Ressentiment is a grudge against another that never turns into action but is felt over and over again; in On the Genealogy of Morality of 1887, Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) made the French word a technical term of his critique of morality. For Nietzsche, the “slave revolt in morality” begins where ressentiment itself creates values (Nietzsche, 1887, Zur Genealogie der Moral, I 10). Gwendolin Kirchhoff discussed it with her father, the philosopher Jochen Kirchhoff, in the SYMPOSIUM conversation “Nietzsche und die Große Gesundheit” (Nietzsche and the Great Health), which has been on her channel since 2024.
#What does ressentiment mean?
Ressentiment is a hostile feeling towards another that is not discharged but lived through again and again. The philosopher Max Scheler (1874–1928) writes that he uses the word not out of a fondness for French but “because we did not manage to translate it into German” (Scheler, 1915, p. 44). Nietzsche, he adds, had coined it as a technical term (cf. ibid.). In the natural French meaning of the word Scheler finds two elements: the repeated living-through and re-living of a particular emotional response against another, and a negative quality of that emotion, a movement of hostility (cf. ibid., pp. 44 f.). “Perhaps the German word ‘Groll’ would be the most suitable,” Scheler writes, to cover one basic component of the meaning; Groll is a smouldering grudge (ibid., p. 45).
Instead of a definition of the word, Scheler gives a description of the thing: “Ressentiment is a self-poisoning of the mind with quite definite causes and consequences” (ibid., pp. 48 f.). It is, he says, a lasting psychological attitude that arises through the systematically practised repression of the discharge of certain emotions and affects which are in themselves normal and belong to the basic stock of human nature (cf. ibid., p. 49). As the emotions that come first into consideration here, he names the feeling and impulse of revenge, hatred, malice, envy, Scheelsucht (begrudging jealousy) and spitefulness; he sees the impulse of revenge as the most important starting point for the formation of ressentiment (cf. ibid.). Scheler’s essay first appeared in 1912 under the title “Über Ressentiment und moralisches Werturteil” and, expanded, in 1915 as “Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen”.
#How does ressentiment become a morality in Nietzsche?
In Nietzsche, ressentiment becomes a morality when it itself turns creative and gives birth to values. He means the grudge of beings “who are denied the real reaction, the reaction of the deed, and who compensate themselves only through an imaginary revenge” (Nietzsche, 1887, Zur Genealogie der Moral, I 10). In the first essay of the Genealogy he sets two modes of valuation against each other. Noble morality, he writes, grows out of a triumphant saying-yes to itself; slave morality says no from the outset to an “outside”, to an “other”, to a “not-self”, and this no is its creative deed (cf. ibid.). Its action, Nietzsche writes, “is at bottom reaction” (ibid.).
According to Nietzsche, the man of ressentiment first conceives “the evil enemy” and from there thinks up a “good one” as its counterpart: himself (cf. ibid.). Evil in the sense of the morality of ressentiment is precisely the noble, the powerful, the ruling one, “only recoloured, only reinterpreted, only re-seen through the poisonous eye of ressentiment” (ibid., I 11). Nietzsche’s image for this is the lambs who bear a grudge against the great birds of prey and say among themselves: “these birds of prey are evil; and whoever is as little as possible a bird of prey, rather its opposite, a lamb – should he not be good?” (ibid., I 13).
The contempt with which the noble mode of valuation looks down on the lowly falls, according to Nietzsche, far short, even where it falsifies their image, of the falsification with which “the suppressed hatred, the revenge of the powerless” lays hands on its opponent (ibid., I 10). According to Nietzsche, ressentiment can also appear in the noble man. In him it consummates and exhausts itself in an immediate reaction, “and therefore it does not poison” (ibid., I 10). Of the man of ressentiment, by contrast, Nietzsche writes: “His soul squints” (ibid.). How Nietzsche frames the decay of values as a diagnosis of his time is the subject of the entry Nihilism.
#Why does Nietzsche call the priest the redirector of ressentiment?
Nietzsche calls the priest the redirector of ressentiment because the priest turns the blame, which the sufferer looks for in someone else, back onto the sufferer himself. In the third essay of the Genealogy he puts the value of the priestly existence into the shortest formula: “the priest is the redirector of ressentiment” (Nietzsche, 1887, Zur Genealogie der Moral, III 15). According to Nietzsche, the ascetic priest must himself be sick and fundamentally related to the sick and to those who have come off badly, in order to understand them (cf. ibid.).
Every sufferer, Nietzsche says, instinctively looks for a cause of his suffering, more precisely for a culprit on whom he can discharge his affects (cf. ibid.). “‘I suffer: someone must be to blame for this’, so thinks every sickly sheep” (ibid.). The priest agrees that someone must be to blame, and answers: “you yourself alone are to blame for yourself” (ibid.). With that, as Nietzsche writes, the direction of ressentiment has been changed (cf. ibid.). How the feeling of guilt took shape in the hands of the ascetic priest is traced in the essay How to stop feeling guilty.
#How do Gwendolin and Jochen Kirchhoff talk about ressentiment?
