Ressentiment, in philosophy and psychology, is one of the forms of
resentment or hostility. It is the French word for "resentment".
Ressentiment is a sense of hostility directed at that which one identifies as
the cause of one's frustration, that is, an assignment of blame for one's
frustration. The sense of weakness or inferiority and perhaps jealousy in the
face of the "cause" generates a rejecting/justifying value system, or
morality, which attacks or denies the perceived source of one's frustration.
This value system is then used as a means of justifying one's own weaknesses
by identifying the source of envy as objectively inferior, serving as a
defense mechanism that prevents the resentful individual from addressing and
overcoming their insecurities and flaws. The ego creates an enemy in order to
insulate itself from culpability. History
Ressentiment was first introduced as a philosophical/psychological term by the
19th century philosopher Søren Kierkegaard. Friedrich Nietzsche later
independently expanded the concept; Walter Kaufmann ascribes Nietzsche's use
of the term in part to the absence of a proper equivalent term in the German
language, contending that said absence alone "would be sufficient excuse for
Nietzsche," if not for a translator. The term came to form a key part of his
ideas concerning the psychology of the 'master–slave' question, and the
resultant birth of morality. Nietzsche's first use and chief development of
ressentiment came in his book On The Genealogy of Morals; see esp §§
10–11).[1][2]. Ressentiment was translated as envy in Hong's translation
of Kierkegaard's Two Ages: A Literary Review.
The term was also put to good use by Max Scheler in his book Ressentiment,
published in 1912, and later suppressed by the Nazis.
Currently of great import as a term widely used in psychology and
existentialism, ressentiment is viewed as an influential force for the creation
of identities, moral frameworks and value systems. However there is debate
as to what validity these resultant value systems have, and to what extent
they are maladaptive and destructive. Perspectives
= Hegel = The old conception—due to a one-sided
survey of human life—of Nemesis, which made the divinity and its action in the
world only a levelling power, dashing to pieces everything high and great,—was
confronted by Plato and Aristotle with the doctrine that God is not envious.
The same answer may be given to the modern assertions that man cannot
ascertain God. These assertions are the more illogical, because made within a
religion which is expressly called the revealed; for according to them it would
rather be the religion in which nothing of God was revealed, in which he had not
revealed himself, and those belonging to it would be the heathen “who know not
God.” If the word of God is taken in earnest in religion at all, it is from
Him, the theme and centre of religion, that the method of divine knowledge may
and must begin: and if self-revelation is refused Him, then the only thing left
to constitute His nature would be to ascribe envy to Him. But clearly if the
word Mind is to have a meaning, it implies the revelation of Him.
—Philosophy of Mind by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Section 564
= Kierkegaard and Nietzsche = "It is a fundamental truth of human
nature that man is incapable of remaining permanently on the heights, of
continuing to admire anything. Human nature needs variety. Even in the most
enthusiastic ages people have always liked to joke enviously about their
superiors. That is perfectly in order and is entirely justifiable so long as
after having laughed at the great they can once more look upon them with
admiration; otherwise the game is not worth the candle. In that way
ressentiment finds an outlet even in an enthusiastic age. And as long as an age,
even though less enthusiastic, has the strength to give ressentiment its proper
character and has made up its mind what its expression signifies, ressentiment
has its own, though dangerous importance. …. the more reflection gets
the upper hand and thus makes people indolent, the more dangerous
ressentiment becomes, because it no longer has sufficient character to make
it conscious of its significance. Bereft of that character reflection is a
cowardly and vacillating, and according to circumstances interprets the same
thing in a variety of way. It tries to treat it as a joke, and if that fails,
to regard it as an insult, and when that fails, to dismiss it as nothing at all;
or else it will treat the thing as a witticism, and if that fails then say
that it was meant as a moral satire deserving attention, and if that does
not succeed, add that it was not worth bothering about. …. ressentiment becomes
the constituent principle of want of character, which from utter wretchedness
tries to sneak itself a position, all the time safeguarding itself by
conceding that it is less than nothing. The ressentiment which results from want
of character can never understand that eminent distinction really is
distinction. Neither does it understand itself by recognizing distinction
negatively but wants to drag it down, wants to belittle it so that it really
ceases to be distinguished. And ressentiment not only defends itself
against all existing forms of distinction but against that which is
still to come. …. The ressentiment which is establishing itself is the process of
leveling, and while a passionate age storms ahead setting up new things and
tearing down old, raising and demolishing as it goes, a reflective and
passionless age does exactly the contrary; it hinders and stifles all
action; it levels. Leveling is a silent, mathematical, and abstract occupation
which shuns upheavals. In a burst of momentary enthusiasm people might, in
their despondency, even long for a misfortune in order to feel the powers
of life, but the apathy which follows is no more helped by a disturbance than an
engineer leveling a piece of land. At its most violent a rebellion is like a
volcanic eruption and drowns every other sound. At its maximum the leveling
process is a deathly silence in which one can hear one’s own heart beat, a
silence which nothing can pierce, in which everything is engulfed, powerless
to resist. One man can be at the head a rebellion, but no one can be at the head
of the leveling process alone, for in that case he would be leader and would
thus escape being leveled. Each individual within his own little circle
can co-operate in the leveling, but it is an abstract power, and the leveling
process is the victory of abstraction over the individual. The leveling
process in modern times, corresponds, in reflection, to fate in antiquity. ... It
must be obvious to everyone that the profound significance of the leveling
process lies in the fact that it means the predominance of the category
‘generation’ over the category ‘individuality’." The Present Age, 1962,
pp. 49–52 (T)he problem with the other origin of
the “good,” of the good man, as the person of ressentiment has thought it
out for himself, demands some conclusion. It is not surprising that
the lambs should bear a grudge against the great birds of prey, but that is no
reason for blaming the great birds of prey for taking the little lambs. And
when the lambs say among themselves, "These birds of prey are evil, and he
who least resembles a bird of prey, who is rather its opposite, a lamb,—should
he not be good?" then there is nothing to carp with in this ideal's
establishment, though the birds of prey may regard it a little mockingly, and
maybe say to themselves, "We bear no grudge against them, these good lambs,
we even love them: nothing is tastier than a tender lamb."Friedrich Nietzsche,
On the Genealogy of Morality Ressentiment is a reassignment of the
pain that accompanies a sense of one's own inferiority/failure onto an external
scapegoat. The ego creates the illusion of an enemy, a cause that can be
"blamed" for one's own inferiority/failure. Thus, one was
thwarted not by a failure in oneself, but rather by an external "evil."
