What is resentment?
2 Answers
-
Scheler described this phenomenon well in his book “Resentment in the Structure of Morals”. Resentment is resentment in the sense that it does not disappear, but sinks into the center of the personality and makes you experience the emotion again and again, but not to take revenge.
Further along the Scheler:
-
Successful revenge quenches the thirst for revenge in the same way as punishing someone who is targeted by the impulse of revenge, for example, self-punishment, sincere forgiveness; this is not resentment.
-
Envy also disappears if the goods that I envy someone for become my own. This is not a resentment.
-
Malevolence seeks out in things and people those objects and values that can satisfy it. Dethroning and humiliating, pushing out negative value points in things and people, which are noticeable only because they are found together with clearly expressed positive value points; concentration on negative points, accompanied by a sharp sense of pleasure. Obviously negative attitude towards people, concentration on their negative traits, i.e. to see enemies in everyone, natural aggressiveness. This is not a resentment.
-
Insidiousness: malevolence sinks even deeper, and this impulse is ready to give itself away at any moment – the way you laugh, some gesture. This is not a resentment.�
-
Malice tries to find more and more opportunities to gloat and already shows itself to be more independent of certain objects than schadenfreude. This is not a resentment.�
All this is not a resentment, but the stages of its formation. They form a resentment if there is no moral overcoming (in the case of revenge, for example, sincere forgiveness), no action (swearing, waving hands, fighting, etc.), and where this does not happen because such an action or expression is restrained by an even more obvious consciousness of one's own powerlessness. They are “held back by biting their lips” – because of physical or spiritual weakness, out of fear and awe of the one on whom the affects are directed. If a servant who has been badly treated allows himself to “swear in the hall”, he will not fall into the internal “venom” that is characteristic of resentment; but this will happen if he has to make a “good face at a bad game”, hiding negative, hostile affects.�
Thus, resentment is a self-poisoning of the soul, which has well-defined causes and consequences. It is a long-term mental attitude that arises from a systematic prohibition on the expression of certain mental movements and affects that are normal in themselves and relate to the basic content of human nature – a prohibition that generates a tendency to certain value illusions and corresponding assessments.
Components of resentment:
– powerlessness, inability to respond immediately, because any response will lead to defeat.– the impulse of revenge, that is, if you didn't manage to answer right away, you want to answer later, even more strongly, but this is only an impulse. Real revenge doesn't happen.
As a result, the feeling changes from the desire for revenge through anger, envy and ill-will to deceit.
Nietzsche (all that I will write further is Scheler's opinion) wrote that resentment is the basis of Christian morality and love. Christian love grew out of this hatred of the Jewish people. Hatred is the root of this love, and this tree strives for light and height, for prey, seduction and goals of this hatred, while the roots of hatred are absorbed into everything that is evil on earth, and take nourishment from there. Jesus, who came as the savior of sinners, the lowly, the poor, and the sick, bringing with him just this roundabout path and temptation in its ugliest form. (This means that the sick and poor are filled with hatred, and they, having failed to get happiness and a sense of deep love on earth, having suffered enough, “viciously” hope to avenge everything after death, because the rich and happy must go to hell, and the torment there is more than perfectly painted. Isn't this vengeance and an appeal to the Big King of Heaven, who will avenge them after death? This is a direct hope that the happy ones on earth will experience all the depths of suffering, and this time eternal.) Slave morality says “No” to the outside world, and thus it initially needs the outside world to say “No”to it. It is not taken from the inside. “Weakness should be transformed into merit, and impotence, which does not repay, into 'kindness', cowardly meanness-into 'humility', and submission to superiors, whom the slave hates, into 'obedience', because this obedience is prescribed by God.” The inoffensiveness of the weak, the very cowardice of which he has plenty, his begging, his inevitable fate of being always waiting, gets here too well called “patience”, it is just as well called virtue; the inability to avenge oneself is called unwillingness to avenge, perhaps even forgiveness (“for they (those who have power)are the ones who have power). they do not know what they are doing – only we know what they are doing!”). They also talk about “loving your enemies” – and sweat at the same time.'
-
-
http://echo.msk.ru/blog/a_goldfarb/1451376-echo/
ALEXANDER GOLDFARB :: BLOG�
====
You lived by the rules-you followed the laws and commandments, paid taxes, obeyed the policeman and the priest, and respected the authorities. But you've been unlucky in your life. Everyone around them grew rich, flourished, and rejoiced. And you have everything wrong – and there is not enough money, and the boss is an idiot, and the wife sleeps with a neighbor and the daughter is rude. In general, you are a loser, a loser, a random guest at the celebration of life. And even though you push the thought away, deep down you know that there is no one to blame but yourself, if there is anyone to blame at all. Maybe you were just born that way? But that doesn't make it any easier for you.
