Autor: Scheler, Max

Buch: Ressentiment

Titel: Ressentiment

Stichwort: Einführung 2: Ressentiment: spezifische Strukturen; unbewusste Umdeutung eines positiven Wertes in einen negativen

Kurzinhalt: ... three specific structures of ressentiment: 1. A subconscious emotive detraction of a positive value into a negative value. 2. Ranks among values. 3. Intersubjective comparing.

Textausschnitt: II. SPECIFIC EMOTIVE STRUCTURES OF RESENTMENT

9a Within this general description of ressentiment one can discern three specific structures of ressentiment:

1. A subconscious emotive detraction of a positive value into a negative value.
2. Ranks among values.
3. Intersubjective comparing.

Let us look into these specific components.

1. A subconscious emotive detraction of a positive value into a negative value (eü)

1. Ressentiment persists and perseveres, it was stated, because of an abiding impotency which blocks any possible realization of particular positive values. This, in turn, lets the venom of ressentiment permeate the person's whole inner life and experience, so that the order of values and the order of loving positive values is in a state of disarray. Reasoning about values can not stop the emotive disorder to occur and continue. It might at best recognize the disorder when, for instance, a ressentiment-subject says, "There is something wrong with me." But this is very rare among those subjects, and it neither nullifies the experience of the disorder felt among positive and negative values, nor does it help to rationally recognize the higher values to be attained, i.e., to let the grapes simply what they are, namely, sweet. A insight in emotional experiences is at a rational inventory of oneself. Rational logic is no cure in a flawed experience of values.

9b But there is another side to the detraction lowering of unattainable positive values occurring in ressentiment-feelings. (Fs)

9c While the failure to realize a certain positive value, and while this continues to irk the ressentiment-subject, the feeling of ressentiment, to boot, also raises those values it indeed can realize; that is, those values that the impotency allows the ressentiment-subject to attain: Giving up trying to reach the unattainable sweetness of the grapes, and the fox's self-deception that they are sour anyway, is more valuable to him than granting the grapes their due. In ordered value-feelings this can also occur because, no matter whether the grapes are sweet or sour, they are simply not attainable for an ordinary person, and this settles the issue altogether. However, in the presence of ressentiment-feelings, the disvalue of physical impotency is not admitted. It is even ennobled in the self-deception that they are sour. But -- and this is the very "tragic" in all resentment feelings -- throughout the process of the emotional inversion of value-detraction and value-elevation there remains translucent, no matter how faintly, the true order of values and their ranks, in the background of the entire value-conflict.

10a This simultaneous value detraction and elevation may be graphed in the following way, where "I" stands for the impotence in the feelings of ressentiment and "V" for the value detracted from its proper level: