Thus Spake Zarathustra - Penn State University

Friedrich Nietzschemerely a means to an end, they are expedients for acquiringpower.In morality, Nietzsche starts out by adopting the positionof the relativist. He says there are no absolute values“good” and “evil”; these are mere means adopted by Christian moral values. He declared them to be, like allApplying this principle to mankind, Nietzsche attackedall in order to acquire power to maintain their place in other morals, merely an expedient for protecting a certaintype of man. In the case of Christianity this typethe world, or to become supreme. It is the lion’s good todevour an antelope. It is the dead-leaf butterfly’s good was, according to Nietzsche, a low one.to tell a foe a falsehood. For when the dead-leaf butterfly Conflicting moral codes have been no more than theis in danger, it clings to the side of a twig, and what it conflicting weapons of different classes of men; for insays to its foe is practically this: “I am not a butterfly, I mankind there is a continual war between the powerful,am a dead leaf, and can be of no use to thee.” This is a lie the noble, the strong, and the well-constituted on thewhich is good to the butterfly, for it preserves it. In one side, and the impotent, the mean, the weak, and thenature every species of organic being instinctively adopts ill-constituted on the other. The war is a war of moraland practises those acts which most conduce to the prevalenceor supremacy of its kind. Once the most favourable calls noble- or master-morality; that of the weak andprinciples. The morality of the powerful class, Nietzscheorder of conduct is found, proved efficient and established,it becomes the ruling morality of the species that rality it is the eagle which, looking down upon a brows-subordinate class he calls slave-morality. In the first mo-adopts it and bears them along to victory. All species ing lamb, contends that “eating lamb is good.” In themust not and cannot value alike, for what is the lion’s second, the slave-morality, it is the lamb which, lookinggood is the antelope’s evil and vice versa.up from the sward, bleats dissentingly: “Eating lamb isConcepts of good and evil are therefore, in their origin, evil.”295