Ressentiment (Scheler) - Basic Features of Ressentiment

Basic Features of Ressentiment

Scheler's described Ressentiment in his 1913 book by the same title as follows:

"…Ressentiment is a self-poisoning of the mind which has quite definite causes and consequences. It is a lasting mental attitude, caused by the systematic repression of certain emotions and affects which, as such are normal components of human nature. Their repression leads to the constant tendency to indulge in certain kinds of value delusions and corresponding value judgments. The emotions and affects primarily concerned are revenge, hatred, malice, envy, the impulse to detract, and spite."

Although scholars do not agree on a fixed number or attributes materially defining Ressentiment, they have nonetheless collectively articulated about ten authoritative and insightful points (many times combining them) which stake-out the boundaries of this concept:

1) Ressentiment must first and foremost be understood in relation to, what Scheler termed the apriori hierarchy of value modalities. While the direction of personal transcendence and ethical action is one toward positive and higher values, the direction of Ressentiment and unethical action is one toward negative and lower values. Scheler viewed values as emotively experienced with reference to a universal, objective, constant and unchanging apriori hierarchy of value modalities. From lowest to highest these modalities (with their respective positive and corresponding negative dis-value forms) are as follows: sensual values of the agreeable and the disagreeable; vital values of the noble and vulgar; mental (psychic) values of the beautiful and ugly, right and wrong and truth and falsehood; and finally values of the Holy and Unholy of the Divine and Idols. Ressentiment represents the dark underside, or inversion, of Scheler's vision of a personal and transformational Non-Formal Ethics of Values.

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2) Ressentiment, as a personal disposition, has its genesis in negative psychic feelings and feeling states which most people experience as normal reactive responses to the demands of social life: i.e., envy, jealousy, anger, hatred, spite, malice, joy over another's misfortune, mean spirited competition, etc. The objective sources of such feeling states responses might be occasioned by almost anything: e.g., personal criticism, ridicule, mockery, rejection, abandonment, etc.

For the individual person, the ethical and psychological issue becomes how the energy from these feeling states will be channeled so as to better benefit the individual person and society.

3) Ressentiment is highly situational in character in that it always involves "mental comparisons" (value-judgments) with other people who allegedly have no such Ressentiment feelings, and who likewise exhibit genuinely positive values. Hence, although Ressentiment might begin with something like admiration and respect, but surely ends in a sort of coveting of those personal qualities and goods of another: i.e., advantages afforded by their beauty, intelligence, charm, wit, personality, education, talent, skills, possessions, wealth, work achievement, family affiliation and the like. This early stage of Ressentiment resembles what we might refer to today as an inferiority complex.

However, one can easily extend this notion of "comparing" to externally acquired qualifiers having the potential for negative valuations which also tend to a support consumer based economics: i.e., status symbol possessions (a lavish house, or car), expensive fashion accessories, special privileges, club memberships, plastic surgery and the like. This principal is expressed in our common colloquialism of "Keeping-up with the Jones'". The subliminal result of all of these "comparisons" tend to lend credence the idea that one's self-concept, self-image, self-esteem, worth or social desirability is linked to our social inclusion or exclusion in a favored superior class having the means to insulate themselves from the rest of society.

4) Ressentiment, as situational, also typically extends to inherent social roles. Many social roles involve relationships frequently occasioning some level of inter-personal value-judgment with accompanying negative psychic feelings and feeling states which suggest dominant and submissive roles, not unlike Nietzsche's Master-Slave dichotomy. For example:

• The subordinate and/or submissive gender roles assigned to woman in terms of sexuality, child rearing and nurturing tasks.
• Generational Divides ("Generation Gaps"): The rejection of a younger generation by members of an older generation, due to the latter's inability to accept their own changes and to move beyond the value pursuits proper to those preceding stages of life. Also, the reverse is true. The rejection of an older generation by members of a younger generation due to latter's inability to accept that fact that the older generation understands and sympathizes with the challenges they face.
• Progressive forms of inter-family and blended-family relations: i.e., younger siblings toward the elder sense of entitlement; the hyper-critical mother-in-law toward the daughter-in-law;, or even the more contemporarily abandonment of an ex-spouse in favor of "trophy wife" or "trophy husband" as a status symbol signaling a raise in social status; the relational neglect toward children from a previous marriage over ones of the current; the reactions of peer friends and family to a romantic relationship involving partners of vastly different ages; the pathetic efforts of a mediocre ne’er-do-well child to live up to the standards of a successful high achieving parent, etc.
• The classic employee / employer adversarial relationships.

5) Ressentiment triggers a tendency in people which Scheler termed "Man's Inherent Fundamental Moral Weakness": a sense of hopelessness which pre-disposes a person to regress and seek surrogates of lower value as a source of solace.

When personal progress becomes stagnant or frustrated in moving from a negative to a more positive plateau given a relatively high vital or psychic level of value attainment, there is an inherent tendency toward regression in terms of indulgence in traditional vices and a host of other physical and psychological addictions and self-destructive modes of behavior (e.g., the use of narcotics). This tendency to seek surrogates to compensate for a frustration with higher value attainment inserts itself into the scenario of consumerist materialism as an insatiable self-defeating need "to have more" in order to fill the void of our own philosophical bankruptcy and spiritual poverty.