Nietzsche's Psychology of Ressentiment

Revenge and Justice in "On the Genealogy of Morals"

Guy Elgat

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351754439
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

Ressentiment —the hateful desire for revenge—plays a pivotal role in Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morals. Ressentiment explains the formation of bad conscience, guilt, asceticism, and, most importantly, it motivates the "slave revolt" that gives rise to Western morality's values. Ressentiment, however, has not enjoyed a thorough treatment in the secondary literature. This book brings it sharply into focus and provides the first detailed examination of Nietzsche's psychology of ressentiment. Unlike other books on the Genealogy, it uses ressentiment as a key to the Genealogy and focuses on the intriguing relationship between ressentiment and justice. It shows how ressentiment, despite its blindness to justice, gives rise to moral justice—the central target of Nietzsche's critique. This critique notwithstanding, the Genealogy shows Nietzsche's enduring commitment to the virtue of non-moral justice: a commitment that grounds his provocative view that moral justice spells the 'end of justice'. The result provides a novel view of Nietzsche's moral psychology in the Genealogy, his critique of morality, and his views on justice.

1 Ressentiment as the ‘Home of Justice’?

Introduction

Nietzsche argues in the Second Essay of the Genealogy against Eugen Dühring (1833–1901)—the German philosopher and political economist whom Nietzsche read closely¹—that the origin of justice does not lie in ressentiment. On the other hand, Robert Solomon accuses Nietzsche of being too one-sided and critical of ressentiment, thus failing to see that ressentiment ‘is the gateway to a sense of justice—or, more accurately, a sense of injustice—from which our sense of justice is derived’ (Solomon, p. 116).

But what do Nietzsche, Solomon, and Dühring mean when they deny or assert that the origin of justice lies in ressentiment? In what sense can ressentiment stand or fail to stand at the origin of justice? In order to obtain a handle on this rather complex issue, we have to distinguish between different ways to think the relation between justice and ressentiment. The first possibility will be ascribed to Dühring on the basis of an interpretation of claims he makes in a couple of his works. According to this possibility ressentiment just is our sense of justice, and attained justice just is consummated ressentiment. The next two possibilities will be ascribed to Solomon on the basis of an interpretation of his paper on ressentiment: first, that ressentiment is particularly well constituted to detect cases of injustice and, in its protestations, can lead the way to just adjudications and possibly new conceptions or theories of justice; second, that our developing sense and understanding of justice essentially grows out of the protestations of ressentiment. According to the fourth possibility, ressentiment stands at the origin specifically of punitive justice. On this view, the very intelligibility of the idea that punishment of wrong-doers is just is derived from the desire for vengeance at the heart of ressentiment. According to the fifth possibility, attributed to Nietzsche and defended in the next chapters, there is no essential or even close connection between instances of ressentiment and justice: justice can arise from ressentiment only by happenstance.

Before I proceed it is important to briefly address the following issue in a preliminary fashion. Though neither Solomon nor Dühring explain clearly what concept of justice they have in mind, as will become apparent in later chapters, Nietzsche wishes to distinguish a concept of moral justice from a more basic, pre-moral and non-moral concept of justice. Though the difference between these two concepts will emerge in the unfolding of the book’s discussion, we can point to a central difference between the two already at this stage: moral justice, in contrast to its pre-moral variant, holds that there are certain universal, timeless principles of action that are equally authoritative with respect to every person as such. Pre-moral justice, on the other hand, arises out of and addresses particular conflicts between particular parties that demand a just resolution befitting the particular situation. The discussion in this chapter, however, does not hang on this distinction. I will therefore put it to the side in what follows.

