Resentment
Nietsche, Geneology of Morals:... it acts and grows spontaneously, it merely seeks its antithesis in order to pronounce a more grateful and exultant "yes" to its own self;
This is Nietsche's description of the morals of the militant aristocrat. It's a very materialistic sort of morality in the sense that it only seeks to rejoice in what is. Per Nietzsche, a pernicious counter morality came into being. It was originally a way the slave could redeem himself in his own eyes. But in time it became a weapon directed at the aristocrat. It's an anti-materialistic morality because it primarily rejects. It's essentially a perpetually seething resentment.
Nietzsche, Geneology of Morals:"Who is really evil according to the meaning of the morality of resentment?" In all sternness let it be answered thus: - just the good man of the other morality, just the aristocrat, the powerful one, the one who rules, but who is distorted by the venomous eye of resentfulness, into a new color, a new signification, a new appearance.
I find it easy to be skeptical about some of Nietzsche's details here, but the fundamental message appears to me to be true. There is a brand of morality that simply rejects anyone who has power. It reviles anyone who has self-love. It teaches that the proper mode is to be poor, helpless, and full of self-loathing. Agree?
Comments (58)
No - why would you think so?
Furthermore I'm curious according to what grounds did you draw the "materialistic" vs "non-materialistic" distinction? It seems to me that the one morality isn't anymore materialistic or non-materialistic than the other.
Attractive people are dumb, rich people are wicked, etc.
It's essentially the condition of Job (Biblical figure) where instead there is a lack of faith in God (or the standard morality) coupled with misfortune.
Why not exercise the power of revenge upon those who are just as undeserving for their fortune, out of spite? If life is worthless for the fringe, marginal, dispossessed, why not perpetuate the chaos of their own hell?
Some nihilists (driven mad by resentment) are wrecked beyond saving.
Was talking to a good buddy of mine yesterday, right into politics, and I said that I didn't want to get involved in his discussion, and I'm basically liberal anyway to which he replied "oh yeah, how's that been working out for you?"
Maybe the meek inherit the earth when they get jaded enough.
What brand of morality decrees this?
Possibly Bill Maher joke:' Who cares...they're just a bunch of meeks...we'll just take it back from them.Ba dum dum'
It's partly expressed in the message of Jesus. More broadly in the ethic of progress. The rich are fat and satisfied, so they have to reason to be on the move.. to be progressing. Where progress is a virtue, satisfaction is evil.
Where I see it in the world around me is in my liberal friends and family. One displays one's angst as a badge of goodness. I find myself falling into it as well. And it's true, it's partly just straight envy.
I don't think this is too honest. The morality in question is formed of misjudgements about justice. When I complain that the dumb guy next door is rich and I'm poor, I'm really saying that he doesn't deserve to be rich (because he's dumb and I'm much smarter than him!). The injustice is that he gets what he doesn't deserve, and I don't get what I deserve. Most often though, these are misjudgements - meaning that my judgement that he's dumber than me or that because he's dumber than me he deserves to have less money than I do, or whatever is false.
So it's not that one denies the value of riches in this case, but that one is upset at the injustice present, and this upset manifests by a rationalisation of the situation.
Maybe but what does this have to do with the point I was making? The so called slave is upset at an injustice. This underlies that he has a sense of justice, which actually is functioning.
Can a sense of justice ever not be reactive? Doesn't justice always react to the way things are?
Quoting Mongrel
Well I think it's a natural part of the functioning of a rational being. If I am working for a guy who is my boss, and he's more stupid than I am (and this is the objective fact now, not just a misjudgement on my part), shouldn't I feel upset that I'm working for such a person? Shouldn't I wish to replace him if possible, and become the boss in his place?
What Plato said it is: to each as they deserve.
By using your judgement and judging objectively while doing that? There's obviously not way to get this right with certainty if that's what you're asking for. These are tentative judgements.
Does this sound like proper judgment to you?
I would not say it is the liberal view to "revile anyone who has self-love and to teach that the proper mode is to be poor, helpless, and full of self-loathing."
Many liberals are wealthy and or in positions of power themselves for one.
I think the liberal resentment of the wealthy has to do with the percentage of their income that they spend on taxes.
Compared to middle and lower classes they pay significantly less.
The wealthy often earns money from capital gains for example, and the rate at which capital gains are tax compared to wage earners is significantly less.
So yeah there is resentment there.
There is also resentment concerning environmental issues.
That large corporations can have a much larger impact on the environment than individuals but then argue that they should not also have a much larger legal obligation because of that capacity.
It depends on his character, but it is possible. However, even if he had little power, he would be willing to do a lot of evil things, only that he wouldn't have the means to do them.
Quoting Mongrel
Depends - people who climb up the ladder of power generally have to bear humiliation after humiliation, and after a lifetime of being humiliated left and right by X and Y, then finally get to the top. Wouldn't you be ruthless, greedy, and careless by that point? So that is a natural evolution of things - they pay those who pulled them down with exactly what they paid them on their way up. Things are only different if they have character, and if they don't humiliate themselves on the road to power - if they have dignity and character, then they won't be vengeful.
I agree with that. Some folks just naturally root for the underdog. Those people are more likely to end up being liberal (in my neck of the woods, anyway.)
Every rich/powerful family has a founder - a person who got them rich. In the case of, say, Donald Trump, it's his father. The founder is the one that bears the humiliations. I love reading Chinese history, Chinese history is replete of such examples in politics. Then they grow their sons and daughters in a strict and rigid environment because they know how harsh the world was to them. Then their sons and daughters become ruthless and expand the empire. Sooner or later, future generations will be like "WTF our parents were so harsh with us, we couldn't properly enjoy... let's let our kids enjoy!" and they will revert back to the baseline, become lazy, lose the virtues taught to them, and the family will fall, only to be replaced by another.
Quite honestly, I almost always root for the underdog. If Trump had never been the underdog, probably I would never have rooted for him. And I'm the farthest you can get from a liberal. Just saying.
If there is some underdog morality which has attempted to establish itself via democracy, revenge isn't the goal. The impetus is to manifest a shared vision of a world where opportunity is available to all. Where little black girls and little white girls will join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual...
God I'm jaded.
In the west you don't have to be born wealthy or powerful to attain wealth or power.
And in the west they tend to value upward mobility.
I suppose you could say this is something of a soft spot for the underdog.
I think that Tertullian perfectly captures Nietzsche's notion of ressentiment.
And I'd say Tertullian is not alone.
Resentment tends to manifest as hatred or cruelity towards a powerful group. The powerful "deserve it," whatever thatight be, for being dominant. It's not really a measure of whether someone is seeking a just outcome or defending an ethical concern. They are sort of two different axes which are defined independently.
That is true, there is such a brand, and it is indeed buried in resentment. However, quoting Jesus probably won't help a lot here. If Jesus came to overthrow the kingdoms and powers of earth, we have to interpret that as eschatology. In God's unfolding judgement, the first (powerful, rich) will be last and the last (the meek, the poor) will be first. The orders of status will be up-ended.
Take away the end of this world, the Kingdom of Heaven, the final judgement, and so on, and the preaching of Jesus loses it's fizz. If this is an unredeemed and irredeemable world, it makes no sense to celebrate meekness and poverty.
My guess is that resentment comes before the morality. "We are extremely dissatisfied with our wretched lot. "Some people are in the penthouse, eating foie gras pate; me and my wife are in the shithouse eating beans and hay..." "I hate those people; they don't deserve what they have got. I want more. I need more. I deserve more!" They hate the rich, especially if they are in close proximity.
A number of moralities come to mind. An anarchist might justify taking an elevator up to the penthouse and throwing a bomb into the middle of the rich folks' soirée, ridding the planet of the lot of them. The communist might take them all down on the elevator and line them up against a wall and shoot them. Some will denounce them for being privileged, for having power, and send them to North Dakota to work on the fracking rigs. They won't grieve when the rich folks go bankrupt.
I agree. This sort of morality has nothing to do with liberalism or conservatism. It's the psychology of twisted people, whatever their political views.