Gwendolin and Jochen Kirchhoff talk about ressentiment in connection with Nietzsche’s priest. The priest wants to rule over the other, Gwendolin Kirchhoff says; Nietzsche worked this out like hardly anyone else, this impulse and claim to rule in the priest, “who however thinks he speaks for the good or for God or for someone or other” (Kirchhoff, G., 2024, “Nietzsche und die Große Gesundheit”, 19:38; cf. 19:30–19:42). These are all attempts at deception, she says (cf. ibid., 19:42).
Jochen Kirchhoff says in the same conversation: “I am so very mistrustful of moral formulas” (ibid., 19:58); Nietzsche, he says, instilled this basic mistrust in him (cf. ibid., 21:27–21:31). Nietzsche, he says, stressed tirelessly that morality is also mendacity (cf. ibid., 22:17–22:25). Gwendolin Kirchhoff specifies: “A particular morality.” (ibid., 22:25). Nietzsche also describes, she says, that things like justice, fairness for example, “are an outflow of vital strength” (ibid., 22:33). The strong one who stands well in his will to power affords himself, as she presents it, fairness and friendliness for instance, also out of an aesthetic sense (cf. ibid., 22:35–22:57). “But it is a free choice” (ibid., 23:05), Gwendolin Kirchhoff says, and the priest tries to take certain things he would like to have out of this way of dealing with others that flows from strength, “out of his ressentiment, out of his having come off badly” (ibid., 23:19), in order to hold them against the other and plant feelings of guilt in him (cf. ibid., 23:16–23:29).
Jochen Kirchhoff takes up the word and remarks that it is no longer as present in everyday language as it used to be (cf. ibid., 23:29–23:36). “Ressentiment is envy,” he says, “a peculiar form of envy” (ibid., 23:40; 23:43). He goes on: that one looks good, “he is powerful, so he has to come down, he has to go, because we are ugly and small” (ibid., 24:04; cf. 24:02–24:10). Gwendolin Kirchhoff carries the thought further: those who are at the very bottom “are suddenly the good ones through being at the very bottom”, because they are not the evil ones (ibid., 24:13; cf. 24:11–24:17). One can take this in many ways and in part also criticise Nietzsche for it, she says; but it is in any case very interesting what he says about it and what he means to clear away (cf. ibid., 24:17–24:28).
#Is ressentiment the same as envy?
Whether ressentiment is envy is weighted differently. Jochen Kirchhoff calls ressentiment “a peculiar form of envy” (Kirchhoff, G., 2024, “Nietzsche und die Große Gesundheit”, 23:43). Max Scheler counts envy among the emotions that come first into consideration for ressentiment, but sees the most important starting point for the formation of ressentiment in the impulse of revenge (cf. Scheler, 1915, p. 49). Nietzsche speaks of envy of the healthy, against which the ascetic priest defends his herd (cf. Nietzsche, 1887, Zur Genealogie der Moral, III 15). The essay Envy follows envy itself.
Scheler considers Nietzsche’s discovery of ressentiment as a source of moral value judgements the most profound among the scarce recent discoveries about their origin, and that even if Nietzsche’s more specific claim should prove false that Christian morality, and Christian love in particular, are the finest flower of ressentiment (cf. Scheler, 1915, p. 45).
#What can the concept ask of your own life?
Above all, the concept lets you ask where a valuation of your own comes from. For philosophical conversation, this entry suggests taking up ressentiment as a question put to your own valuations, not as a verdict on others. Nietzsche’s distinction between a yes that grows out of itself and a no that first needs an outside can be carried over to your own judging: do you say yes to something, or does your value only begin with a no to someone else? Where do you hold something against a person that you would like to have yourself? And where has a grudge not turned into action, but is felt by you over and over again?
Such questions do not decide who is right; they ask where you yourself are valuing. How Jochen Kirchhoff reads Nietzsche’s yes is traced in the entry Great Health; the entry Nietzsche presents Nietzsche as a diagnostician of cultural decline. How Nietzsche frames the love of fate is traced in the entry Amor Fati.
#Sources
- Nietzsche, F. (1887). Zur Genealogie der Moral. Eine Streitschrift. Leipzig: C. G. Naumann. Quoted from zeno.org, http://www.zeno.org/Philosophie/M/Nietzsche,+Friedrich/Zur+Genealogie+der+Moral (first essay, 10, 11, 13; third essay, 15). English translations our own.
- Scheler, M. (1915). “Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen”. In: Abhandlungen und Aufsätze, vol. 1. Leipzig: Verlag der Weißen Bücher, pp. 39–274. First published 1912 as “Über Ressentiment und moralisches Werturteil”. Digitised copy: https://archive.org/details/abhandlungenunda01sche (pp. 44, 45, 48 f.). English translations our own.
- Kirchhoff, G. (2024). “Nietzsche und die Große Gesundheit – Ein Gespräch mit Jochen Kirchhoff – SYMPOSIUM” [Video, German]. YouTube, 19 October 2024. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XS8vCl4BkvI (conversation partner: Jochen Kirchhoff).
