180188 LPS Resentment, Ressentiment, Resilience (2024S)

In recent times, the term 'resentment' – or 'Ressentiment' (capitalized for legibility) – frequently surface in discussions about our social and political climate, both on global and local scales. This concept appears to have gained popularity as a means to describe and explain sociopolitical dynamics, based in the attribution of a collective sentiment, oftentimes containing hostile emotions directed against specific groups, such as immigrants or a political opposition. The notion of a 'politics of resentment' points explicitly to how this collective sentiment is assumed to motivate political agendas.
In these contexts, resentment/Ressentiment appears to denote a collective emotion, one that is in some way intertwined with other emotions like indignation, anger, frustration - as a response to perceived unfairness and injustices - coupled with a desire for revenge - thereby oftentimes carrying an implicit moral undertone. However, despite the appeal of explaining sociopolitical dynamics mono-causally through a lens of resentment/Ressentiment, a closer look reveals that the precise meaning we assign to this concept is not as clear-cut as it might initially seem. Is it an emotion, a sentiment, a psychological condition, a moral vice, a psychopathy? In what ways does it differ from (complex) emotions or moral emotions? Can we categorize it as a form of anger, indignation, or hate?

Moreover, we are confronted with two terms - resentment and Ressentiment - which, though both etymologically rooted in the French 'ressentir' and often used interchangeably – spark ongoing debates about how to individuate them. While resentment is associated frequently with Strawson’s work on reactive attitudes, Ressentiment activates specific connotations leading back to Friedrich Nietzsche's and Max Scheler’s exploration of the concept (the latter being the focus of this course).

Although Ressentiment is seen by Scheler to be similar to rancor or the act of holding a grudge, it is crucially rooted in an inability to express or act upon feelings such as envy, hate, or revenge. This sense of powerlessness or inability ('Gefühl des Nichtkönnens'/'Ohnmacht’) is crucial: It is not merely the presence of emotions like a desire for revenge or envy, but their non-expression — be it through forgiveness or taking revenge — and the conscious awareness of one’s inability to act, that culminates in Ressentiment. Scheler describes Ressentiment as “the repeated experiencing and rumination of a particular emotional response reaction against someone else, which leads this emotion to sink more deeply and little by little to penetrate the very heart of the personality” until it becomes “self-poisoning.”

In this course, we will follow the trail of this term, diving into various proposals from the seminal work by Max Scheler to more contemporary contributions, investigating the different conceptions of both terms. We will engage in detailed comparative work, analysing the different conditions proposed to individuate Ressentiment. This poses somewhat of a challenge due to the different methodological approaches (e.g., phenomenological, analytical, ethical, psychoanalytical) from which these proposals stem.

Students should be interested in topics of applied philosophy as well as analytical precision.