According to Kierkegaard, ressentiment occurs in a "reflective, passionless
age", in which the populace stifles creativity and passion in passionate
individuals. Kierkegaard argues that individuals who do not conform to the
masses are made scapegoats and objects of ridicule by the masses, in order to
maintain status quo and to instill into the masses their own sense of
superiority. Ressentiment comes from reactiveness:
the weaker someone is, the less their capability to suppress reaction.
According to Nietzsche, the more a person is active, strong-willed, and
dynamic, the less place and time is left for contemplating all that is done to
them, and their reactions become less compulsive. The reaction of a
strong-willed person, when it happens, is ideally a short action: it is not a
prolonged filling of their intellect. = Scheler =
Max Scheler attempted to reconcile Nietzsche's ideas of master–slave
morality and ressentiment with the Christian ideals of love and humility.
Nietzsche saw Christian morality as a kind of slave morality, while Greek and
Roman culture was characterized as a master morality. Scheler disagrees. He
begins with a comparison of Greek love and Christian love. Greek love is
described as a movement from lower value to higher value. The weaker love the
stronger, the less perfect love the more perfect. The perfect do not love the
imperfect because that would diminish their value or corrupt their existence.
Greek love is rooted in need and want. This is clearly indicated by the
Aristotelian concept of God as the "Unmoved Mover". The unmoved mover is
self-sufficient being completely immersed in its own existence. The
highest object of contemplation, and who moves others through the force of
attraction because efficient causality would degrade its nature.
In Christian love, there is a reversal in the movement of love. The strong bend
to the weak, the healthy help the sick, the noble help the vulgar. This movement
is a consequence of the Christian understanding of the nature of God as
fullness of being. God's love is an expression of His superabundance. The
motive for love is not charity nor the neediness of the lover, but it is rooted
in a deeply felt confidence that through loving I become more personalized and
most real to myself. The motive for the world is not need or lack, but a
creative urge to express the infinite fullness of being. Poverty and sickness
are not values to be celebrated in order to spite those who are rich and healthy,
but they simply provide the opportunity for a person to express his love. Rich
people are harder to love because they are less in need of your generosity.
Fear of death is a sign of a declining, sick, and broken life. St. Francis' love
and care for the lepers would have mortified the Greek mind, but for St.
Francis, the threats to well-being are inconsequential because at the core of
his being there is the awareness that his existence is firmly rooted in and
sustained by the ground of ultimate being. In genuine, Christian love, the
lower values that are relative to life are renounced not because they are bad,
but simply because they are obstacles to those absolute values which allow a
person to enter into a relationship with God. It is through loving like God that
we are deified. This is why Scheler sees the Christian saint as a manifestation
of strength and nobility and not manifesting ressentiment.
= Weber = Max Weber in The Sociology of Religion
relates ressentiment to Judaism, an ethical salvation religion of a "pariah
people." Weber defines ressentiment as "a concomitant of that particular
religious ethic of the disprivileged which, in the sense expounded by
Nietzsche and in direct inversion of the ancient belief, teaches that the unequal
distribution of mundane goods is caused by the sinfulness and the illegality of
the privileged, and that sooner or later God's wrath will overtake them.", 110.
= Sartre = Jean-Paul Sartre used the term bad faith
to describe a highly similar phenomenon of blaming one's own failure on external
factors and therefore denying responsibility for oneself.
= Deleuze = Gilles Deleuze significantly develops
the concept of ressentiment as discussed by Nietzsche in his work Nietzsche and
Philosophy. See also
Bad faith Existentialism
Friedrich Nietzsche Master–slave morality
Max Scheler Peter Sloterdijk
Helmut Schoeck Psychology
Resentment Søren Kierkegaard
References