Autor: Scheler, Max

Buch: Ressentiment

Titel: Ressentiment

Stichwort: Einführung 4: Ressentiment: intersubjektives Vergleichen; Kant (Anfang d. Menschheitsgeschichte); Wettbewerb - R. (Sklaverei); Beispiel: "arrivist" (der Streber); Illusion: Verbesserung durch Ethik; Scheelsucht

Kurzinhalt: A society beset with social discrepancies and competition is a most fertile ground for the psychic venom of ressentiment ... Whenever an individual is unable to face his self and instead loses himself and dissolves into external, societal relations to ...

Textausschnitt: 3. Intersubjective comparing (eü)

16a
3. This brings us to the third component in the emotive structure of ressentiment. All ressentiment feelings necessitate active or passive, intersubjective acts of "comparing" with others, in particular with those who have no ressentiment feelings. (Fs)

16b In this regard, an important factor concerning the phenomenology of intersubjective experience commonly referred to as the problem of the "I" and the "Thou," should be mentioned here. In phenomenological discussions this, the role of acts of comparing with others is rarely, if at all, seen in its significance. It appears that in pertinent literature authored by such thinkers as M. Buber, E. Husserl and E. Levinas among many others, little or no mention is made on the constitutive role of passive and active comparing with others. No matter if there is intersubjective ressentiment present, comparing lies at the very root of any intersubjective experience. Indeed, it can be held that without it, no co-experience of a person with another person can occur. (Fs)

16c Comparing is independent of whether my ego presupposes the presence of an alter-ego, a position held by Scheler since 1913, or whether an alter-ego presupposes an ego, something which E. Husserl suggested. (Fs)

16d Comparing with others is at the root of each alternative. It appears that the significance of comparing was first seen by I. Kant in his essay, "Mutmasslicher Anfang der Menschengeschichte," (The Probable Beginning of Human History). Kant states here that the first "stirrings" of reason consisted in making "comparisons" between objects given to the nutritive drive, on the one hand, with those given not in this drive, on the other, as visible but non-eatable objects. Comparing, says Kant, provoked enlargement of knowledge in that the first human beings were "renegades" from the spells of natural drives which drove them to "toy with the nature's voice." Comparing, Kant goes on to say, pushed the first humans to the "rim of an abyss" and into an eternity which, in turn, made them free. Both reason and freefom, therefore, are born together and in conjunction with the first act of comparing. (Fs)

17a Specifically, a person filled with ressentiment is provoked to compare his weakened value-feelings with those of persons having no ressentiment. This is the reason why the ressentiment-subject can at all elevate the values of his powerlessness. He even gets an aberrated satisfaction by emotively elevating negative values on a more praiseworthy level, but where they do not belong. He remains, as we indicated earlier, faced with the unattainability of those values that his ressentiment feeling keeps on tussling with in vain and which he detracts on a lower, less praiseworthy level. Ressentiment feelings just do not cease to be encapsuled in emotive comparing between "elevation" of inferior and negative values and the emotive failure to completely deprecate unattainable, positive values. (Fs)

17b Intersubjective comparing also bears heavily on the nature of society itself. A society beset with social discrepancies and competition is a most fertile ground for the psychic venom of ressentiment with its value-deceptions to leak into all walks of life. The opposite of this holds when individuals freely accept the social stations they are born in and where there is little or no competition. The pervasive slavery in ancient Rome, for example, apparently did not generate ressentiment to speak of against Roman masters. To be born a slave at the time was felt to be a natural state. Neither Aristotle in his Nicomachean Ethics, nor Plato in his Republic perceive an omen of possible upheavals when they touch upon the theme of social classes. Accepting the social bed one was born in was, right or wrong, the order of the day, and contributed to some communal feelings of solidarity which modern societies are not prone to develop. (Fs) (notabene)

17c By contrast, any group which neither freely accepts different social levels nor individual persons of higher stations will -- as in a competitive society -- will be haunted by ressentiment. For this reason, the intensity of active comparing with others is especially obvious in the competition of contemporary society. Dishing out a myriad of awards -- a symbol of competition -- for whatever and sometimes even for insignificant so-called accomplishments, has turned into all but a cosmetic practice. The intensity of competition lets awards mushroom everywhere and for almost anything, sometimes for such oddities as the worst movie or ugliest grimace of the year. One can even apply for and buy awards. They are supposed to make an awardee comfortable; yet others, like ressentiment-subjects, to be sure, less comfortable. In many walks of life including business, awards are dished out with a tacit psychological motivation to spur others to emulate the "role models" showing their awards and thus to encourage more productivity, not necessarily for wage increments, and more of trolling for them. (Fs)