1 Ressentiment and Justice

1.1 Eugen Dühring on Ressentiment and Justice

I first turn to present an interpretation of Dühring’s view on the relation between ressentiment and justice. According to Dühring, the connection between ressentiment and the sense of justice is extremely close, for he virtually identifies the two. Thus, for Dühring, ‘the injury which appears first—that is, not one that is itself induced by another injury which licenses a reaction—is injustice itself [ist eben das Unrecht selbst]’ (Dühring 1875, p. 224). What arises in response to such injury, the impulse to retaliate, Dühring calls ressentiment. (As we shall see, Nietzsche follows Dühring here). Dühring explains: ‘this reaction expresses itself first of all inwardly in a reactive feeling [Rückempfindung], which we can also call ressentiment, a need for retaliation, or downright revenge—if we are to use a strong word which definitely signifies its true natural ground’ (Dühring, p. 224). He adds that ‘the spontaneous and hostile injury has ressentiment and the spur for retaliation as its result with the same necessity with which a mechanistic reaction follows upon an action’ (Dühring, p. 224). It is this desire for revenge that arises as a reaction to an injury which for Dühring constitutes the ‘first affective means to denounce and make known that an injustice has occurred’ (Dühring, p. 225). But since the ‘first appearing’ injury is unjust, the feeling that arises and reacts to it can only be of a contrary nature and thus can be seen as belonging to the sphere of justice. Accordingly, Dühring asserts that ‘the feeling of revenge [Racheempfindung] is only that otherwise so-mysterious sense of justice itself [Rechtsgefühl selbst]’ (Dühring, p. 224, emphasis added). Thus, on this view, the impulse for revenge and for justice is one and the same.²

On the basis of these claims, Dühring then goes on to state a genealogical thesis that justice originates in individual, or private, revenge: justice in its raw form is nothing but acts of personal revenge.³ In the course of time, the development of society, as well as the institution of law, gave this impulse a more refined, regulated, and public form—‘society has found it desirable to establish its own monopoly of revenge, rather the leaving it in the hands of individuals’ (Small, p. 172).⁴ The concept of justice changes accordingly and comes to be expressed in impersonal judgments and theories (Small, p. 172). All instances of revenge thus give rise to different concepts of justice: the most basic kind of revenge corresponds to the most basic of concepts, while revenge in its more civilized, socially monopolized form generates a different, more refined concept of justice. Importantly, though, in its developed, institutionalized and public form, justice can function as a force that opposes acts of private revenge (Dühring, p. 214). Thus, once justice is sufficiently developed, it is not necessarily the case that every personal act of revenge accords with what is now called ‘justice’ (or vice versa). Nevertheless, even in its institutionalized form, it remains at bottom nothing but revenge. As Dühring puts it: ‘Criminal justice, even in its idealistically conceived form, can only be the public organization of revenge’ (Dühring, p. 214, emphasis added). It is, he adds, ‘ignorance or hypocrisy when someone claims to be in general raised above the natural laws of revenge. Such a person thus shows himself as someone who lacks understanding of justice or does not wish to know anything about it’ (Dühring, p. 215). Thus, for Dühring, the desire for revenge, which is ressentiment, is nothing but the sense for justice, and justice, when it is attained, is at bottom nothing but an expression of ressentiment, nothing but a consummated act of revenge, whether publicly organized or not. Dühring’s view, in Nietzsche’s formulation, is that justice is ‘at bottom merely a further development of the feeling of being aggrieved’ (GM II 11, emphasis added).

1.2 Robert Solomon on Ressentiment and Justice

The next two possibilities regarding the genetic relation between ressentiment and justice will be extracted from Solomon’s paper on ressentiment. According to these possibilities, ressentiment stands in an intimate relation to justice, so that, first, ressentiment typically ‘lights up’ in response to an injustice and demands its correction (in what can be seen are just decision and actions), and second, our sense of justice essentially grows out of ressentiment.⁵

I will first reconstruct Solomon’s understanding of the psychology of ressentiment.⁶ According to Solomon, ressentiment (to which he occasionally refers with the English word ‘resentment’), is a ‘bitter emotion based on a sense of inferiority and frustrated vindictiveness’ (Solomon, p. 95). The first element in Solomon’s analysis of ressentiment has to do with the qualitative nature of ressentiment—namely, its characteristic unpleasant feeling, directed at others, which Nietzsche at times calls ‘hate’. With the second element Solomon has in mind the idea that ressentiment typically arises in people who are weak, but not in some biological or physical sense, nor in any other sense that can be determined objectively; rather, the weakness has to do with a damaged sense of self-worth. It is thus based ‘on an original perception of oneself …, a kind of self-contempt’ (p. 114) or ‘wounded self-esteem’ (p. 115). It is people who for the most part possess a sense of pride, a sense that then gets trampled upon or denied in some way, who are prone to experience ressentiment. This wounded sense of self-worth, in turn, gives rise to a ‘reaction … which includes … schemes of revenge’ (Solomon, p. 103). Specifically, it causes a desire for revenge motivated by anger. But, Solomon explains, it is when this desire gets frustrated that ressentiment is born: ‘revenge intended in anger is typically part of the expression itself [of anger] … if it is not so expressed, anger tends to turn to resentment. Thus one might say that frustration lies at the heart of resentment, and this is what distinguished it from affective anger’ (Solomon, p. 103). A final element that Solomon adds is that ‘resentment is, above all, an emotion concerned with power—or rather, with the lack of it’ (Solomon, p. 98). It is this frustration of one’s desire for vengeance that, for Solomon, shows that ressentiment involves lack of power: the inability to express and fulfill one’s desire for revenge (which, on this reading, is distinct from ressentiment) as a result of an obstacle that stands in the way and that one cannot overcome leads to a feeling of lack of power. But Solomon is careful to add that ‘[l]ack of power is not the cause, but the content of resentment; and resentment in turn is not merely the cause but the content of morality, as Nietzsche envisions it. It is not the soil from which morality springs … but rather the structure of morals as such—the consciousness of one’s own vulnerability (Solomon, p. 98, emphasis in the original.). It is hard, however, to see why impotence is not also the cause of ressentiment, rather than being merely what it is about. Solomon is unfortunately not very clear on the relation between ressentiment and morality either: on the one hand, he says that ressentiment is ‘not merely’ the cause of morality, and, on the other hand, he claims that it is ‘not the soil from which morality springs’ (Solomon, p. 98).⁷ Be that as it may, once we put all the pieces of Solomon’s analysis together we obtain the following: wounded self-esteem makes one susceptible to ressentiment about one’s lack of power when one’s desire for revenge out of anger is frustrated.

