Herd Morality

Herd morality arises from the instincts of animals that survive through collective solidarity rather than individual strength. In a herd, what is dangerous to the group is "evil" and what maintains its cohesion is "good." These are not universal values but the local values of a particular kind of creature — and Nietzsche argues that modern European morality, from democratic politics to Christian ethics, is precisely this instinct dressed up as philosophy.

What makes herd morality threatening, for Nietzsche, is not that it exists — every type of creature has its values — but that it claims to be the only morality. When the herd insists that its instincts are universal moral laws, it actively suppresses any departure from the norm. The exceptional person, the experimenter, the creative type, becomes not merely unusual but immoral. This is how mediocrity enforces itself.

Nietzsche traces herd morality directly into modern politics. The democratic movement is for him the political expression of the gregarious instinct: the drive to flatten hierarchies, equalise conditions, and protect the weak from the consequences of their weakness. He does not oppose compassion as such, but he sees the democratic elevation of compassion into the supreme value as a symptom of cultural exhaustion — the refusal to allow anything higher than the average to exist.

Herd morality is Nietzsche's term for what he elsewhere calls "slave morality" when viewed from a sociological rather than psychological angle; the two concepts overlap substantially but herd morality emphasises the conformist mechanism, while slave morality emphasises the reactive origin in ressentiment.