“The masters have been done away with; the morality of the common man has triumphed.”
This powerful declaration comes from the mind of Friedrich Nietzsche, a philosopher who delighted in challenging the very foundations of Western thought. The quote is not a celebration. Instead, it is a sharp critique, a lament for a world he believed had lost its way. It serves as a concise summary of one of his most influential ideas: the historical battle between two fundamentally different types of morality. To truly understand this statement, we must journey into Nietzsche’s exploration of master morality and slave morality.
The World of the Masters
Before the triumph of the common man, Nietzsche argues, a different value system reigned. He called this “master morality.” This was the morality of the noble, the powerful, and the aristocratic soul. These masters did not look to a higher power or an external source for their values. Instead, they created values themselves. They looked at their own qualities—strength, pride, creativity, and courage—and called them “good.”
Consequently, their definition of “bad” was simply an afterthought. It referred to the common, the weak, the timid, and the powerless. There was no deep-seated hatred involved. The masters simply saw these traits as beneath them, as lacking the qualities they admired in themselves. Their morality was a direct affirmation of life and their own will to power. They acted from a position of strength, shaping the world according to their own vision.
The Rise of Slave Morality
In stark contrast stands “slave morality.” Nietzsche proposed that this system was born from the oppressed, the weak, and the suffering. Unlike the masters, their morality did not begin with a confident declaration of “good.” Instead, it started with a resounding “no.” It was a reaction against the power and values of the masters who ruled over them. The slaves first identified their oppressors—the strong, wealthy, and proud—and labeled them as “evil.”
From this initial judgment, they defined their own “good.” If the master was evil for being powerful, then the weak must be good. Qualities like humility, pity, patience, and meekness became virtues. These were the very traits that helped the powerless endure their suffering. Therefore, slave morality is fundamentally a morality of utility and resentment, or what Nietzsche, using the French term, called ressentiment. It is a clever, psychological revenge of the weak against the strong.
A Revolt in Morality
Nietzsche saw history as the stage for a grand conflict between these two moral systems. The quote, “The masters have been done away with; the morality of the common man has triumphed,” marks the victory of one side. He argued this was a “slave revolt in morality.” This was not a physical uprising with swords and shields. Rather, it was a slow, insidious re-evaluation of all values over thousands of years.
He identified Judeo-Christian ethics as the primary vehicle for this triumph. Source This new system successfully convinced the world that the masters’ values were sinful and that the slaves’ values were righteous. Strength became prideful arrogance. Willpower became greed. In contrast, weakness was rebranded as