And then you hear on the radio that it's not really your fault. The reason for your non-compliance is not yourself, but Someone who has encroached on your benefits and rights due to you by birth, your Enemy.
And you're not the only one. Everyone like you (class brothers or blood brothers) is under constant threat from the same Enemy (exploiter, European). It is He who is responsible for your misfortunes. And the rules and laws by which you have hitherto lived in peace with him are designed precisely so that you will obey him without a murmur.
And you suddenly realize that you are not a loser at all, and that you have something to be proud of, and something to respect yourself for, and that instead of resigning yourself, you should get up from your knees, straighten your shoulders and realize that the Enemy is to blame for everything.
And you, along with others like you, begin to hate the Enemy. And along with this hatred, your self-esteem returns.
If your thoughts have recently been following this path, and you have unexpectedly simultaneously gained self-respect and hatred for the Enemy, then you suffer from a psychological state called “Resentment” – (Fr. ressentiment – “resentment, resentment, bitterness”), a syndrome of defective aggressiveness.
The concept of resentment was first introduced by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche in his work On the Genealogy of Morality (1887). According to Nietzsche, resentment is a feeling of hostility to what the subject considers to be the cause of their failures (“to the enemy”), impotent envy, “a painful consciousness of the futility of trying to raise their status in life or in society.” The feeling of weakness or inferiority, as well as envy in relation to the “enemy” leads to the formation of a special value system that denies the value system of the “enemy”. The subject creates an image of the “enemy” in order to get rid of feelings of guilt for their own inferiority.
Resentment is a more complex concept than simple envy or dislike. The phenomenon of resentment is the sublimation of feelings of inferiority in a special system of morality. Nietzsche considers it to be decisive in the self-consciousness of “slaves”:
“The slave revolt in morality begins when resentment itself becomes creative and generates values: resentment of those beings who are not capable of a real reaction, a reaction that would be expressed in an act, and who reward themselves with imaginary revenge. While all preeminent morality springs from a triumphant self-affirmation, slave morality says no from the very beginning to the “outside”, “other”, “non-self”: this “No ” turns out to be her creative act. This turn of the appraising gaze-this necessary appeal to the outside, instead of turning to oneself-is precisely what belongs to resentment: slave morality always needs, first of all, an opposing external world for its emergence.”
====
Scheler described this phenomenon well in his book “Resentment in the Structure of Morals”. Resentment is resentment in the sense that it does not disappear, but sinks into the center of the personality and makes you experience the emotion again and again, but not to take revenge.
Further along the Scheler:
Successful revenge quenches the thirst for revenge in the same way as punishing someone who is targeted by the impulse of revenge, for example, self-punishment, sincere forgiveness; this is not resentment.
Envy also disappears if the goods that I envy someone for become my own. This is not a resentment.
Malevolence seeks out in things and people those objects and values that can satisfy it. Dethroning and humiliating, pushing out negative value points in things and people, which are noticeable only because they are found together with clearly expressed positive value points; concentration on negative points, accompanied by a sharp sense of pleasure. Obviously negative attitude towards people, concentration on their negative traits, i.e. to see enemies in everyone, natural aggressiveness. This is not a resentment.
Insidiousness: malevolence sinks even deeper, and this impulse is ready to give itself away at any moment – the way you laugh, some gesture. This is not a resentment.�
Malice tries to find more and more opportunities to gloat and already shows itself to be more independent of certain objects than schadenfreude. This is not a resentment.�
All this is not a resentment, but the stages of its formation. They form a resentment if there is no moral overcoming (in the case of revenge, for example, sincere forgiveness), no action (swearing, waving hands, fighting, etc.), and where this does not happen because such an action or expression is restrained by an even more obvious consciousness of one's own powerlessness. They are “held back by biting their lips” – because of physical or spiritual weakness, out of fear and awe of the one on whom the affects are directed. If a servant who has been badly treated allows himself to “swear in the hall”, he will not fall into the internal “venom” that is characteristic of resentment; but this will happen if he has to make a “good face at a bad game”, hiding negative, hostile affects.�
Thus, resentment is a self-poisoning of the soul, which has well-defined causes and consequences. It is a long-term mental attitude that arises from a systematic prohibition on the expression of certain mental movements and affects that are normal in themselves and relate to the basic content of human nature – a prohibition that generates a tendency to certain value illusions and corresponding assessments.
Components of resentment:
– powerlessness, inability to respond immediately, because any response will lead to defeat.
– the impulse of revenge, that is, if you didn't manage to answer right away, you want to answer later, even more strongly, but this is only an impulse. Real revenge doesn't happen.
