A college paper I dug up…
Apolitical Ressentiment
Nietzsche’s Zarathustra proclaimed, “that man be delivered from revenge, that is for me the bridge to the highest hope, and a rainbow after long storms†(Zarathustra part II, sec. 7, p. 99). For Nietzsche, revenge (a term with which he frequently interchanges the French word ressentiment), was man’s original sin; it was that force within the human psyche that led to a life-denying “slave moralityâ€â€”ultimately to a nihilism that threatened to overtake European society. In The Genealogy of Morals he wrote, “the sight of man now makes us weary—what is nihilism today if it is not that—we are weary of man†(Essay I, sec. 12, p. 44). Nietzsche saw the mindset of the slave, of ressentiment, as having triumphed over Western man’s ability to see himself as noble (34). Thus he saw humanity as degenerating to a state of self-loathing reminiscent of the vengeful protagonist in Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground, who by spiting the world has come to view himself with utter contempt.
The heart of revenge for Nietzsche is a state of hateful infatuation with what is outside oneself:
Nietzsche chronicles the development of this dynamic using noticeably Hegelian terms, establishing slave morality as primarily a reaction to “master morality.†While Nietzsche’s master-slave dichotomy developed at the dawn of human history, as did Hegel’s, for Nietzsche this primitive “struggle to the death†could be transcended only through a superhuman feat of self-creation. He saw no evidence that such a thing, which he thought of as the advent of the god-like overman, had taken place. To borrow Hegelian language, humanity was still trapped in its most primal historical phase—in which the master acts, and the slave reacts.
Nietzsche conceived of the master—or the “nobleman,†the “higher manâ€â€”as being the spontaneous actor, the prime mover in the human dialectic. It was the master who first wielded the power of language and thereby defined the moral order of man. The noblemen defined themselves, the privileged, the powerful, as truly “noble†in a moral sense—where “good = noble = powerful = beautiful = happy = beloved of God†(34). These noble men defined the lower ones, the slaves, as being “unhappy†and “wretched†and even “bad†(38). However, while the master invented “goodâ€â€”and by necessity “non-goodâ€â€”he did not come up with the concept of evil. In order for him to define another man, even an enemy, as evil, he would have had to deeply care about the moral status of that man. But Nietzsche’s higher man has no reason to worry about such things; he is perfectly content with himself and his privileged life, and needs to see the other, the slave or the enemy, only as other—as different from him. The master has no motive to pronounce further judgement, even when wronged; he “had no memory for insults and vile actions done him and was unable to forgive simply because he—forgot†(39).
For Nietzsche, unlike Hegel, the master-slave relationship became only more polarized and more pronounced with the advent of ressentiment; the slave assumed a partial, perhaps neurotic self-consciousness, “neither upright nor naïve nor honest and straightforward with himself.†On one level he lived entirely self-absorbed: “his spirit loves hiding places, secret paths and back doors, everything covert entices him as his world, his security, his refreshment†(38). However, the slave was aware also of the master, and he resented the master’s privileged status; in fact, he was entirely consumed by ressentiment. All he did was a reaction, a vengeful reaction, to all the master was.
The slave became clever, for that is the only way he knew how to assert himself. And the clever slave became embodied for Nietzsche in the Judeo-Christian priesthood, marking the introduction of “evil†as a concept into the human psyche. It is no longer enough for one man to view the other as a mere “otherâ€â€”not if the other has mastery over him. The slave, the priest, will judge the other as evil, will become spitefully infatuated with condemning every aspect of the other’s being as morally repugnant. Where a noble man can respect a noble enemy, the slave knows only revenge—only malice and hatred—toward those who threaten him.
“Good†then becomes only an afterthought, a reaction to the concept of evil that masks the slave’s insecurities.
Thus Nietzsche traces the lineage of 19th century morality not from any concept of inherent “goodness,†but from the very idea of evil—an idea born out of revenge. This forms the basis for an all-out assault on Christianity and its progeny in 19th century political philosophy. Nietzsche sees the Christian as deriving morality from “abysmal hatred†of his impotence and powerlessness,
Once the slave sees himself as unconditionally good, he will idolize his own character traits—virtues and vices alike. This act of idolatry is the essence of the vengeful slave morality that Nietzsche sees as so dangerous to European society.
For Nietzsche, the whole history of Judaism and Christianity was a story of slavish vengeance overcoming noble, aristocratic morals. Even the most peace-loving priest is filled with revenge. The entire concept of Hell is a reaction to the “evildoers†who exert their power over the priestly class. The priest bides his time, however, preaching love for one’s enemies and “vengeance is mine sayeth the Lord.†But this is only because the priest fully expects to gloat over his enemies in the afterlife—watching them burn in Hell as he enjoys the fruits of his “good†life in paradise. Nietzsche finds himself fully justified in drawing this conclusion, as he quotes Aquinas: “the blessed in the kingdom of heaven will see the punishments of the damned, in order that their bliss be more delightful to them†(49).
