On the Slave mentality of St Anthony.

University Degree Historical and Philosophical studies

On the Slave mentality of St Anthony.

By Philip F. Markwick.

In 1887 Nietzsche publishes The Genealogy of Morality in which he formulates his notion of the ‘Slave Ethic(s)’ and the ‘Slave Mentality’. A phenomenon that is the central rift in the history of ‘Moral feeling’, between those that accept moral codes that are handed to them and those who do not. Nietzsche saw it that those who obey ‘moral codes’ for their own protection, such as the rules of Christianity or Judaism, were simply deluding themselves under a false and misleading notion of goodness. In contrast to those who had no moral codes other than those that they have created for themselves. These groups have a familiar symbolic relationship, that of the ‘Master’ and the ‘Slave’.

In Nietzsche’s view the slave mentality deepens itself over the millennia in ever more implacable resistance to the master, this resistance will never overcome the “will to power” which the true “free-spirit” possesses. The free spirit, as we might easily have guessed, being the acme of the ‘noble’ individual, the ‘superman’, and the status that we should strive and aspire to. In the Aristocratic cultures of ancient Greece (and Rome) Nietzsche finds his ‘free-spirits’- that equate ‘good(ness)’ with its original sense, away from such pitying and altruistic deeds of ‘weakness’ and ‘humbleness’. Goodness (for Nietzsche) becomes exalted proud states of self-affirmation, and distinction of ones own soul above all else, and creating law onto its self, distinguished and determining over states outside notions of rank. The mere notion of ‘good’ and evil’ become an illusion, and the truth, or reality as Nietzsche saw it, was of the ‘noble’ and the Ignoble who are unable to rule themselves, and allow this master to rule them with such effect that the master becomes the damning voice inside. The slave mentality says ‘no’ to itself, denies itself, for in this world where they are last in the queue, they in the after-life will be moved to the front [The meek shall inherit the earth]. As Nietzsche writes: “Whereas all noble morality grows triumphant yes-saying to oneself, from the outset slave morality says “no” to an “out-side,” to a “different,” to a “not self,”: and this “no” is its creative deed. This reversal of the value-establishing glance-this necessary direction toward the outside instead of back onto oneself –belongs to the very nature resentment: in order to come into being, slave mentality always needs an opposite external world” (GOM. 19) So, the ‘Anti-noble’ ethics become the slave ethics, which deny self-fulfilment for the greater illusion of spiritual fulfilment. In short, the slave needs no actual master, for they are beating themselves.

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In Flaubert’s book The Temptation of St Anthony Nietzsche might well have seen a great example of what he called the ‘slave mentality’. A saint is, after all, the archetype of the man that has given their life over to their god, and in some cases lost their life for the sake of that god as a martyr. They are the absolute example of goodness and good behaviour that is expected of us. And it would have been of no doubt that Nietzsche would have taken interest in the project that Flaubert had taken up to deconstruct and explore this character. An exploration away from the simple and un-complex understanding of the nature of goodness and altruism or self denial that a saint, and we are expected to hold. However, it is important to remember that Nietzsche [Flaubert, also] does not forsake morality, or endorse immorality as the badge of true freedom, or the ‘free-spirit’. What Nietzsche moves against is prescriptive morality. St Anthony is tempted by pantheism, the belief that there is no god other than the nature around them, when he sees ‘non-believers’ receive death with equal, if not more, grace as Christians (See: TSA p70 and thereabouts). Just as with the Buddha that appears before St Anthony and tells us of a different spiritual path to that of complete denial: “In accordance with custom, I took myself a wife; and passed the days in my kingly palace; - clad in pearls, under a rain of perfumes, fanned by the fly whisks of thirty three thousand women,- watching my peoples from the height of the terraces adorned with fringes of resonant bells.

But the sight of the miseries of the world turned me away from pleasure. I fled.”

(TSA. 123). This shows St Anthony that there are other paths to spiritual completeness rather than denial, just as Sidhharta (who was to become the enlightened Buddha) had lived in the palace with pleasure, and lived in physical denial, and then discovers that it is the ‘middle way’ that one discovers for themselves, and through their own meditation that is the best path for enlightened beings and men alike. All these visions, the Buddha, and other Christian, Gnostic or pagan figures parade before St Anthony. A milieu of ‘other’ spiritual and no-spiritual paths, temptations; scientific or sexual. Yet St Anthony turns from them all, to be as the good Christian is, in denial to their true nature and in service of the true nature of his god. Could he have been the ‘curious-individual’ the philosopher that tests his boundaries, moves beyond God’s boundaries and into (what only God and his advocates calls) the Devil’s.

Reading

Nietzsche, Friedrich. On the Genealogy of Morality. 1998 Hackett Publishing Ltd.

Flaubert, Gustav. The Temptation of St Anthony. 2001 Modern Library.

Gane, Laurence and Chan, Kitty. Introducing Nietzsche. 1998 Totem books.

Note: Although modern attitudes have changed to ‘other’ religions, and their approach to the ‘individual’ and the infinite. It is important to remember that Christianity would always seek to distinguish itself away from other ‘false religions’ and ‘false’ gods. However the modern will of our religious leaders ahs been to draw comparison and overcome difference until we all worship a non-distinct Deus (as example; the multi faith worship with a rabbi, mullah, vicar and priest.) It is important to remember that the history of belief was never so ‘accepting’ as it is now. And so religious figures of the other beliefs would simple be lumped in as ‘heretic’, ‘non-believer’ & etc.