seats of why that is by asking you guys to start considering this question for egalitarian movements socialism communism Christianity feminism is resentment the essence of these movements or is it merely a likely perversion now before I tell you my own answer to this question there's another account there's another mechanism by which slave morality appeals not just to the slaves

but also the Masters that's the aesthetic ideal that's what we're going to investigate in this next part part three so before I introduce you to the the aesthetic ideal and what that means there's a new class in this war between master and slave that I need to introduce you to and those are the priests and there's three important things you need to know about the priests the first is that the priests are the leaders of the slave revolt okay and they're leaders because they share a common attribute the slaves which is that they're sickly when

n calls the priests and the slaves sickly he does mean physically ill he does mean that they're timid but what do really has in mind is sickly of spirit that they're negative they're gloomy people they're naturally depressive that's one way to think about it so these priests like the slaves don't have the same natural light-heartedness of the Masters what they do have this is the second characteristic you need to know is something that neither the slaves nor the Masters have which is that they're very smart they're very interesting they're very intelligent and so even though

n is ultimately going to side against these priests he's a lot more complimentary than you think because those were the group of people that made man interesting the third quality is that the priests also share a quality with the Masters themselves and that is that they have very strong will to power so will to power is a central idea in N let me read to you how n describes it in his own words every animal instinctively strives for an Optimum of favorable conditions under which it can vent its power completely and attain its maximum in

the feeling of power the interpretation of the will to power there's many that makes the most sense to me is that more often than not even if we're not aware of it we do most things out of a desire to increase our feeling of power so it's not a blanket metaphysical thesis it's not even a blanket psychological thesis that everything is Will To Power it's simply the much more reduced but still interesting point that more than meets the eye is motivated out of power so those are the three qualities of the priests like the master

they have strong WS of power like the slave they're sickly unlike master and slave they're very smart and the closest approximation we have to priests would be someone like the intellectual today especially the progressive intellectual right someone who sides with the victim against the oppressor so the priests are going to have their own ideal and N calls that the aesthetic ideal also a version of slave morale but it has a different emphasis and focus than this good and evil mode valuation we discussed in part two the aesthetic ideal seeks to deny oneself of all the

natural desires of Life Food Water sex sleep Pleasures but also to deny oneself of the social desires money reputation honor so just like the good and evil scheme this is a form of slave morality because it's about limiting the ego right it's about making oneself more ego less but it has a different emphasis because the good and evil scheme primarily the emphasis is social whereas this is a lot more individualistic it's about denying oneself so what you should have in mind here when he says aesthetic ideal think Mystics Buddhist Mystics Sufi Mystics um a Christian

monk who goes into the desert for 30 days to pray okay obviously the first question we need to ask is how is this the will to power you said the priests have high will to power but their primary thing is deny themselves how is that will to power it's high will to power in two ways the first way is that asceticism is the way by which the slaves convince others of their political legitimacy so an example of this is one of my favorite uh TV shows Game of Thrones has this character called The High Sparrow

so the High Sparrow was the leader of one of the most powerful religious sects in the capital city and he would always be really out of place in every scene he was in because he was surrounded by the political Elite right amongst the aristocrats who were decked out in these elegant outfits but he was always wearing Rags he was always shown to be doing menial labor like sweeping the floor and his rhetoric is a lot more humble oh this for the people this is for the gods but n's Point any anyone who has watched that

show knows it's precisely his powerlessness that gives him his political power it's asceticism itself that provides him his political legitimacy in ruling that religious sect and the mechanism is this if you see someone who has denied life's most important desires sex money reputation honor even food then you think well he must have gotten something else right he must have transcended he he must have gotten a higher ideal so that's how this mechanism works that's how denying oneself is an act of securing political legitimacy here's another example and it's it's a personal one and it comes

from the Tibetan Monastery that I practiced in so so every few weeks you would have an opportunity to ask one of these great living Masters who you know is selfless secured his Enlightenment a question so it's like office hours but it's a lot more ritualistic than office hours so what you got to do is you enter the room and you got to do a prostration you know what prostration is you put your hands like this go like that you kneel on the floor bang your head to the ground that's cow toow that's one prostration you

do three prostrations You Wobble feebly in front of the master you KNE kneel on the floor the master is sitting in his good golden cushion chair and then you get to ask your single question that's also how we're going to do our Q&A today by the way and I think and I think if n saw me do that he just want to slap me in the face and say this is the guy you're trying to learn how to be selfless from this is the eagle guy and n's critique would be the Tibetan Buddhist they can

