Ressentiment (a fugitive from Heavy Moderation)

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I wanted to post in the heavily moderated discussion, but apparently I’m not cool enough :confused: . So I’ll post here instead. Bits of this are from a long paper I wrote last semester (Professor Nehamas gave it an A, so it must be good :wink: ) The full text of the paper is here, though I’ve since recognized that Section V is pretty off-base. Anyway, my post was/is a bit of critique of the above-referenced discussion:

From my study of the Genealogy, it seems to me that ressentiment is not interchangeable with “revenge.” There’s a reason Nietzsche chose not to translate the French into German - there’s no simple way to transfer the concept he had in mind into his own language, although surely there’s a way to say “revenge” in German (though I don’t know it). He in fact uses “revenge” itself in several places, does he not? For example:

On the other hand, the nobles rarely if ever experience this feeling of ressentiment. They are able to exercise the “true reaction” of deeds, taking out what frustrations they experience on those less fortunate:

Revenge is itself necessarily a reactionary force. The noble reacts externally, blows off steam, as it were, and feels good for having done so. The essence of the slave is that he cannot have this revenge in reality, so in his impotence he imagines taking out his frustration on the masters. Ressentiment is more like “hatred” than “revenge” - it is by its very nature brooding, inactive, poisonous.

While the creditor/debtor distinction is important to Nietzsche, this doesn’t mean that might=right. He admires strength, to be sure. But, his goal in the Genealogy was to do away with value judgments like “right” and “wrong.” Strength has its good aspects, but the noble is “stupid” and animalistic. Cleverness is clearly something to be desired, but it is only developed on Nietzsche’s view with the advent of ressentiment and the inward-turning of the value-positing eye. This emotion does not merely poison - it creates! It’s clever! It separates humans from animals even as it leads them to nihilism.

And as for Plato and Socrates: Nietzsche didn’t like them either. I know there are quotations to support this but I don’t have any handy. The Republic and its concept of subjecting man’s individuality to the whims of the state cannot have appealed to him. But, the master-slave duality was based on the Rome-Judea conflict that occured hundreds of years after Plato. His ideas did eventually worked their way into Christian doctrine via Augustine, but they weren’t immediately relevant to the specific conflict Nietzsche had in mind. It is worth noting though that Plato’s views in the Republic stand in direct contrast to Thrasymachus (sp?), who looks like a noble to me: “the good is the advantage of the stronger”, etc. So his thought fits Nietzsche’s pattern in this sense, even if he preceded the Judeo-Christian movement and the eventual triumph of the slave.

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Nobody is cool enough to post there, and nobody is patient enough to read what is posted there. That forum should be closed.
:laughing: :laughing: :laughing:

How could a “slave” triumph, how could his “revengeful” ideas triumph at least eventually? If Christians are slave-minded, so they are always to be controlled by someone, by “stronger” men, by “noble men who act always freelly”, but they could never “triumph”. This means that they couldn’t be so “slave-minded” as they were supposed to be by Nietzsche.

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The Genalogy outlines the slave’s triumph. He’s won because the world now accepts and abides by his “good”-“evil” value judgment, rather than what Nietzsche saw as the nobles’ “good”-“bad” values. The nobles saw themselves as good and whoever wasn’t happy as they were as bad. The oppressed slaves first called their oppressors (the nobles) “evil” and associated their traits of strength and happiness with “evil.” Only then according to the GM did the slave ideal of “good” come into being, as a reaction against the “evil” that made the strong happy. Christianity brought this value judgment to the whole western world, whereas it had previously been confined to judaism. That’s why Nietzsche refers to Jesus of Nazareth as the “great bait,” which I find strangely and morbidly amusing. Although the slave might now be in control, his nihilistic (in Nietzsche’s view) system of values still marks him as a slave. He’s won, but that does not make him noble.

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Notes on the full paper:

I like your writing style. It sounds very professional and pleasant.

I agree with your characterizations of Nietzsche’s positions. Your interpretation is very much like my own, which is an impressive thing considering that you appear (given the reference list) to have read only one of his works. I have read most of his work, though it has moved toward the background in my thoughts over the last few years. Anyway, I have great faith in the coherence and accuracy of my own interpretation (don’t we all), and so must respect the judgment of anyone who agrees with me on these matters.

“The initially powerful noble class is paradigmatically embodied by Rome in its moral struggle against Judea”
I can easily believe that this Rome-Judea contrast can act as an example of the two castes, but there seems to be a hint here that Nietzsche was talking about them, or had these particular civilizations in mind. I have always thought of his theory and his two groups as being much more abstract, as abstract, hypothetical groupings he formulated to show the mechanism by which slave morality developed. This suggestion (and I can’t quite say you make the claim) that Nietzsche’s argument refers to these particular people and their relationship goes against my reading, though I may have missed something.