However, if “God is deadâ€â€”and for Nietzsche this is obvious—the slave has no foundation of belief on which to pin his resentful valuations; he must face himself for what he is, and he will degenerate into self-loathing and nihilism. While Nietzsche borrows heavily from Hegel in his initial construction of the master-slave dichotomy, he flatly rejects Hegelian optimism concerning progress. Where Hegel sees humanity (or in fact all of reality as embodied in Geist) as progressing toward a sublime self-realization, Nietzsche sees it declining. For him, slave morality had triumphed over noble humanity through the rise of Christianity, and it was being perpetuated through socialist and utilitarian idealism. However, none of these delusional remnants of religion could stay in tact without a God to make them obligatory pursuits. Since Christianity has triumphed over the higher man, the slave masses no longer have any stable venue through which to channel their spite. They were aimless and purposeless—“straying as through an infinite nothing.â€
One reading of Nietzsche might conclude that he also rejects Hegelian values in describing the nature of lordship and bondage. Where for Hegel the master-slave stage was just one stage, for Nietzsche, it appears to be a fundamental and necessary bedrock of the human community. After all, we humans are not all equal and never will be; we have various degrees of talent and weakness, and not all of us are capable of assuming a self-reliant “master†consciousness. But we need that consciousness to survive, so those who cannot reach it must become slaves to those who can. While Nietzsche finds the master’s existence praiseworthy—a necessary step on the way to the overman (in which there is a complete absence of ressentiment)—Hegel describes it as essentially savage, full of blind, impulsive drives for domination and power.
It would seem, however, that the two philosophers view the psychology of the master somewhat differently, a fact that may well obscure the apparent disagreements between them. Hegel sees the master as actually needing the slave for existential validation, as being essentially insecure; in Nietzschean terms, however, this trait would be the mark of the slave, not the master. While Nietzsche’s oft-cited will-to-power concept may suggest a certain impulsive drive for domination, he views the master-slave relationship as being quite natural; rather than being forced by the master into subservience, the slave subjugates himself through revenge. Nietzsche’s master is certainly not the needy, insecure figure found in Hegel—but rather a “blond beastâ€, a lion—imperfect but self-assured and passive about the attitude of the slave. It would seem that while Nietzsche borrows Hegel’s terminology, he alters the definitions—making it difficult to establish a clear, substantive disagreement between the two philosophers on this point.
It would be similarly difficult to interpret Nietzsche as being unconditionally opposed to left-wing political ideologies. Correlations have been drawn between Nietzsche’s philosophy and Social Darwinism or Hobbsian realism. However, such implications are not entirely fair. In fact, to view Nietzsche as a political theorist in the first place (where “political†implies “socialâ€) is to take a wrong turn in my opinion. For one thing, he never actually voiced any political partiality. At one time or another his work censured just about every ideology of the 19th century. And, indeed, he could be read as actually favoring certain left-wing ideas.
For instance, it would be wrong to see Nietzsche as a total enemy of socialism (although, to be sure, he was no friend to the socialist movements of his day). He saw that no matter what political system one lives under, the master-slave dynamic will exist—whether it is built into the social fabric or comes about as a natural product of human relationships. However, he saw slave morality as destructive, and I see no reason to think that he would have wished the life of the slave on anyone. It stands to reason, then, that social conditions perpetuating and promoting a slave mindset—conditions such as worker exploitation under the free market system—would be undesirable for Nietzsche. The suggestion is easily made that Nietzsche would support, on principle, political and social reform geared toward decreasing these “slave†conditions. What Nietzsche despised was the mindset of pity, of the hermit who says, “take part of their load and help them to bear it—that will be best for them†(Zarathustra 11). However, many socialists in the last century have used Nietzsche to argue for a collectivism geared toward promoting the individual’s self-affirmation.
But even further, Ressentiment and mastery need not be viewed as strictly—or even primarily—political in the first place. Nietzsche’s concept of “master morality†should not automatically imply a need to dominate another person. Self-mastery, the imposition of will upon one’s impulses and actions, is perhaps the most fundamentally important form of domination in Nietzsche’s system (and here we can see a Hegelian influence re-surface); if a person does not master herself, she will surely open herself to revenge from within and domination by others. Master morality must begin, then, with self-mastery, and perhaps it does not need to go any further.
Ressentiment and its opposite can be viewed apolitically on an even more fundamental level. If Christianity really has triumphed over the higher man, then there is no one for the vengeful slave to resent; there are no noble humans for the priest to call “evil.†So what is it that keeps man degenerating down the path of nihilism and weariness with himself? Nietzsche often portrays the object of the slave’s revenge as human, but he also talks of revenge being leveled at “that which is outside†the slave, at the world in general. If we take Zarathustra seriously when he summons the “most abysmal thought,†and then slips into “nausea, nausea, nausea†(216), we might find a clue to what the vengeful man truly fears.
Zarathustra earlier recounts a vision of a shepherd with a snake hanging from his mouth; it had attacked the man while he slept, clamping onto the inside of his throat, refusing to let go. In this vision, Zarathustra tells the shepherd, “bite! Bite it’s head off!†And the shepherd does so—“far away he spewed the head of the snake—and he jumped up. No longer shepherd, no longer human—one changed, radiant, laughing! Never yet on earth has a human being laughed as he laughed†(159-160).
The snake is a metaphor for that which is most nauseating about human nature—that it means nothing, that it eternally recurs, that it has become unchained from its sun. The slave reacts violently to this reality—retreating to religion and self-delusion, “neither upright nor straightforward with himself.†But if the slave can no longer hide, if “all that is heaviest and blackest†crawls down his throat, he becomes nauseous, neurotic, without hope—in short, Dostoevsky’s sick underground man; he writhes with the snake in his mouth, unwilling to consume it, instead consumed by it, his every action a reaction. Ressentiment is in essence our all-too-human reflex to the nauseating truth about human existence. For Nietzsche, not even the noble “higher man,†the self-assured actor, can face this abysmal reality. Only the self-created overman—appearing as a mere shepherd in Zarathustra’s vision (hardly a picture of aristocracy)—will face this sickness of the soul, and he will do so through mastery of himself, his actions, his future; and he will laugh.
Cited
Nietzsche, Friedrich. Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Walter Kaufmann trans. New York: Penguin Books, 1978
Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Genealogy of Morals, Walter Kaufmann trans. New York: Vintage, 1989.