talk about egolessness they can talk about compassion all they want look at the society they built look at the feudal order look at the large surf class they had serving these supposedly selfless Nobles look at their system of corporal punishment look at their hierarchical rituals you can't even get a question out without cow to three times n's critique is that feudal the feudal theocracy of Tibetan Buddhism is propped up precisely by their aestheticism so it's not a sensation of Desire it's actually willing very strongly I think that's a good critique I think that's an interesting

critique I think it goes a bit too far I don't think it's just will to power but I'm going to save the reasons for why I think so again into the last section so that's the first way in which the aesthetic ideal for n represents a Will To Power right a form of social control but nich's surprising Insight or his surprising claim rather is that even for the aesthetic who's meditating by himself no sociality whatsoever in the forest even that is Will To Power and that represents Will To Power because it represents the ideal situation

the ideal conditions under which the aesthetic priest can pursue his great project now how this actually works is going to be a lot more easily understood when we when we look at the philosopher first right because the philosopher again the intellectual also participates in this Priestly ideal so what we're going to do now is we're going to first examine how aesthetic ideals helps the philosopher do his great project and then we go back to the aesthetic ideal in the aesthetic I quote to unicha Poverty humility Chastity look at the lives of all great fruitful inventive

Spirits close up one will always find all three to a certain degree certainly not as goes without saying as if these were their virtues but rather because their Supreme Lord philosophy demands it of them demands prudently and relentlessly he has a mind for only philosophy and gathers everything time energy love interest only for this saves it only for this n's point is this poverty chassity humility the philosopher does not choose these because he's virtuous he choose these because these are the conditions that allows him to do his great work so let's take poverty for example

the Philosopher's orientation is not to make money he's not focused on making money even if you offer him possessions he's not going to want them why because having possessions comes with obligations it comes with demands so he didn't choose to be poor because it's virtuous he chose to be poor because that's not his focus in life that's not where he directs his will to power now obviously we want to push back against n here and say but isn't having truth seeking rather than money-making as your primary goal isn't that virtuous and he just going to

say there's a lot of issues with truth seeking as your primary goal we're going to talk about that very soon but even if it were more virtuous to live a truth seeking life than a money seeking life that's not why the philosopher chose it the philosopher chose it because his dispositions his circumstance his resources better suited him to exercise will to power in the domain of Truth so I've had a lot of personal experience here where I've been up close and personal with the top intellectuals as well as the top capitalists in the world and

they hate each other right the capitalists think the intellectuals are poisoning The Well of ideas and the intellectuals think the capitalists are hoarding all the resources and they see a vast Chasm of difference between each other but when you get up close and personal especially when you look at the elite of both the similarity I think and I think n is right here is greater than the difference they all have that maniacal Focus they all have that unrelenting drive to succeed to win out they all have a super strong world to power and I suspect

that nature is right that the only thing that made them go one way or the other is not because I don't know capitalism can help everyone or because truth seeking is the most virtuous life it's because their dispositions their circumstance their relationships their resources better predispose them to exercise their Will To Power in one domain rather than the other okay and the same story goes with humility philosophers are not more humble because they're moderate it's exact opposite they immoderate Pur suit of the truth is why they are humble because they don't want to get bothered

by people okay so that's why they don't advertise themselves that's why they don'tplay their name on things Chastity the last virtue I think is the most interesting so n asks us why are so many of the Great philosophers chass they don't have they don't have wives Kant schopenhauer n kirkgard rouso i mean Socrates had a wife but Socrates literally chose the most annoying woman he could find to test his resolve right so so that that doesn't really count so that's the question why do philosophers not get married I think n has a very interesting answer

here it's because most people get married to have progeny to have kids right to have their name live on but the philosopher already has a channel for his name to live on and it's through his books so again it's not like the philosopher is more enlightened it's not like the philosopher no longer cares about his name living on after his own death it's that he's found a better willto power route to exercise that same desire so the aesthetic ideal of the philosopher is an expression of the will to power because it's by rejecting the usual

demands of Life money sex name that the philosopher can fully devote himself to Truth at all costs that's what his aesthetic ideal is truth at all cost to life I I'm going to go on a little tangent here but only because it's so interesting n thinks we got this aesthetic ideal Truth at all costs from Christianity and you can see how it's a religious idea right that I'm going to be pursuing a transcendental ideal namely truth against all other demands of life I'm going to sacrifice sex I'm sacrifice family reputation just for truth that's a