“[the nobles] first seized the right to create values and to coin names for values”
I don’t suggest that you have misrepresented Nietzsche’s position here, but I feel like there’s another aspect of this creation in his work that is missing here. My sense is that the “good” of the nobles is good without anyone going through any process of declaring it so. It simply feels good. [EDIT: I see you noted this later: “The nobles had dubbed themselves “good” merely on the grounds that they were happy.”]

“allows them to “emerge from a disgusting procession of murder, arson, rape, and torture, exhilarated and undisturbed of soul, … convinced they have provided the poets with a lot more material for song and praise.”
This reminds me of the Nietzschean alternative to “greatest good for the greatest number” theories of morality. He suggested a different formula, one in which the goal is for some small number—perhaps even just one—of human beings to live a life higher than that which has been lived before. Even if one continues to subscribe to more egalitarian formulas, it is of interest that there can be an opposing formula, that there are other senses of “good”. I think Nietzsche proves the opposite of many basic moral convictions not to correct their errors per say, and replace them with their opposite values, but to frame the whole system of moral judgment in a postmodern way, where there are multiple viable approaches.

“:it is all but unavoidable that the lower class should experience pain and anger as a result of its constant oppression at the hands of the noble upper class. The slaves are Judea to the nobles’ Rome: conquered, repressed, impotent, and weak.”
Here you’ve returned to the Rome/Judea example, which again makes me uncomfortable, but this raises a question in my mind about whether people are sorted by their attributes as individuals, or by being members of a nation. The way you express it here suggests the latter, that the Judeans are slaves because the Romans conquered them. One could further expect that the Romans were able to conquer them based on some relative weakness, but a great man among the Judeans would still, by this system, be a conquered Judean and a slave. This seems to me to take “class” and “slave” much too literally. My sense is that there were 40 of us on the savannah, and three or four alpha males distinguished themselves. You and I, not being among them and not being strong enough to challenge them directly, began to plot their downfall. In this small-scale version, master/slave relations arise naturally out of individual strength. The “slaves” are not really conquered, captured people, but those who didn’t manage to build an army and a castle. In your more wide-scale version, as suggested above, the stongest, most noble Judean would be a slave, and the lowliest Roman would be a master. I think the further observations about slave mentality support my view.

Of course this debate over what Nietzsche meant ties in nicely to much larger questions about the degree to which individual humans are who they are because of the groups to which they belong. I see you address this below.

“In the noble’s mind, “good” and “bad” referred merely to a sort of social stratification; to the slave it is something more, something deeper. The man of ressentiment ‘has conceived ‘the evil enemy,’ ‘the Evil One,’ and this fact is his basic concept, from which he then evolves, as an afterthought and pendant, a ‘good one’ – himself!’”
Again, if Nietzsche were referring to actual historical moments, he might (as a good philologist) offer us a quote or two from this time when evil was invented. I think these descriptions are much more like myth, shrouded in the mists of prehistory.

“’The priests,’ argues Nietzsche, ‘are the most evil enemies’…”
I did not recall this explanation of the role of the priests. Interesting.

“However, unless the actor could have chosen otherwise…’That lambs dislike great birds of prey’… Nietzschean metaphysics eliminate the individual, autonomous subject,… This fiction of the soul – the independent actor … The nobles had dubbed themselves ‘good’ merely on the grounds that they were happy. Such value judgments do not require an independently acting will. The slaves, on the other hand, were forced by their ressentiment to create a target for the hate they could no longer internalize, and without the concept of a subject worthy of blame for their miserable situation, such hate was simply impossible.”

Well, you’ve made quite a case hear against my claims that this geneology should be interpreted as applying to individuals. I will give it considerable attention in my futher efforts to understand this body of work. While I’m doing so, however, let me also put up a defense. Consider this passage from Gay Science:
“During the longest and most remote periods of the human past, the sting of conscience was not at all what it is now. Today one feels responsible only for one’s will and actions, and one finds one’s pride in oneself. All our teachers of law start from this sense of self and pleasure in the individual, as if this had always been the fount of law. But during the longest period of the human past nothing was more terrible than to feel that one stood by oneself. To be alone, to experience things by oneself, neither to obey nor to rule, to be an individual—that was not a pleasure but a punishment; one was sentenced ‘to individuality.’ Freedom of thought was considered discomfort itself. While we experience law and submission as compulsion and loss, it was egoism that was formerly experienced as something painful and as real misery. To be a self and to esteem oneself according to one’s own weight and measure—that offended taste in those days. An inclination to do this would have been considered madness; for being alone was associated with every misery and fear. In those days, ‘free will’ was very closely associated with a bad conscience; and the more unfree one’s actions were and the more the herd instinct rather than any personal sense found expression in an action, the more moral one felt. Whatever harmed the herd, whether the individual had wanted it or not wanted it, prompted the sting of conscience in the individual—and in his neighbor, too, and even in the whole herd. —There is no point on which we have learned to think and feel more differently.” (GS, #117)
Here there is a historical view in which humans were formerly herd animals and nothing more, and have developed individuality in recent centuries. Still, your logic would hold true for morals evolving during “the mists of prehistory”, wouldn’t they?
Curses! Foiled again! How’s this, I’ll agree that they masters and slaves referred to in the theory were very much herd creatures if you’ll drop the reference to Romans and Judeans and push them back into mythical, pre-historical status. No, no. It still doesn’t let me preserve my understanding, my sense that we’re talking about the strongest coming together to form a class, rather than one race or nation becoming the nobility by conquering another. Hmmm.

