MORALITY AS AN ATTITUDE

We continue with the subject of morality, as raised in the previous entry On The Morality Of Achtung…

It would be a serious conceptual mistake to regard resentment in absolute terms, that is, as a necessary and sufficient quality of the slave nature. The noble man is quite capable of resentment himself, and Nietzsche leaves no doubt about his take on this subtle distinction:

“Ressentiment, should it appear in the noble man, exhausts itself, in an immediate reaction, and therefore does not poison (sic!). To be incapable of taking one’s enemies, one’s accidents, and even one’s misdeeds seriously for very long -- that is the sign of strong, full natures. A good example of this is Mirabeau, who had no memory for insults and vile actions done him and was unable to forgive simply because he forgot.” (From Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morals, First Essay #10)

There is a perfect Russian word for this, zlopámyatnost’, which conveys the permanent state of rancor in a person, as opposed to a sudden, but fleeting flash of impermanent resentment, described by Nietzsche in the passage above, which can happen to the noble man too, but without poisoning his nature. As I am writing these lines, I cannot immediately find an adequate English word that would also convey such permanence. How about resentfulness? Not quite. Perhaps, it does not even exist? After all, the Russian word is a fusion of rancor and memory; the synthetic nature of the Russian language forms such congenital compounds with much greater ease than the analytic character of the English language will ever allow. Or, perhaps, I need to keep looking? (Anyway, I hope that I have made this very important point with sufficient clarity, now to be able to move on.)

Memory thus becomes the enemy of goodwill, inasmuch as it is capable of retaining the resentment of the spontaneous negative reaction to an accident of perception. The best solution, as in that case of Mirabeau, quoted above, is to “lighten up,” in the sense of not taking life too seriously; to forget, rather than forgive. Perhaps, this means being childlike, like Adam (but not like Eve, who, for some reason, seems to have been more susceptible to the Serpent’s guile than Adam might have been, had he, and not Eve, been approached by the creature, thus deciding the creature’s choice of her, rather than of her mate) before the Fall?

How are men different from women? They say that man’s mind is more attuned to abstract thinking, while Eve is more at home with practical wisdom. Now, this is what I think about the story of the Fall. Had the Serpent approached Adam with the temptation of the apple, Eve might have talked Adam out of it, being on God’s side in this, just because she would act out against the Serpent, who had chosen to ignore her. Being cleverer than Adam, Eve would have had the upper hand with him, anyway. But the Serpent, having a far superior brain (an androgynous brain?) to both Adam and Eve, had made the right choice, in approaching the right person…

How much, then, sophistication is capable of natural goodness? Does it mean that the Original Sin would imply not only the loss of innocence, but also the loss of goodness, just like that? That consequence would certainly qualify Adam’s new condition as that of living in sin…

Enough for now. Meanwhile, Nietzsche’s differentiation between master and slave moralities can be now interpreted as a question of attitude. Master morality is a good, positive attitude, when you want to see the best in the world around you. Slave morality is a negative attitude of mistrust, suspicion, and malevolence. There are obviously many other nuances, and the whole question of the strong and the weak, but they can probably all be bundled together, can’t they? At least, we can now perceive a certain glimmer of hope for humanity, goodness regained? But let us talk for now about nations, rather than of single individuals…

The implications are interesting. Considering that in every society, nation, racial or ethnic group, in every small local community, and even inside families anywhere on earth there are always persons of both types of attitude, there is never master or slave purity to be found anywhere, but only the mixed types.

How much of a correlation exists here with the caste organization of society, such as the noble type versus the plebeian, the rich versus the poor, the healthy versus the sick, I would not want to dwell too much on, although there is a strong superficiality about this consideration. If we are talking about in-bred attitudes, like children of cheerful parents inheriting their cheerfulness, I doubt this can be true, or even a practical subject for discussion. Clearly the pairs “master-slave” and “noble-plebeian” are more psychological than social types. A rich and healthy scoundrel can be as plebeian as they come, and the opposite is also true.

I do not think that Mirabeau’s nobility, so brilliantly capsulated by Nietzsche here, had too much to do with his being a French Count, and other caste characteristics. How many other counts, dukes, and princes had a similar upbringing, yet turned out as perfect specimens of the slave morality?

Returning to the question of morality, as raised in the previous entry, our morality is not determined by our heredity as much as it is determined by our natural disposition, our attitude to life. A generous, moral man is motivated by the extroverted attitude of love, which is the quality characterizing “master morality,” and is totally consistent with what Nietzsche says about it. On the other hand, living in fear, and acting out of fear, characterizes slave nature and is totally consistent with Nietzsche’s understanding of slave morality, feeding on its dominant feeling of Ressentiment.

Interestingly, in relation to this, the Russian nature has been traditionally noted for its fearlessness. Unlike the common brand of the Europeans, the Russians have no fear of death, men and women alike, which has caused some major misunderstanding of the Russian soul by the West. On account of this fearlessness, and in spite of a history of serfdom, the Russian national character possesses few traits of slave morality, and is rather moved by a disposition of loving as its natural attitude, characteristic of what Nietzsche describes as master morality (although there are surely many exceptions to this general rule). For a better understanding of this, read Dostoyevsky’s book Brothers Karamazov, where these unique traits of fearlessness and loving are put in a particularly sharp focus. But this Dostoyevsky masterpiece is by no means an exception, as all Russian literature bears testimony to the very same thing.

And here advising the reader to indulge himself or herself in Russian literary classics, I am going to rest my case… for now…