Christian idea for n if that's the case then the aesthetic ideal Truth at all costs is also what gave birth to science and Atheism so think about the early atheist writers think about the early scientists like Galileo and how much persecution how much life they needed to sacrifice for their ideal of Truth so in this way then n thinks Christianity committed suicide I quote to you each what actually triumphed over the Christian God Christian morality itself the ever more strictly understood concept of truthfulness translated and sublimate into the scientific conscience into intellectual cleanliness at any

price end quote so it's the Christian desire Truth at all costs which gave birth to atheism and science that ended up destroying Christianity and I just want to make clear and this just shows us how different n's value system is to ours when most people say Christianity gave birth to science they mean that as a praise of Christianity when n says that he means it as a critique of science that science still operates under this religious Faith Truth at all cost that it itself cannot justify why are we going out and finding out what all

the Beatles are doing okay that is not a normal masterly desire and each his own position is that no value should have that transcendental absolute status X at all costs is always bad let alone truth because forn what sustains life what sustains life's core commitments is illusion and so Truth at all costs is going to be deeply harmful for life all right that's the tangent I hope you found it interesting let's go back to our conversation about what the aesthetic ideal means for the aesthetic himself again we saw what it meant for the philosopher right

for the philosopher of the aesthetic ideal denying once demands of Life meant the greatest conditions to pursue his own great project and N thinks that's exactly what it means for the aesthetic as well the next obvious question is what is the Aesthetics great project and N has a brilliant but I think wrong answer here like most of philosophy willing nothingness the philosopher denies life for the sake of pursuit of Truth the aesthetic denies life for the sake of denying life the philosopher is Chast because he doesn't want to get naged he wants to focus on

his work the aesthetic is Chast for Chastity's sake okay why does That's So uncharitable Right why does n how could he possibly describe the Aesthetics as willing nothingness I think the first thing to say in defense of n is that's what Aesthetics themselves tell you if you listen closely I mean think about the goal of Buddhism cessation of Desire I'm not talking about the later developments of Buddhism the Mahayana the vadana think about the theravada Buddhism early Buddhism what sensation of Desire meant was poofing out of existence you obtain Nirvana you still live but when

you die it's called Paran Nirvana the final Nirvana and you just leave and that makes sense right life is a cycle of suffering let's end life I mean that's a bit of a simplification but not by much and I think n sees this common strand amongst all the world's mystical traditions this life is suffering this life is evil this life is bad we need to find a way to end it of course what n thinks is actually going on here what n thinks is actually happening is that some people are predisposed to make that judgment

because of their Natures because they're naturally sickly right they're naturally gloomy they're naturally depressive if you read the commentary on the Buddha's early life you you'll know that he's a naturally gloomy depressive figure but not all of us are like that so when someone tells you all life is suffering for n again think back to Theon think back to Socrates as ugly that tells you a lot more about who they are than what life is so here's an example in this Tibetan Monastery that I was at I talked to a uh meditator a practitioner who

was in her 60s and she had practiced for about 35 40 years and she told me after 30 years of practice and and reading and meditation I finally sensed that the Buddhists were right I finally could see for myself that at the core of all desire was suffering and n's reading of that is that she didn't learn some objective truth she got tricked she's naturally healthy she's naturally healthy she doesn't have to interpret the world as all life is suffering but if you all you hear for 30 years say all life is suffering all life

is suffering all life is suffering that's what you're going to start to see in everything so she was healthy and then she was made Sick by the priests who are spreading their natural sickliness now of course many Aesthetics are going to reply you got it wrong okay we're not ending life to end life we're not willing nothingness to will nothingness we're willing to transcend this reality right this reality subjectivity itself is an illusion the ego that's an illusion we want to get to the objective reality that's what we're trying to do and again I think

n has a brilliant but ultimately wrong response here which is that he says objective reality is an oxymoron think about it all reality requires some form of subject all life is necessary perspectival it's from a certain perspective from n there's no God eyes View to escape to and even if they were it would be one among many perspectives so when you tell me I want to transcend perspectives I want to get to objectivity I want to leave subjectivity life itself is subjectivity what you're really telling me is you want to end life and we're back

to willing nothingness and by the way there's another intuition that n thinks science got from religion this desire to get to an objective realm this desire to seek perspectiv less truths and N thinks that's totally misguided all right so we solve the puzzle of the aesthetic and the answer to the riddle is this man would much rather will nothingness than not will what n is saying here is that our Will To Power is so strong that we would actively use our will to power to will nothingness than just just to stop using our Will To

