stunt_muppet

Er. Well, in that case, bear in mind that my familiarity with the ins and outs of Nietzschean philosophy is not what it should be - I have a general idea of what he wrote and what he believed, but the you couldn't quiz me on the specifics.

Anyhoo, what made me think of it is Voldemort's line in the first movie, which wasn't even in the first book - "There is no good and evil. There is only power, and those too weak to seek it". And I thought: Whoa. That's the master morality in a nutshell. The possession of power justifies the use of power; what those in power do sets the standard for what is "good" and "bad".

Now, we come to Harry Potter. Actually, first we come to Lily Potter. Perhaps her sacrifice for her baby son can be paralled to (bear with me and don't groan too loud) the Crucifixion - the sacrifice that is held up as the ultimate good in the Christian "slave" morality. Now, the slave morality, which rose with Christianity, was a complete reversal of the master morality, since it held up meekness, self-sacrifice, and selflessness as "good".

Then, we get to Harry (and into the other books a little bit). Harry can only retrieve the Philosopher's Stone because he doesn't want to use it. Denial of power = slave morality again. Also, even after Lily's death, her sacrifice still protects him from Voldemort's power - that's the slave morality again conquering the master morality. But after the first book, Lily's protection can't help Harry anymore. As Nietszche himself would put it, "God is dead". The slave morality, and the God that justifies it (embodied by Lily's sacrifice), have become tired, used-up, ineffectual, empty. Harry's got to look somewhere else for guidance.

Now, the last point rests on a theorized development. If Harry and Voldemort destroy each other (which I am convinced they will and will be actually disapointed if they don't), that will spell out Nietzsche's eventual prediction for the master and slave morality. Rather than returning to the master morality, Nietzsche argued (I think) that we would need to develop a new morality, one that transcended simple concepts of good and evil. If Harry and Voldemort are destroyed (and thus both master and slave morality are gone), then the people who remain will have to build something new in their absence; not a morality precisely, but you get the point.

Again, this is based on my somewhat flawed understanding of Nietzsche and is probably dead wrong. But it sounded really good when I thought of it.

Darn, now I need to actually do research...