2. Kommentar (23.03.13), zu oben: Das erinnert mich sehr an Kolnais Verständnis von Hierarchie und Privileg.

18a Scheler gives a salient example for competitive feelings of resentment based in a psychic impotency, by mentioning a type of person he calls the "arrivist" (der Streber). The arrivist is a person who incessantly tries to "arrive" at the top, outdoing his fellow persons at any cost. This person-type comes close to certain "overachievers" today. He is unable to love, to give and forgive, to sacrifice, to admit defeat with his head up, to make friends, to be content with his own self. He is impotent to enjoy the value and quality of his life. He is good at smirking rather than smiling in friendship. Impervious and sometimes stiff as his personality is, his motivation to do overwork and crave for perfection is not motivated by realizing a common good like that of a corporation, a company, nation of church. Rather, his impotency to fill the deep gaps in his hollow personality generates the constant urge to do better than, and win over others in public and to fish for social esteem and respect. Marks for excellence acquired in school, business or elsewhere, cover up the personal dearth which makes him a social loner rather than a friends, sharing, and have compassion. (Fs)

19a In society material overachieverism plays also into applied ethics, so called, which tries to seek solutions for such moral dilemmas as abortion, racketeering, euthanasia, cruelty to animals, substitute motherhood, cloning genes and many more moral problems whose solution can not keep up from the fast pace of technology from which they in part originate. One avoids asking what this ethics is applied "from." And there is its impotency. Applied ethics like business, legal, or medical ethics, ethics for nursing, ethics for the police and "ethics committees" are indispensable for perceiving relevant states of affairs but appear to be impotent to encourage individual inspection into the moral tenor of the individual person. Instead, applied ethics favors to seek solutions for societal dilemmas by open debate alone. There is nothing wrong with this as long as a recourse to philosophical foundations of professional ethics is articulated, say, those provided by Aristotle, Kant or Mill. Applied ethics not infrequently presupposes that if one is able to turn society as a whole around for the better and to improve its political institutions and legal systems, the individual, too, will, in turn, also become good. But all careful investigations into the foundations of ethics have shown that the very opposite is the case: namely, that it is first the individual person's moral self-inspection, improvement of his actions, careful cultivation of self-responsibility and love for others will improve a society, its institutions and legal systems. It is easy to shift blame on anything but oneself, a point Scheler makes in order to indicate there may be blatant but hidden ressentiment. Likewise, it is easy for an arrivist to work for any goal but for that of his own moral standing. Whenever an individual is unable to face his self and instead loses himself and dissolves into external, societal relations to elude his self, there is an index of ressentiment possible. Scheler alluded to this in 1913 as "alienation" (Entfremdung). (Fs)

19b Having explained the three components of the structure of ressentiment (1) the emotive detraction or positive values, (2) the ranks among values, and (3) intersubjective comparing, there is no further need to analyze the various instances of ressentiment cases Scheler offers in his investigation. (Fs)

20a But two technical remarks may be added here instead, before reading the text. The first pertains to the initial forms of resentment Scheler mentions and which merge into ressentiment proper when the above given structure is at hand. These initial forms of ressentiment are: revenge, malice, envy, spite, "Scheelsucht" and "Schadenfreude." The two latter German words, ask for some explanation because there are no adequate English equivalents for them. (Fs)

20b German "Scheelsucht" refers to an uninterrupted blind impulse to detract. When people deride classical music, or rock, because they have no appreciation of either, there is not necessarily ressentiment involved but likes or dislikes. But when someone derides anything he comes across with, there is a blind value detraction present. There is neither a particular, nor a particular class of objects around this person which is not subject to his derision. He suffers from a plain, continued obsession to detract and to belittle the value of whatever, indeed that of the whole world. If, however, the latter is the case, such a person may be turn desperate and suicidal. In very intense cases of the kind a person may become suicidal. The word "Scheelsucht" is hardly used in German parlance. But its literal meaning fits well with what all that has been said. The more common adjective of the noun "Scheelsucht" is: "scheel," which means "cross-eyed." And "scheelsuechtig" means to have a very strong need to feel askance at others, to disparage. In our context, then, the word would figuratively translate into being "cross-valued" in the sense of the above mentioned inversion of value detraction and value elevation. (Fs)

Kommentar (24.03.13): Scheelsucht - scotosis

20c The word "Schadenfreude," on the other hand, is sometimes used in English, and refers to reveling in someone else's bad luck and misfortune. For example, the disappointed fans of a badly losing basketball team may suddenly revel over an unanticipated series of bad luck of their opposing team trying in vain till the end of the game to get the ball into the net, and losing the game after all. (Fs)

21a The second technical remark pertains to the German Collected Edition of Scheler's philosophy: the Gesammelte Werke. Presently, it comprises fourteen volumes, published from 1954 to 1965 by Francke Verlag, Bern, Switzerland; and from 1986 on by Bouvier Verlag, Bonn, Germany. From 1954 to 1969 Max Scheler's widow, Maria Scheler, was its editor, and from 1970 on, the present writer has borne undivided responsibility for the edition. (Fs)

21b An up to date list of English translations of Scheler's works is contained in: Max Scheler. On Feeling, Knowing, and Valuing. Edited with an Introduction by Harold J. Bershady. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, London, 1992. (Fs)