Power so the Buddhists they're not seizing desire they're Desiring cessation think about how active How Will To Power Buddhist monastic life is I'm going to give you one last example to really drive this home do you know what the first law from the First Council of NAA was this is one of the most important events in all of early Christian history convened by Constantine himself establishing core doctrines of the faith the literal first law first canon law was do not chop your penis off and the reason was because too many early Aesthetics in Christianity were

chopping their penises off and that's exactly what n has in mind here man would rather will nothingness then not will okay in this domain willing would be having sex not willing would be being chass but with a penis attached actively willing nothingness is is actively chopping it off and I do think it's a very interesting Insight that early Aesthetics would rather actively chop their penises off than just leave it on and not use it and n's reading here again is that our Will To Power is so strong I mean think about the balls it takes

okay to chop off your balls that's Will To Power right there all right so we solved the riddle of the aesthetic ideal what appears to be not willing is really the will to power directed in two Avenues social control or the Willing of nothingness which means again life denial denying denying one's core instincts and N just spend so much time drawing out this this distinction making sure we're seeing the Aesthetics as willing nothingness for three key reasons the first reason is that he wants you to start viewing the priests as just as hypocritical as the

slaves right because the priests they're just as much exercising their Will To Power as the Masters and the second reason once you get into this Frame once you start seeing the priests as exercising their Will To Power you start looking at the object to which they exercise their Will To Power and that's nothingness and I think n wants you to realize that's a very stupid goal in other words if we're going to have to use Will To Power might as well direct it somewhere fun like the Masters like orgies and conquest and tragedy and festivals

and not something stupid like cutting your penis off the third reason that n wants to make sure we understand the aesthetic as willing nothingness is that he wants to set up how the priests managed to convince everyone else both master and slave to also adopt this ideal to also will nothingness so that that's going to be the final topic we're going to reconstruct in in each's genealogy the riddle we need to solve now is why did this aesthetic ideal again denying one's life's core instincts why did it spread to people who weren't priests who didn't

have Transcendence as their main goal to people like you and me n's answer is that it appealed to two constants within Human Nature cruelty and suffering we going to talk about cruelty first so Nature's claim is that humans all want to exercise cruelty an example he gives are how chimps and monkeys Delight in violence how ancient cultures make pain make out of pain what he calls a festival whe whether this is looking at the Coliseum whether this is going to beheadings as if it were like an amusement park that's something people used to do right

public executions were seen as a festivity and we can even see this desire to exercise violence and cruelty on others NE to thinks in our modern day right I mean for today it would be the sheer amount of violence in our media that we consume in our video games and our movies the issue with this desire the desire to exercise violence and cruelty on on on others is that Civilization cannot permit it right civilization can't permit you to exercise violence all the time otherwise it's going to disrupt civilization so n thinks without an external Target

of Cruelty we turn this cruelty internally and then we adopted the aesthetic ideal I quote to unicha all instincts that do not discharge themselves outwardly turn themselves inward this is what I call the the internalizing of man so he's giving us what is called a hydraulic view of human desire right of water pressure if it doesn't come out one way it's going to have to come out another way thus first growen man that which he later calls his soul the entire inner world originally thin as if inserted between two skins has spread and unfolded has

taken on depth breadth height to the same extent that man's outward discharging has been obstructed so this cruelty is not totally negative right it gave us our inner life hostility cruelty pleasure and persecution and assault in change in destruction all of that turning itself against the possessors of such instincts that is the origin of bad conscience n's observation is that civilizations and cultures that give People Avenues to let loose their cruelty that maybe even makes a spectacle out of Cruelty like the Greeks the people there they end up like the jocks they're quite light-hearted funnily

enough and jovial but cultures like our own that think cruelty is something to be swept away under the rug that thinks something avoidable that it's bad people end up gloomy because we turn this cruelty onto ourselves and what N I think is gesturing at when he talks about self- cruelty does include things like physical harm right we cut ourselves deny ourselves our core instincts suicide is obviously the most extreme example but I think what he also has in mind is mental harm think about the immense negative internal dialogue that we have about ourselves you're not