It isn't the climb to the top that gives people ruthless, greedy, ambition. It's ruthless, greedy, ambition that drives them up and on -- despite whatever adverse headwinds, insults, and so forth they endure on their way to the top.
Well it's not just ruthlessness, greed, and ambition.
There are plenty with these traits that don't make it to the top.
So I think there has to be something more to it than just these things.
It's been awhile since I have read the Genealogy of Morals, but I recall that Nietzsche used a technical term "ressentment" a form of resentment. Wikipedia has pretty good discussion about it
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ressentiment
I think we see this type of ressetiment occurring around the world today.
what is your avatar pic of?
This is too simplistic, and ignores the fact that power corrupts.
I would say the sense of unfairness comes before the resentment. Do you think it is right that the rich be allowed to accumulate as much as they are able at the expense of others, and only be compelled to give back a minimum, just as much as will be barely tolerable to those who are disadvantaged by their hoarding of resources?
Good on you. Me too...fuck the greedy bastards..
Absolutely these are not sufficient to get one to the top of the wealth pile. Quite right, lots of people who barely make it up the first few steps out of the basement are also ruthless, greedy, and ambitious.
But... Given talent, given favorable conditions (like a head start), given generous bankers willing to lend the money, given high unemployment to keep wages down, given strong demand for minerals which you happen to own, or smelting equipment that is ready to go, AND ruthless ambitious greed, one will get to the top.
Bill Gates had help getting to being a multi-billionaire a couple times over. It takes the help of investment bankers, for instance, to get small businesses rolling. It does take talent. It takes luck: Bill couldn't have know exactly how his little DOS program designed for the measly IBM personal computer toy would work out; IBM couldn't either. But... it worked out well. Many, many copies of DOS sold. Then Windows. Then Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and all that; Access; huge labor forces scribbling code. Sweetheart deals nailing Microsoft software into every PC.
It's just photoshop art that I did a long time ago.
N drops the scenario straight onto the Jews. There's no doubt that the Jews had a unique problem with the concept of justice because their religion teaches that they have a special relationship with God. They have a deal or covenant in which God protects them if they meet his requirements as laid out in the Mosaic law. Anytime bad things happened, the Jews would try to work out how they had failed God so they could get it right. Eventually that technique was strained to the point of absurdity.
Christian apocalypticism actually starts about 200 years before Jesus was born. A statue of Zeus was installed in the Holy of Holies in the temple in an attempt to Hellenize the Jews. Scholars say that it was around this time that the book of Daniel was written and circulated. The concept of the World to Come is taking shape as an answer to the problem of God's justice. They probably weren't even aware that they were modifying an element of the Zoroastrian religion.
The World to Come is a time when the Gentiles are supposed to finally get what's coming to them. The Jews will be raised up to their proper place at the right hand of God. By putting resolution of injustice somewhere off in the future, Good becomes other worldly. This world of wounded flesh is all bad and just a passing shadow pending the arrival of the Messiah.
Christians say the Messiah did come, but obviously nothing significant changed. What a drag. Maybe he'll come again... yea, that's it.
Exactly.
I think that quite possibly it's not the Jews that express ressentiment in their morality, but, as this video illustrates, many of the other peoples have hated and some still continue to hate the Jews. This is quite unfortunate in my opinion, and it is exactly why the Western world must help protect Israel.
It's less important what you call it. The point of the Borat movie is that the supposedly "civilised" Americans are more often more racist, more bigoted, and more sexually deviant than even he himself, the savage, is - as illustrated by the American's reaction vis-a-vis Jews in this scene. That's what makes the movie genius.
In any event, I think the dichotomy is a false one. And I don't buy the idea of there being conflicting "packages" of morality that different socio-economic categories of people accept.
Yes I made the same point in my reply but it was never addressed here:
http://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/47611#Post_47611
That's correct. Plus we have a ginormous nuclear arsenal and the ability to deliver warheads anywhere anytime with ICBMs, medium range missiles, bombers, and submarines. Think about it.
What's that got to do with anything though?
:s