self-Assertion/Cathedral Essay

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Self-Assertion/ Cathedral A German philosopher by the name of Friedrich Nietzsche developed two types of moralities. The moralities separate and categorize the morals to decide what type of person you are the two moralities: master morality and slave morality. Nietzsche defines master morality as strong-willed. Slave morality originates in the weak which is inverse of master morality. The essence of the master morality is nobility and the other qualities that are often valued: open-mindedness, courage, truthfulness, trust and an accurate sense of self-worth. The moral of slave morality is to inflict the strength and will on others like master morality does, but to conjoin. In unity slave morality will find strength. In the short story “Cathedral “ By Raymond Carver, the narrator, who is the husband in the story, acquires qualities that resemble both types of morality, but his wife and Robert, who is a blind gentlemen, resemble those who possess the slave moralities. The narrator who stays nameless, which is directly a characteristic of slave morality. Staying nameless refers to the idea of slave morality as reverse with in. The husband is constantly judging the blind man on how he eats “I watched with admiration as he used his knife and fork on the meat” (211) as if being blind would affect the way one would eat. As Nietzsche would say “he does not require to be approved of; he passes the judgment” (87). The husband judging the way Robert eats would fall under some master morality. The husband does not fully understand the thought of someone being blind; the questions he was asking about the train ride expecting an answer as if he could see. He pities Roberts’s condition when he bring up that he has to hire someone to help him with his daily tasks. That is how Robert met the narrator’s wife when she lived in Seattle before they knew one another. The wife’s name is never mentioned, which is a way the husband has control over “self-glorification” (87) Nietzsche stated, which is a way to feel power over someone else. Master morality states “ the noble man honors in himself the powerful one, him also who has the power over himself, who knows to speak and how to keep silence, who takes pleasure in subjecting in himself to severity and hardness and has reverence for all that is severe and hard,” (87) Nietzsche says. The silence of the names is keeping the power to him over his wife, but not as much for Robert since we know his name, but throughout the story he is referred to as the blind man. Only which is master morality. Master morality will help out the less fortunate, but only when it will give “an impulse of generated super-abundance of power” (87). Robert is a very happy guy and outgoing which puts him in the slave morality. Nietzsche says “qualities which serve to alleviate the existence of sufferers are brought into prominence and flooded with light, it is here that sympathy, the kind, helping hand, the warm heart, patience, diligence, humility and friendliness attain honor” (88). Robert has a lot of those features. He has a warm heart, the husband talks about his jealously he has toward him and his wife’s friendship after all the years. “Slave-morality is essentially the morality of utility” (88) Nietzsche says, since master morality is always trying be the more dominant one, and not everyone can be in power. The blind man does have a little master morality, but it is brought on by his condition and you almost don’t realize it by the friendliness that he has, but he does have to be in charge of whomever he hires to help him with his daily tasks. His condition is the cause
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