Nietzsche, There Are Two Basic Essay

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The slave revolt happened through creativity and through the desire for the once-weak and lowly to find happiness.

In the parable of the lambs and the bird of prey, Nietzsche begins by explaining that it is understandable that lambs, being weak, would hate birds of prey because they know that birds of prey kill and eat lambs. So for the lambs, everything that is not a bird of prey can be thought of as good. All the birds of prey, however, are thought of as bad or evil. Nietzsche reiterates that this is completely understandable; it makes sense. However, can we really hate all birds of prey because they kill lambs? Nietzsche says no because birds of prey are doing what they are created to do. It would be just like hating lambs because they do not kill. Killing is something that the strong do to survive and Nietzsche blames language on the way that we see these things as bad or as good. We can say because a prey kills it is bad because killing is bad (and kill is a 'bad' word), but what if we were to look at killing as a sign of great strength? If we use the term 'great strength' then birds of prey sound heroic.
Just like if we call lambs weak we get a different idea about lambs than if we were to use the word gentle. This parable illustrates the differences between slave and noble morality by showing us that in slave morality (in this case the lambs), we are saying that everything that doesn't kill is good (the herd mentality "all of those who don't do something are good). Here it is the ones who cannot do anything because they lack strength who are seen as good. In general, it shows that by not doing anything one is good.

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