Ressentiment

The man of ressentiment experiences every being and object as an offence in exact proportion to its effect on him. Beauty and goodness are, for him, necessarily as outrageous as any pain or misfortune that he experiences.

"One cannot get rid of anything, one cannot get over anything, one cannot repel anything - everything hurts. Men and things obtrude too closely; experiences strike one too deeply; memory becomes a festering wound".

The man of ressentiment in himself is a being full of pain: the sclerosis or hardening of his consciousness, the rapidity with which every excitation sets and freezes within him, the weight of the traces that invade him are so many cruel sufferings.

And, more deeply, the memory of traces is full of hatred in itself and by itself. It is venomous and depreciative because it blames the object in order to compensate for its own inability to escape from the traces of the corresponding excitation. This is why ressentiment’s revenge, even when it is realised, remains "spiritual", imaginary and symbolic in principle.

This essential link between revenge and memory resembles the Freudian anal-sadistic complex. Nietzsche himself presents memory as an unfinished digestion and the type of ressentiment as an anal type.

[Gilles Deleuze]
Nietzsche and Philosophy, p.116

[...] we must beware of those who condemn themselves before that which is good or beautiful, claiming not to understand, not to be worthy: their modesty is frightening.

What hatred of beauty is hidden in their declarations of inferiority. Hating all that is experienced as lovable or admirable, diminishing by buffoonery or base interpretations, seeing traps to be avoided in all things: always saying, "please don't engage me in a battle of wits".

What is most striking in the man of ressentiment is not his nastiness but his disgusting malevolence, his capacity for disparagement. Nothing can resist it. He does not even respect his friends or even his enemies. He does not even respect misfortune or its causes.

Think of the Trojans who, in Helen, respected and admired the cause of their own misfortune. But the man of ressentiment must turn misfortune into something mediocre, he must recriminate and distribute blame: look at his inclination to play down the value of causes, to make misfortune "someone's fault".

By contrast, the aristocrat's respect for the causes of misfortune goes together with an ability to take his own misfortunes seriously. The way in which the slave takes his misfortunes seriously shows a difficult digestion and a base way of thinking which is incapable of feeling respect.

[Gilles Deleuze]
Nietzsche and Philosophy, p.117

In ressentiment happiness "appears essentially as a narcotic drug, rest, peace, 'sabbath', slackening of tension and relaxing of limbs, in short passively".

The man of ressentiment does not know how to and does not want to love, but wants to be loved. He wants to be loved, fed, watered, caressed and put to sleep. He is the impotent, the dyspeptic, the frigid, the insomniac, the slave.

[Gilles Deleuze]
Nietzsche and Philosophy, p.117-18

The man of ressentiment is the man of profit and gain.

Moreover, ressentiment could only be imposed on the world through the triumph of the principle of gain, by making profit not only a desire and a way of thinking but an economic, social and theological system, a complete system, a divine mechanism.

Morality in itself conceals the utilitarian standpoint; but utilitarianism conceals the standpoint of the passive third party, the triumphant standpoint of a slave who intervenes between masters.

[Gilles Deleuze]
Nietzsche and Philosophy, p.118

The imputation of wrongs, the distribution of responsibilities, perpetual accusation. All this replaces aggression.

Here we rediscover the dreadful feminine power of ressentiment: it is not content to denounce crimes and criminals, it wants sinners, people who are responsible.

We can guess what the creature of ressentiment wants: he wants others to be evil, he needs others to be evil in order to be able to consider himself good. You are evil, therefore I am good; this is the slave's fundamental formula, it expresses the main point of ressentiment from the typological point of view, it summarises and brings together all the preceding characteristics.

This formula must be compared with that of the master: I am good, therefore you are evil. The difference between the two measures the revolt of the slave and his triumph: "This inversion of the value-positing eye . . . is of the essence of ressentiment: in order to exist, slave morality always first needs a hostile world". The slave needs to set the other up as evil from the outset.

[Gilles Deleuze]
Nietzsche and Philosophy, p.118-19

We ask: who is it that begins by saying: "I am good"? It is certainly not the one who compares himself to others, nor the one who compares his actions and his works to superior and transcendent values [...] The one who says: "I am good", does not wait to be called good. He refers to himself in this way, he names himself and describes himself thus to the extent that he acts, affirms and enjoys."

He who affirms and acts is at the same time the one who is: "The root of the word coined for this, esthlos signifies one who is, who possesses reality, who is actual, who is true". "He knows himself to be that which in general first accords honour to things, he creates values. Everything he knows to be part of himself, he honours: such a morality is self-glorification.

[...] the good "only looks for its antithesis in order to affirm itself with more joy". This is the status of aggression: it is the negative, but the negative as the conclusion of positive premises, the negative as the product of activity, the negative as the consequence of the power of affirming.

[For the slave] The negative becomes "the original idea, the beginning, the act par excellence". The slave must have premises of reaction and negation, of ressentiment and nihilism, in order to obtain an apparently positive conclusion. Even so, it only appears to be positive.

This is why Nietzsche insists on distinguishing ressentiment and aggression: they differ in nature. The man of ressentiment needs to conceive of a non-ego, then to oppose himself to this non-ego in order finally to posit himself as self. This is the strange syllogism of the slave: he needs two negations in order to produce an appearance of affirmation.

We already sense the form in which the syllogism of the slave has been so successful in philosophy: the dialectic. The dialectic, as the ideology of ressentiment.

"You are evil, therefore I am good." In this formula it is the slave who speaks [...]They begin by positing the other as evil. He who called himself good is the one who is now called evil.

This evil one is the one who acts, who does not hold himself back from acting, who does not therefore consider action from the point of view of the consequences that it will have for third parties.

And the one who is good is now the one who holds himself back from acting: he is good just because he refers all actions to the standpoint of the one who does not act, to the standpoint of the one who experiences the consequences, or better still to the more subtle standpoint of a divine third party who scrutinises the intentions of the one who acts.

"And he is good who does not outrage, who harms nobody, who does not attack, who does not requite, who leaves revenge to God, who keeps himself hidden as we do, who avoids evil and desires little from life, like us, the patient, humble and just".

This is how good and evil are born: ethical determination, that of good and bad, gives way to moral judgment. The good of ethics has become the evil of morality, the bad has become the good of morality. Good and evil are not the good and the bad but, on the contrary, the exchange, the inversion, the reversal of their determination.

Good and evil are new values, but how strangely these values are created! They are created by reversing good and bad. They are not created by acting but by holding back from acting, not by affirming, but by beginning with denial. This is why they are called un-created, divine, transcendent, superior to life. But think of what these values hide, of their mode of creation. They hide an extraordinary hatred, a hatred for life, a hatred for all that is active and affirmative in life.

They have invented the good wretch, the good weakling: there is no better revenge against the strong and happy.

[Gilles Deleuze]
Nietzsche and Philosophy, p.119-22

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