As a result, the feeling changes from the desire for revenge through anger, envy and ill-will to deceit.
Nietzsche (all that I will write further is Scheler's opinion) wrote that resentment is the basis of Christian morality and love. Christian love grew out of this hatred of the Jewish people. Hatred is the root of this love, and this tree strives for light and height, for prey, seduction and goals of this hatred, while the roots of hatred are absorbed into everything that is evil on earth, and take nourishment from there. Jesus, who came as the savior of sinners, the lowly, the poor, and the sick, bringing with him just this roundabout path and temptation in its ugliest form. (This means that the sick and poor are filled with hatred, and they, having failed to get happiness and a sense of deep love on earth, having suffered enough, “viciously” hope to avenge everything after death, because the rich and happy must go to hell, and the torment there is more than perfectly painted. Isn't this vengeance and an appeal to the Big King of Heaven, who will avenge them after death? This is a direct hope that the happy ones on earth will experience all the depths of suffering, and this time eternal.) Slave morality says “No” to the outside world, and thus it initially needs the outside world to say “No”to it. It is not taken from the inside. “Weakness should be transformed into merit, and impotence, which does not repay, into 'kindness', cowardly meanness-into 'humility', and submission to superiors, whom the slave hates, into 'obedience', because this obedience is prescribed by God.” The inoffensiveness of the weak, the very cowardice of which he has plenty, his begging, his inevitable fate of being always waiting, gets here too well called “patience”, it is just as well called virtue; the inability to avenge oneself is called unwillingness to avenge, perhaps even forgiveness (“for they (those who have power)are the ones who have power). they do not know what they are doing – only we know what they are doing!”). They also talk about “loving your enemies” – and sweat at the same time.'
http://echo.msk.ru/blog/a_goldfarb/1451376-echo/
ALEXANDER GOLDFARB :: BLOG�
====
You lived by the rules-you followed the laws and commandments, paid taxes, obeyed the policeman and the priest, and respected the authorities. But you've been unlucky in your life. Everyone around them grew rich, flourished, and rejoiced. And you have everything wrong – and there is not enough money, and the boss is an idiot, and the wife sleeps with a neighbor and the daughter is rude. In general, you are a loser, a loser, a random guest at the celebration of life. And even though you push the thought away, deep down you know that there is no one to blame but yourself, if there is anyone to blame at all. Maybe you were just born that way? But that doesn't make it any easier for you.
And then you hear on the radio that it's not really your fault. The reason for your non-compliance is not yourself, but Someone who has encroached on your benefits and rights due to you by birth, your Enemy.
And you're not the only one. Everyone like you (class brothers or blood brothers) is under constant threat from the same Enemy (exploiter, European). It is He who is responsible for your misfortunes. And the rules and laws by which you have hitherto lived in peace with him are designed precisely so that you will obey him without a murmur.
And you suddenly realize that you are not a loser at all, and that you have something to be proud of, and something to respect yourself for, and that instead of resigning yourself, you should get up from your knees, straighten your shoulders and realize that the Enemy is to blame for everything.
And you, along with others like you, begin to hate the Enemy. And along with this hatred, your self-esteem returns.
If your thoughts have recently been following this path, and you have unexpectedly simultaneously gained self-respect and hatred for the Enemy, then you suffer from a psychological state called “Resentment” – (Fr. ressentiment – “resentment, resentment, bitterness”), a syndrome of defective aggressiveness.
The concept of resentment was first introduced by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche in his work On the Genealogy of Morality (1887). According to Nietzsche, resentment is a feeling of hostility to what the subject considers to be the cause of their failures (“to the enemy”), impotent envy, “a painful consciousness of the futility of trying to raise their status in life or in society.” The feeling of weakness or inferiority, as well as envy in relation to the “enemy” leads to the formation of a special value system that denies the value system of the “enemy”. The subject creates an image of the “enemy” in order to get rid of feelings of guilt for their own inferiority.
Resentment is a more complex concept than simple envy or dislike. The phenomenon of resentment is the sublimation of feelings of inferiority in a special system of morality. Nietzsche considers it to be decisive in the self-consciousness of “slaves”:
“The slave revolt in morality begins when resentment itself becomes creative and generates values: resentment of those beings who are not capable of a real reaction, a reaction that would be expressed in an act, and who reward themselves with imaginary revenge. While all preeminent morality springs from a triumphant self-affirmation, slave morality says no from the very beginning to the “outside”, “other”, “non-self”: this “No ” turns out to be her creative act. This turn of the appraising gaze-this necessary appeal to the outside, instead of turning to oneself-is precisely what belongs to resentment: slave morality always needs, first of all, an opposing external world for its emergence.”
====