enough you're fat you're lazy you're stupid I do think it's a very interesting Insight that when we talk to ourselves in that way we use the second person you and not I and that I think is because n thinks this drive for cruelty gave us an inner World it made us both the subject and object of punishment but there's a there's a problem with self- cruelty which is why why am I being cruel to myself right now I need some kind of reason to the priests invented an ingenious solution you are guilty you are to

blame you are to be faulted I quote to unicha guilt before God this thought becomes an instrument of torture for him in God he captures the most extreme opposites he can find to his actual and inescapable animal instincts he reinterprets these animal instincts themselves as guilt before God as hostility rebell Rebellion Insurrection against the Lord the Father the Primal ancestor and beginning of the world the interesting Insight here that I think n is highlighting is that the concept of original sin is not a bug but a feature we actually like it because it enables us

to maximally exert self- cruelty unto ourselves and of course this type of self- Cruelty is none other than the aesthetic ideal committing violence to oneself denying oneself our core desires and so again the other interesting Insight is that even everyday people like you and me we have adopted this aesthetic ideal even to a less extreme extent but there's another pathway which both guilt and the aesthetic ideal appeal to people and that's through the problem of suffering so for n he got this from schopenhauer who got this from the Buddhists and it's quite a simple idea

that life contains a great deal of suffering some people might suffer less like the Masters because they're naturally more healthy but they also suffer and the problem with suffering isn't the amount of it or the fact of it but it's the lack of meaning of suffering so n has this very famous line he who has a why can bear with almost any how and what he means to highlight there is the amount of pain the amount of struggle we're willing to go through if it's for a cause if it's for some narrative it's if it's

for our friends our children so suffering needs a meaning and Ina thinks that people try to find this meaning by blaming others and we already talked about how the slaves in part two blame the Masters and eacha thinks that the Masters in the GRE Roman world can blame the gods it was Athena that caused me to spiral into frenzy but there's an issue with this form of other blame which is that it doesn't really fully answer the why question why is Athena punishing me why is that bird of prey attacking me why me and so

the priest jump in here with both the idea of guilt and the aesthetic ideal and present an ingenious solution you are suffering not because of someone else but because you are at fault I quote to unicha those who suffer make Mala factors out of friend wife child and whatever else stands closest to them I am suffering for this this someone must be to blame thus every diseased sheep thinks but his Shepherd the otic priest says to him that's right my sheep someone must be to blame for it but you yourself are this someone you alone

are to blame for it you alone are to blame for yourself I am suffering because I made a mistake because I am guilty because all of this life itself all of my natural desires is bad now my suffering is given meaning and I do think it's a very interesting Insight that of the five major world religions all of them answer this question of suffering in some sense back to you right it's sin in the abrahamic faiths and it's the idea of Karma and Hinduism and Buddhism suffering is no longer blamed on as it was in

other religions a manikan devil but it's blamed on you and I do think that's a very interesting insight you are the reason you're suffering that's the idea of guilt and you can stop suffering by denying yourself that's the aesthetic ideal so both of these Pathways appeal to the slave as well as the master but they appeal to the slave a bit more because the master has external channels um to unleash his cruelty and he suffers less to begin with but the key thing is this also appealed to the master because the GRE Roman world didn't

have a compelling answer to these questions so we're now ready to give n's full answer to the question why Christianity won on one hand Christianity inverted Master morality and fed into the resentment of the slaves on the other hand by negating Life by blaming the individual by creating guilt it created both an outlet for cruelty that had nowhere to go in ization and and was also able to give suffering a meaning so the answer that n gives for why Chris anyone is a psychological one right he appeals to factors like resentment that's the first essay

in the genealogy cruelty that's the second essay in the genealogy and suffering that's the third essay in the genealogy obviously we have to ask how far can this line of critique go why can't Christianity both be true and be promulgated by perverse psychology think about it like this does the climate scientist have perverse incentives to exaggerate their their findings to play into apocalyptic fears to get funding to make themselves feel important yes is climate change happening it is was Churchill a warmonger he was were the Nazis an actual threat they were so why can't Christianity

both be the result of perverse psychology and also be true n isn't attacking the heart of the problem surely the heart of the problem the only question that matters is is Jesus the son of God nothing else matters there's two things to say here in n's defense the first thing is that again remember n is giving us a pmic here that's that's how he conceives his own book so he's not trying to give you a metaphysical argument for Why God can't be but he's trying to have you LED this taste in slave morality and the

