The Progression and regression of slave morality in Nietzsche's Genealogy: The moralization of bad conscience and indebtedness

Abstract

With the advent of slave morality and the belief system it entails, human beings alone begin to advance to a level beyond that of simple, brute, animal nature. While Christianity and its belief system generate a progression, however, allowing human beings to become interesting for the first time, Nietzsche also maintains in the Genealogy that slave morality is a regression, somehow lowering or bringing them down from a possible higher level. In this paper I will argue that this is not a mere inconsistency in Nietzsche's writing, but is instead an important clue to a correct interpretation of the Genealogy.