#slave morality

At first: I disliked her. I thought she was annoying and antisocial. But I liked her costume and it strongly reminded me on magic knight rayearth.

The first interesting thing about her is one specific thing in the german dub: there, one character (I think it was kyoko) calls her a Gutmensch. And that is VERY fitting.

The origin of the term Gutmensch is not completely clear. There are some things linking it to Nietzsche again. (Which fits.) Others found evidence that this term was a slur invented by German jews in the 19th century. Today, in germany, it is frequently used by conservatives and especially by libertarians against left liberals. And its common among boomers.

While it is often used similar to the words woke (by the way, here in germany, for the most terms, liberals mostly adopted the term woke and because of that, in germany, woke is often understand similar to what Americans call liberals or shitlibs. And a certain American form of left liberalism conquered german left wing parties and almost drove out genuine social democracy. This is why many Europeans dislike the term woke.) or SJW.

But the term virtue signaling is more close to what the term Gutmensch means. The term white knighting can also fit. And a Gutmensch does not have to be a left winger. A catholic priest who secretly hires prostitutes might also get called a Gutmensch.

The term Gutmensch basically is referring to a hypocrite who overemphasizes his or her moral superiority but whose morality is more a facade to degrade other people. (You see how that relates to Sayaka.) And these people tend to basically just adopt popular causes and are silent when something is not popular enough to score point. (Some people here in germany call that "TV dictated morality") And the Gutmensch loves to emphasize pity.

You definitely see how that fits to Sayaka. One interesting thing here is also how she treats Kyoko. Kyoko tells her that she is basically poor and likely homeless. Sayaka does not help her but assumes Kyoko acts criminal and scolds her for that and emphasizes her superiority. Sayaka has absolutely no Empathy for someone for Kyoko despite Kyoko possibly having far Worse living conditions than her.

But now back to philosophy. Sayaka has a lot to do with the ideas of Nietzsche as well as with Sartre and his wife, the feminist Simone de Beauvoir.

Friedrich Nietzsche wrote a theory about the development of morality. His theory had huge influences all over the spectrum. The left liked that it exposed Christianity as hypocritical, the right loved its emphasis on strength and Ayn Rand was influenced by it and used it as a way to ethically defend capitalism against the left.

But Nietzsche criticized everyone. He criticized communists, Christians, capitalists and others equally. For him almost everyone was a hypocrite. (More on that later.)

But now to the theory. His ideas have some similarities to intersectionality theory by the way.

The first thing to notice here is the idea of the will. Nietzsche was influenced by Schopenhauer and Schopenhauer was influenced by Kant. And both talked about the limits of perception. Basically, Kant and Schopenhauers theory says that people do not mentally recognize reality as it really is. They see the world and form an opinion about it. And instead of seeing the world, they only see their opinion about the world.

Schopenhauer added one thing here: the perception of the world starts with a desire to see the world. And for Schopenhauer, the desire making you want to see the world is your desire to survive in this world.

Nietzsche changed Schopenhauers definition and said not everything is about mere survival and people are often willing to risk their lifes. So, survival is not the end goal. The ultimate desire is power.

Now, there is a second important influence: Hegel. Hegel was a german philosopher who thought history was a fight between worldview opposites. He called it dialectics. One group has one worldview, gets power, spreads it. Then people with another viewpoint challenge them and in the end, they find a new position influenced by that struggle.

And one such dialectic is the dialectic between oppressors (or privileged people) and oppressed. This drives history forward. By the way. That theory also formed the basis for Marxist class theory.

How does this apply to morality? According to Nietzsche there are 2 forms of morality. The first one is master morality. This is more common sense than morality in the classical sense: the things that benefit me (or benefit me and society) are good and things making me/us sick are bad.

Now. Here comes the other side: slave morality. Slave morality is basically the morality of oppressed people taking revenge on their oppressors (or on people who caused no harm but have simply been more successful than them in life) by harming their reputation and demonizing them. Slave morality is basically the position of "how dare you be more successful than me?" While master morality often boils down to "I deserve my privilege because I am such an awesome person"

And here is the important point: both sides are egotistical hypocrites who want a better position for themselves.

One key aspect of slave morality is also the glorification of suffering. Basically instead of "I suffer due to me having bad luck or doing something stupid", now it's "my suffering shoes that I am a superior person"

One interesting point here is also, Slave morality has a double meaning. On the one hand, it's the morality of oppressed people e.g. slaves. But on the other hand, it's a morality driven by resentment and hatred. The position is basically "I am a good person because I am not like these guys here." But this is not a free concept of the self but a definition in negation of someone else. So, if I am not like person X, if person X changes and I want to stay unlike him, his change forces myself to change. So, the persons I hate have literally the power to determine who I am if my goal is to not be like them. So, in an identity sense, slave morality turns people into slaves. (One example of how ridiculous that can get is the "hitler ate sugar" type of arguments. Some people say veganism is bad because Hitler was a vegan, or that green energy is bad because the Nazis had some research on renewable energy. These arguments are stupid because something is not inherently bad but something becomes bad because the wrong people did it.)

You see Sayakas way of thought is definitely slave morality and she definitely uses the "I am better than you because I suffer more" argument. Interestingly, some lyrics of her theme song decretum even stronger point that out.