best way he thinks that he can do that is Again by showing you the hypocritical personalities that promulgated it but there's a second thing to say in defense of N and it's a bit stronger which is that it's not just a polemic I think what n is giving us here is what he thinks is the most likely account for how these religions came to be and he's saying that it's much more reasonable and likely that these religions the fact that they pop up everywhere with very similar structures is due to Common structures in our psychology

that they appeal to and not because the Buddha actually got enlightened or Jesus is actually the Son of God and I think this route of critique that religion is really a psychological phenomenon is a deeply important one today because when most people convert today what do they tell you they appeal to to their psychology right it's no longer Miracles it's not no longer reason in Scripture it's I was feeling down and God filled a hole in Me God made me feel whole or it's I was so lost and in the Buddha in the S and

the Dharma I felt in a refuge I think n's clever response here is it's precisely because religion solves your psychological needs that you should be suspicious of it because that's the much more likely reason that it's spread and not because it's actually true personally even if I disagree with the exact mechanisms like resentment that n highlighted I think this is a very compelling mode of critique of religion that is really just a psychological phenomena and so even though n did not end my quest as a spiritual religious Seeker I'm still actively seeking he set an

incredibly High epistemic hurdle for me to clear okay so so that's genealogy and I've already told you what I found most telling what I think we need to rescue from these Pages the mechanism of resentment the tension between egalitarianism and greatness the validity of the ad hominin and the insight into aestheticism now in this last part part four I want to share with you three ways in which I think this book is terribly limited and flawed the will to power the sovereign individual and each's life itself the first idea I want to introduce is that

certain philosophers have certain biases or predispositions for the type of explanations they like to give right so the anglos they always give the most base and boring psychological explanations for anything it was because he calculated his utils and optimized his sharp ratio neich is the exact opposite he always gives us the most extravagant and the most cynical possible reading of human motivation which makes them interesting to read but I don't think it makes them right why are the Christians compassionate resentment how do we develop an inner World our unrelenting drive for self cruelty and I

think this is the most ridiculous instance of that exaggerated cynicism I quote to un by prescribing love of one's neighbor the aesthetic priest is basically prescribing an arousal of the strongest most life affirming Drive even if in the most cautious of doses the will to power so what n is saying here is that when we help others we like it because we feel Superior and look that's maybe a reasonable idea right because we're helping you because I'm helping you it means I have more power but what I take issue with is the word basically as

if all there is to helping others is just this desire of superiority I think what's actually going on here is that n himself is very high wi to power and so he's actually projected that psychology onto too much humanity and look there are people like that I think I'm very high wi of power I think my Progressive acquaintance very high wi of power this is why we can't stand losing this is why if we can't win the current value system we were we were we felt prey to resentment right that we had to flip the

value system but I don't think most people are like that I think most people are totally fine with affirming value systems that don't affirm themselves and this brings me back to that question I raised in the middle of our lecture is resentment the perversion or the essence of egalitarian movements Christianity socialism communism feminism an animal rights activism I think it's merely the perversion it might be a likely perversion right someone like tulan might be a good example very high will to power but I don't think it's the essence I think there's a lot more going

on here than just resentment this also means that I think there's a lot more to asceticism than just W to power there's something real that the Buddhists have uncovered through meditation even if it is clouded by a lot of this will to power that nature rightfully identifies but that's not the extent of it okay so that's the first issue that I think he reads way too much world to power to human nature the second issue is that when whenever n talks about a positive ideal which granted is quite limited because this book is a critical

book it's always of a heroic individualism okay it's always of a lone man creating some new value system and even in the geneology this comes out in his discussion of what he calls the sovereign individual I quote to un n the sovereign individual the individual resembling only himself free from the morality of custom autonomous and superm moral the free human being the possessor of a long unbreakable will has in this possession his standard of value as well looking from himself towards the others he honors or holds in contempt nich's positive ideal is always a lone

individual to frame it in other words he's suspicious of any form of sociality and my issue with that is that I just think it's naive and impossible maybe I've read too much Gerard and Hegel but I I think sociality always interpenetrates us and we always evaluate with a group or against a group or building on top of a group and we can't establish we can't be sane in our Valu of judgments without receiving some kind of recognition in other words one big issue I have in the psychology of the master that n detailed is his