“’in the ancient world, the best educated were more often than not the slaves.’ In fact, they had to be: in order to make up for their impotence, the priests had to out-think their oppressors.”
There’s something I’ve long believed I read in Nietzsche’s work but haven’t been able to find again: a suggestion that being in the priviledged class breeds weakeness and being oppressed breeds strength, and therefore one can expect that after some generations, those on the bottom become stronger and turn the tables. (Maybe I got it from somewhere else. I don’t think I made it up.)

III Nietzsche’s Sublte Ideal: I really like this section. It is showing me things. My attention had never been drawn so well to Nietzsche’s disenchantment with the noble.

“A strict “good”-“evil” dualism does not only represent and manifest weakness; worse, it encourages weakness, the shunning of power, and distaste for life itself. Nonetheless, Nietzsche marvels at the slave’s ruthlessness in bringing down his enemies as well as the personal depth created by the concept of evil.”
Have you read Ayn Rand’s novels? They bring this to life, in spite of her long-winded, preachy style.

Your repeated reference to the two classes as “stereotypes” does a lot to push your position toward the one I’ve been advocating, that these are more mytical than historical. Very nice.

“If we define strength aesthetically – as Solomon has suggested – rather than based on social station or wealth, such strong-willed revolutionaries stand out as paradigms of energy and power tempered by the depth of ressentiment morality. “
And here you have calmed my concerns that the sorting of humans into these categories is done with whole nations.

“Under such a system, the strong are able to extract payment of debt from the weak by gaining a grim satisfaction and enjoyment out of causing them to suffer. The slaves lack the power and resources to fight back or pay their debt in another way, and are therefore subjected to oppression and violence. Once the masters establish a community, “‘just’ and ‘unjust’ exist, accordingly, only after the institution of the law,”
Wow. I like your explanation of Solomon’s position (of which I knew nothing) and Nietzsche’s. Can Nietzsche’s position here be reduced (of course with a loss of insight but without contradicting him) to the belief that there is no universal morality? The Christian version fails because it claims universality, and the noble version relies on something other than being “true”.

“Solomon interprets ressentiment differently from Nietzsche’s original meaning.“
“Solomon’s resentful men, on the other hand, ‘recognize not the absurdity but the injustice of their situation.””
I’m convinced. String the bastard up!

I enjoyed the paper. Thanks.

You might be interested in my collection of Nietzsche quotes:
thinedge.org/thinkers/nietzs … quotes.htm

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Nietzsche’s goal, if I am not mistaken, is to illumine both moralities as manifestations of the will to Power. The morality of ressentiment does this in a very clever way. The will to power (or the need for revenge, perhaps), has no way to exert itself in this life; it therefore festers and redirects itself toward what is essentially nothingness, (sickness, asceticism, death) as the ultimate virtue. The body becomes evil and the otherworldly becomes good, the sick becomes healthy.

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mark, Thanks for the comments. Much appreciated, and I’d have gotten back sooner if not for work.

My interpretation doesn’t rely on the strict cause-and-effect relationship you point out. Though on second thought the use of the Rome-Judea example might paint it that way, the jews (Judea) were slaves in Nietzsche’s view long before Rome came along to conquer them. It’s not the act of conquering that made the Romans noble; rather their nobility manifests itself in the conquering of weaker slavish people. Return to the birds of prey and the little lambs: certain traits make an animal a bird of prey, and this will manifests itself in the carrying-off of little lambs. Also remember as an aside that Nietzsche’s metaphysics eliminate subject and object as creations of the slave morality.

In Nietzsche’ view, the basis of the slaves’ religion is the feeling of inadequacy and oppression, which caused them to invent a God who would raise up the lowly, oppressed Jew and smite down the sinners, those strong members of other societies who enjoyed life and saw themselves as good because of it. Rome is merely their last oppressor and the shining example of Noble characteristics. The slave mentality could develop, I suppose, in either large or small-scale settings, but the specific one Nietzsche wants to discuss is the pseudo-historical development of the Jewish religion and its slavish system of morality.

Basically, I think, yes. He spends the whole Genealogy knocking down Judeo-Christian morality, while als calling the noble “stupid,” so as to suggest that neither frame of reference is adequate. Both have their virtues in the right circumstances, but each can also be life-destroying if taken too far. Read between the lines, as I tried to do in “Nietzsche’s Subtle Ideal,” he seems to advocate a melding of the best traits of each, but without creating a rigid value system, as such systems have been the source of violence and nihilism in the past.

Again, thanks for reading, and thanks for the comments. I found them enlightening and useful.

-CDubs-