What is, then, ressentiment’s relation to justice? Solomon claims that ressentiment involves ‘an overwhelming sense of injustice’ (Solomon, p. 103). He adds that ‘it is hard to even imagine what justice—and, for that matter, morality—would be without resentment and the modicum of selfishness that makes it possible’ (Solomon, p. 124) and concludes that ‘[p]erhaps Dühring was right: the home of justice is to be sought in ‘the sphere of the reactive feelings’ (Solomon, p. 124). Indeed, it is precisely Nietzsche’s failure to properly appreciate this point that stands at the core of Solomon’s objection to Nietzsche’s view of morality: ‘This is the crux of my doubts about Nietzsche’s thesis—his refusal to acknowledge resentment as an essential ingredient in our sense of justice’ (Solomon, p. 112, emphasis added). Though Solomon does not explain precisely what kind of justice ressentiment is especially sensitive to and what type of justice it helps to foster, for his account to serve as a criticism of Nietzsche it should give us reason to think that the ressentiment of the slave revolt is sensitive to moral justice. This is so since only such sensitivity can serve to vindicate the slaves’ revolt and its fruits (the new morality of good and evil), as well as the slaves’ desire that the masters be punished, as morally justified. We can now turn to distinguish the two claims that Solomon makes about the genealogical relation between ressentiment and justice.

1.2.a The first view that can be attributed to Solomon, then, is that ressentiment is endowed with ‘a keen sense of injustice, which is, in turn, the foundation of our sense of justice’ (Solomon, p. 117). He explains that ressentiment indeed starts off from a ‘bitter sense of disappointment or humiliation’, but ‘then tends to rationalize and generalize, and so project its own impotence as a claim—even a theory—about injustice in the world’ (Solomon, p. 117). The claim, then, is that when a subject is in the state of mind of ressentiment she would characteristically be capable of judging her situation in accordance with justice. Ressentiment on this view would be a condition that is—as Solomon puts it—‘overwhelmingly’ attuned to matters of justice in that subjects of ressentiment would characteristically protest against what are genuine injustices and demand corresponding just corrections or amends on the basis of ‘principles of justice … [ressentiment] certainly may contain’ (Solomon, p. 118). Consequently, ressentiment, given its acuity in matters of justice, could produce, when conditions are ripe, a just agreement or settlement, and can even give rise to a concept (and at a higher stage of abstraction, even a theory, as Solomon says) of justice that is based upon ressentiment’s pronouncements against injustice, for these would typically provide one with genuine insights into what justice requires in the given situation. This, then, is what I will take to be Solomon’s first claim: ressentiment, as a state of mind in which a subject can find herself, is endowed with a ‘keen sense of injustice’, which can consequently lead to actual realization of justice. We can rephrase this as saying that ressentiment is a sufficient condition for understanding what justice requires in a particular case, an understanding that, when successfully acted upon, could lead to an attainment of justice. Given its attunement to matters of justice it is characteristically enough to experience ressentiment to sense what justice demands when an injustice has been committed, and so recognize what actions is required to bring it about.

1.2.b Solomon, however, goes further and explains that it is hard to see how our understanding of justice could develop without the promptings of ressentiment. He...