Nietzsche Ressentiment

In On the Genealogy of Morality Nietzsche uses the word ressentiment to, in simple terms, represent a deeply rooted resentment but his interpretation goes further than that. Nietzsche explains that ressentiment arises when people realize that they are inferior to some others but rather than blaming themselves for this they blame those others. These people “being denied the proper response of action, compensate for it only with imaginary revenge”. They experience inferiority not in terms of themselves but in terms of others. Nietzsche describes this as something that is characteristic of the weaker people. He says that while a stronger person may experience this feeling it would not last very long but for the weak it defines their character.

When the weaker people - “the slaves” – are wronged by stronger people – “the masters” – they are unable to avenge themselves and instead feel ressentiment towards them. Their hate of the masters takes the form of ressentiment and becomes a strong and dominant emotion which defines their morality. The idea of ressentiment is crucial in the idea of slave morality as it is the cause of it. Nietzsche explains that “in order to come about, slave morality first has to have an opposing, external world”. Slave morality “is basically a reaction” to master morality so it is necessary to discuss master morality in order to understand slave morality. Master morality is practiced by the stronger people – “the masters”. The idea is that these people hold the power to make the definitions and thus define themselves as good and those unlike themselves as bad. Thus the noble, strong and powerful become good and the weak, cowardly and shy become the bad. The idea of good originates from the noble people themselves and the

He believes that the “noble method of valuation” or master morality is preferable. Nietzsche dislikes slave morality because it comes about from hatred for others. Rather than seeing their own inferiority and working to remedy this in some way people hate others for their superiority. With the slave mentality there is a large notion of the afterlife and “the slave” is focused on this afterlife rather than the present. He dislikes that ressentiment makes people focus less on themselves and on self-improvement. He further argues that while master mentality does misjudge the image of the common man it “remains far behind the distortion with which the entrenched hatred and revenge of the powerless man attacks his opponent”. Master mentality is at its basis positive, “seeking out its opposite only so that it can say ‘yes’ to itself even more thankfully and exultantly” unlike slave morality which “says ‘no’ on principle to everything that is ‘outside’, ‘other’, ‘non-self’” and is thus rooted in negativity. When master mentality dips into negativity its “concept ‘low’, ‘common’, ‘bad’ is only a pale contrast created after the event compared to its positive basic concept” and thus this mentality is “saturated with life and passion”. With slave morality even the positive aspects stem from negativity. For instance the idea