And another trait of slave morality is often a position of "I was a victim so I have the right to act as a jerk towards others." And Sayaka is mean to everyone in the end, even if they never did anything wrong.

The other aspect of Sayaka relates to Sartre and to Simone de Beauvoir. According to both of them, you are fundamentally a free person with free will and all evil and most of your own suffering starts with denying your free will and agency. Basically to say "I have to do x" if that is not really the case. This is also why many oppressed people do not rebel. Their oppression gives them convenient excuses of "I could not do X because I am oppressed" or "if I would have done x I would have received punishment". According to both of them, you could still do x while avoiding to get caught and punished or you could accept the punishment, do it anyway and move on. But if you can deny your free will then you have another one to blame for your actions instead of yourself.

According to de Beauvoir, women are often raised to accept tons of personal sacrifices and deny their own Feelings and free will, for the sake of the common good and this fuels this mauvaise foi too. This also fits sayaka

But according to Sartre and de Beauvoir, this makes you mentally sick in the long run.

And you see that in Sayaka as well. In many many cases, she obviously had a choice (like saying to the boy she loves that she loves him). It was her own choice not to use her chances but she does not uses them, suffers and Lies about her situation leaving her no choice.

And some of her assumptions are not very logical. For example her assumptions that the boy she loves would reject her if he would know the truth. To be honest, if my girlfriend would Tell me she is basically a superheroine, that instead would instantly turn me on and make me horny.🤣 and I think I am not the only one here.

Interestingly, Kyoko frequently points out that Sayaka had far more choice than she admits and her suffering is due to making bad and/or dishonest choices. Like said, Sayaka is often associated with classical liberalism and objectivism and they share with the existentialists that they cherish personal responsibility.

The Anti-Christ | Friedrich Nietzsche (1888)

"The very word 'Christianity' is a misunderstanding—at the bottom there was only ever one true Christian, and he died on the cross."

Even God should earn the right to be called God: He seems to be more and more incompetent at performing His job, and men have “reasonable grounds” for doubting that He is equal to His task.

This, for Nietzsche, is “slave morality” at its purest: we want a God/ Master, but a competent one! We want a Master, but a Master who will be dependent upon us, a Master whom we can approve of, and eventually replace with another one. In other words, we want mastery without the Master.

Just as, according to Nietzsche, Christianity perpetuates itself without God, mastery comes to perpetuate itself without masters. It perpetuates itself through knowledge that poses as objective, as absolutely foreign to the “irrational” and tautological dimension of mastery (“it is so, because I say it is so”). But this is still a form of mastery (“the new tyranny of knowledge”), and a very powerful one at that.

@foundlingmother, I’m making this a separate post instead of reblogging because this is getting well off the trail of the original post and I don’t want to keep dragging poor writernotwaiting into it. Here is the thread of discussion and here’s what you said in your reblog:

That’s an interesting distinction between compassion and respect. I think I would say, taking into account @illwynd‘s explanation of the ways Thor shows that he’s compassionate, or at least trying to be, that part of Thor’s character growth may be that he feels worthiness is tied to, to use the Nietzschean terminology, a slave morality (the contrast between being a good man and a great king, for instance).

That might be some of what’s going on; Thor is probably picking up some (post-)Christian moral ideas from all the Western-educated humans he’s hanging out with. And of course I don’t expect most of the MCU writers to have a very thorough understanding of when certain moral ideas developed and where they came from. So of course to most writers and audiences, “becoming morally better” is going to be more or less synonymous with “becoming more selfless and altruistic.” That said, a noble value system certainly doesn’t preclude caring about other people, and the kind of narcissistic selfishness we associate with people like Trump is still an ignoble mindset, a way of being bad or contemptible according to noble value systems like those of ancient Greece or feudal Europe.

As I’ve said before in discussions of various philosophical issues in the MCU, I think the “good man vs. great king” issue is actually more about deontological vs. consequentialist modes of moral reasoning (I discuss the contrast a bit in this post on Thanos and Ultron and a bit more in this follow-up; apparently I also touched on it in this weird exchange). That’s a distinction that mostly comes up within what Nietzsche calls “slave morality” -- the standard examples are Kantianism and utililtarianism, both of which are secular adaptations of Christian morality -- but it can actually cut across the slave vs. noble morality distinction. So there can be deontological or consequentialist ways of implementing a noble morality. The reason I think that’s what Thor was talking about is this line: “The brutality, the sacrifice, it changes you.” I think what he had in mind was Odin’s willingness to sacrifice many Asgardian lives (and Malekith’s willingness to sacrifice most of his people) for the sake of victory. The reason this is relevant to ruling is that when you’re making decisions about large numbers of people with different needs and interests, you’re always going to have to trade the well-being of some for the well-being of others. I think we all saw the stupidity of Steve’s “We don’t trade lives” claim in Infinity War, because he was trading lives: in order to buy time to save Vision, he knowingly risked a whole bunch of Wakandan lives. In trying to keep his deontologist conscience clean, to remain “a good man,” he just hid from himself that he was being a bad leader making an indefensible trade, sacrificing many lives for one instead of vice versa.

This got very long, so I’m putting most of it under a cut.