claim that the indifference of the master comes from his genetics comes from his nature I don't think that's where it comes from I think it comes from sociality in other words The Jock can only be so indifferent to others because others are not indifferent to him because they praise him they give him their recognition so that's my second issue right n's heroic individualism but my biggest issue with this book has nothing to do with the ideas in this book it has to do with the life that produced it and was produced by it n's life

if n blamed Socrates decadent metaphysical speculation on his ugliness then I would blame n's obsession with power and individuality on him being a loser so let me be clear on what I mean that N is a loser I'm not talking about his early years which seemed fine except for the early death of his father and brother I'm not talking about his fantastic early philological career where he was made the youngest pro professor at the University of bond I'm talking about the mature n the N who wrote books like these I'm talking about his chronic sickness

that eventually became Insanity I'm talking about barely scraping by with a university pension I'm talking about his rejection by multiple women that turned someone who was an early supporter of women's education into a cartoon misogynist I'm talking about a man who conceived of himself as the next Socrates but had so little recognition in his San years that he had to self-fund the publishing of his books if n tells us that every philosophy is an intimate confession by their philosopher What I Hear in n's confession is seeing unrelenting anger at an unreceptive world and I think

that's directly linked to the two ways in which his his ideas are actually flawed it's related to this first point that he exaggerates Will To Power because remember n himself tells us the master does not think about power in fact the master doesn't really think period it's the slave it's the priest it's the people who don't have power on the sidelines those are the ones who are conniving those are the ones who are resentful in thinking of power and I think n was only such a masterful psychologist of resentment because he was also a creature

of resentment and you hear that through the seething anger through his through his work and through his pages so I think the exaggerated emphasis on the World to power tells us perhaps a bit less about the Christian psyche than the psyche of n himself and I think the same goes for his heroic individualism it just reeks of these Avent guard artists who receive no recognition and then they say anyone who's recognized in their own life is a failure I think the heroic individual is the ideal through which Nita triy to turn his lack of reception

into a Triumph but of course it's not an ideal that n could actually inhabit you can say you don't care you can say I can evaluate by myself all you want N I think deeply cared what people thought of him and I think it deeply bothered him that he was unrecognized in his T years I quote to you n's biographer describing the beginning of nich's insanity in nich's mind the tentative contacts his friend had made on his behalf with quite average people people moreover who were generally interested in but hardly converts to his philosophy were

transformed into A discipleship composed solely of the most elevated Natures of exclusively high place and influential people in St Petersburg in Paris and Stockholm in Vienna and New York in his mind he's gone crazy at this point he had become incredibly famous a superstar he says there is no name that is treated with such reverence is mine Jean Bordeaux actually no more than an occasional contributor got promoted to the editor-in-chief of a prestigious French journal in n's mind and as such the most influential man in France in reality far from admiring n BAU regarded his

writings as cruel and perverse this is a man who deeply cared what others people thought of them and so I have the exact opposite issue that most people have of n most people are suspicious of n because he parades the values of the winner I'm suspicious of n because he lived the life of a loser and when you look at who is attracted to n's ideas today I'm not talking about the academics I'm talking about the real people in the real world who uncritically embrac all of n it's never the Uber MCH it's never the

blonde Beast it's never The Jock more often than not it's people like n sickly marginalized unattractive resentful let me be totally clear here n had his dark side and that's what what I'm focusing on because we're talking about the limitations of his work and I think it's inexorably connected to the limitations of his life but he had a positive a yes saying a value creating side as well and N is undoubtedly in my mind one of the great Geniuses of the 20th century so much so that even my fundament mental critique of Nicha is Nan

through and through it was Nicha that taught me the validity the ad hominin so let me end our lecture by expressing both my deep indebtedness my deep gratitude for n as well as my ultimate dissatisfaction with him in the following way I've been too convinced by n to be convinced by the rhetoric of the sick thank you thanks for watching my lecture if you want to go even deeper into these ideas then join my email list atre books. you'll not only get lectures and interviews but also transcripts book summaries and essays all to help you

understand the most important books in history now one thing you might be interested in after this lecture is to explore n's critique of Free Will which we briefly briefly touched upon now n has very interesting Arguments for why Free Will is an illusion and how we can live life without it if that interests you go check out my interview with Professor Brian ligher you can find the links to everything we discussed today including transcripts and my book notes in the description as well as on my website great books. thank you [Music]