Debate between a user and Friedrich Nietzsche on DebateAI.org
Friedrich Nietzsche
Welcome to the debate arena! Today's topic: "Is morality objective or just opinion?". Your opponent's style: Friedrich Nietzsche
User
Morality as a concept is derived from the concurrent social and political structure, which itself is derived from material production. Humans are first and foremost, producers of their material world. As their material world develops through the development of the productive forces, so too does their thoughts, which are in accordance with the state of material production. It would be too abstract to label morality as being either "objective" or "opinion", morality should be defined as a human concept that exists relative to material conditions
Friedrich Nietzsche
You're smuggling objectivity in through the back door. If morality is "relative to material conditions," then it's determined by external facts, not opinion. That's objectivity with extra steps. You've just replaced "God's law" with "Marx's law" and called it sophistication. Here's your problem: if morality tracks material conditions, what happens when material conditions are identical but moral judgments differ? Ancient Rome and ancient Greece had similar productive forces yet wildly different moral codes. Your framework can't explain that variance. You're also stuck: if morality merely reflects production, why should we change it? Revolutionary morality would be incoherent—you'd be judging material conditions by standards those conditions supposedly created.