In this essay I shall look at whether Nietzsche was right that Judeo-Christian morality has its psychological origin in resentment. For Nietzsche, a lot of human action which appears great has indeed been actioned for slavish reasons and rather than imparting an actual increase in power, these actions only serve to promote a perceived sense of increased power (Foot, 2002). From our limitations we are presented with our weaknesses, and these weaknesses can grow into a ressentiment for those who exhibit themselves as our superior. This has the causal effect of the subordinate’s efforts to topple these masters and promote their own superiority. This ressentiment is what Nietzsche wants us to believe is at the root of the psychological origins of Judeo-Christian morality. I will suggest that ressentiment alone is not enough to force this shift in morality and that although the person driven by this ressentiment may claim to hate and want to destroy their superiors, they are also reliant upon them.
Nietzsche’s concept of ressentiment is close to the English meaning of the word resentment but holds within it a more poisoned bitterness, one that has been kept bottled up and festering for a long time. Nietzsche uses this idea of ressentiment in the context of developing his famous account of master and slave mortality. In his Genealogy of Morals, represented by the Romans the master morality is the morality of the life loving and strong. It is the morality of those who love adventure, those who delight in creativity and in their own sense of purpose and assertiveness. On the other hand, the slave morality is the morality of the weak and the humble - the “Priestley” Jews of the text - those who feel victimised and afraid to strike out into the world.
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These weaklings are chronically passive because they are afraid of the strong, and as a result the weak feel frustrated that they cannot get what they want from life. They become envious of the strong and they also secretly start to hate themselves for being so cowardly and weak – but it is difficult for one to live thinking that he or she is hateful, so the weak invent a rationalisation. A rationalisation that tells them that they are good and moral exactly because they are weak and passive.
It is a rationalisation that a clever weakling is never quite going to convince himself of due to the internal damage that this would cause him. While the strong and the rich will carry on getting stronger and richer, often laughing at weaker men, the clever weakling will feel such a combination of self-loathing and envy of his enemies that he will need to lash out. He will feel the urge to hurt his enemy, but of course he cannot risk direct physical confrontation as he is a weakling; his only weapons are words - and so, Nietzsche argued, the weakling becomes extremely clever with words. They will say that patience, humility, obedience and being on the side of the weak and humble are virtues and that the opposites of those things are not only bad but are actually evil. Aggressiveness, pride, independence and being physically and/or materialistically successful are all those which must be condemned. “Blessed are the meek” said Jesus in his Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5.5).
Nietzsche comments on how the concepts of “bad” and “evil”, although both being the opposite of “good”, differ by drawing our attention to the fact that there were two separate concepts of “good” in co-existence. The “evil” that a man of ressentiment professed is exactly that which a noble man would refer to as “good”. All this thought and hatred – this ressentiment - had culminated in the creation of the concept of evil, and with this, the identity of the noble man was one that embodied this “evil”. These are the things Nietzsche presents as the genesis of the Judeo-Christian morality scheme that is still prevalent today.
Matt McManus suggests that the strength and power generated by ressentiment is just a facade (McManus, 2019). That the motivation behind all these acts “is a personal and collective weakness which stifles all efforts to truly overcome its opposition.” He states that those driven by resentment may truly hate and wish destruction upon those who lord over them but that they also rely upon these nobles - that without them the resentful have no-one to feel morally superior over. It is this that renders resentment an ineffective force alone, it may appear to have power and bite but is not enough to enforce change on its own merit. The person that can affect such a change will be one who does not concern himself with the opinions of others but strives towards his own ends and values. This is a person who would not be resentful.
That this change would appear to require being forwarded by a strong, driven and creative type, a type of exactly the kind that the resentful were trying to overcome seems to make the argument circular.
Therefore, although ressentiment certainly played a part in the origin of the Judeo-Christian morality- as it was the Jews who rejected and reversed the aristocratic value equation to undermine the authority of the noble and strong Romans - ressentiment seems not a strong enough force on its own to usher in this reversal under its own steam. In fact, it seems that the Jews were dependent upon the Romans as the power of their resentment was borne from the feelings of moral superiority that this relationship bred.
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