'We are up against a people who think...They invented and successfully promoted socialism, communism, human rights and democracy so that persecuting them would appear to be wrong, so they may enjoy equal rights with others.'
- Dr Mahathir on Jews. Straits Times, Oct 17th

Well, it seems that there are at least some people who hold seriously the view of slave morality. But how do assertian that this is indeed a historical fact? How do you prove that socialism, communism, human rights and democracy really originated with the Jews? Is etymology really enough?

Some Arguments against Etymology
The fact that etymological arguments are today not employed in philosophy is a strong indication of the fact that such lines of arguments are weak. Nietzsche conclusion that Schuld [guilt] is derived from Schulden [debt] appears to rely on similarity of sound and is at best only circumstantial evidence that their original meanings were such. His etymological evidence does not seem to have been corroborated by anyone else. He further undermines his own evidence by saying in GM I 13 that the ‘seduction of language’ can make a force appear otherwise . Surely language shifts and adopts new meanings over time. Some terms acquire meanings totally opposite from the original. For example, we all know 'gay' has taken on a meaning totally different from its original, yet they do now have any significant logical or historical connection. A person making such etymological studies must therefore be very careful not to make connections where there are not any, and I am not convinced that Nietzsche did not make such an error.

While Nietzsche, as a philologist, provides examples several examples in many languages, he crucially left out certain Asian conceptions of morality. For example, Zen Buddhist and Confucian morality appear to be descended from nature and society respectively, and not from nobility. I believe that Nietzsche will find it hard to show any history of a slave morality inverting the values of a noble morality, and even if he did, such morality (such as Buddhist ascetic value) surely did not come from the Jewish tradition.

The biggest objection however, is that even if morality did arise from certain historical scenarios, it does not follow that these moralities are false. The weakness of the argument from etymology is of course the move from ‘morality is malleable’ to ‘there is no absolute morality’. A Christian, for example, can still hold that Christian morality is true because it is based on a revelation from God (The etymology of the word 'Good' according to Webster is from the old english 'gOd'). At best then, Nietzshe's analysis must be viewed as simply an alternative thesis on the origin of morality. Because I have not come across other etymological studies comparing these competing accounts, I am unable to say if Nietzsche's etymological analysis is permissable for

Together, I feel that the argument from etymology is considerably weak. However, Nietzsche does not claim that his analysis is objective fact. Perhaps he just meant the argument to support his view that all morality is only intepretations (his perspecitvism). If this were the case, then we must read his arguments from etymology in that light and not any other.