Ressentiment (French pronunciation: ​[rɛsɑ̃timɑ̃])
is the French translation of the English word
resentment (from Latin intensive prefix re-,
and sentir "to feel").
In philosophy and psychology it is a concept
that was of particular interest to the existentialist
philosophers.
According to the existentialists, 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 this 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 (articulated in Beyond Good and Evil),
and the resultant birth of morality.
Nietzsche's chief development of ressentiment
came in his book On The Genealogy of Morals;
see esp §§ 10–11).
Ressentiment was translated as envy in Hong's
translation of Kierkegaard's Two Ages: A Literary
Review.The term was also used 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 (and more than assertions
they are not) 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.—Encyclopedia
of the Philosophical Sciences by Georg Wilhelm
Friedrich Hegel (1817), 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 (as in the case of
ostracism) 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’."
—Søren Kierkegaard, The Present Age (Alexander
Dru tr.), 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
(like imagining they are actually better)
become less compulsive.
The reaction of a strong-willed person (a
"wild beast"), 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
(à la Schopenhauer), 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 (Ressent 60).
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."
(Max Weber, The Sociology of Religion, (Boston:
Beacon Press, 1993), 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.
=== Girard ===
René Girard differs from Nietzsche by assessing
the ressentiment is a left-over of not pursuing
the mimetic rival or the scapegoat.
It is the price paid for turning the other
cheek.
Atonement could be achieved only by moving
beyond rivalry and ressentiment.
== See also ==
Psychological projection
Peter Sloterdijk
Helmut Schoeck
== References ==
