When Bad Things Happen to Other People (22 page)

Why is 
ressentiment
 any worse than sentimentality? First of all, remember that sentimentality enjoyed a great deal of popularity until this century. What Nietzsche calls 
ressentiment
 never has. European literature in the mid-eighteenth century was dominated by a cult of feeling, itself a reaction to a tendency in philosophy to scorn emotions.16 At base, sentimentality represents a misguided attempt to do something good: to make someone or something objectionable appear more favorable. On some level, however, sentimentality also represents an attempt to deceive and thereby to protect the self. Here sentimentality emerges as closer to moral acceptability than
ressentiment
, for where
ressentiment
also represents an attempt to deceive and thereby protect the self,
ressentiment
requires a downward, as opposed to upward, valuation.
Ressentiment
 represents a misguided attempt to do something bad. Instead of awarding more credit than is due (as in sentimentality),
ressentiment
gives less. Sentimentality touches on emotional generosity, but 
ressentiment
resembles a hardened cynicism.

Nietzsche explains that by transvaluing, the weak enjoy “the ultimate, subtlest, sublimest triumph of revenge.” How does
ressentiment
lead to revenge? And what sort of revenge is in question here? Nietzsche’s answer: the weak reach inside the strong and compel the strong to desire weakness. The weak achieve their revenge when the strong turn against themselves. The mental revenge turns on malice, a hope that things will not go well for the noble or strong. This perversion explains why 
ressentiment
 is much more morally objectionable than sentimentality: maliciousness is more serious than making believe that something is not so bad as it really is. It also indicates that Nietzsche views 
ressentiment
 as a mental, not a physical, operation.

According to Nietzsche, the essence of 
ressentiment
 consists in consciously, perversely denying or denigrating everything one is not. Thus if one is not strong, powerful, or wealthy, one designates such attributes bad, wrong, evil. In the weak this mental revolt takes the place of the revenge they are helpless to exact. For the strong, the story is quite different: they certainly can avenge themselves, though they characteristically refrain from doing so. To have claws and not use them, to be above any 
ressentiment
 or desire for vengeance: that is for Nietzsche the true sign of power (and love) (
A,
 Section 40).

Though the weak may experience their impotence or inferiority in any number of circumstances, the justification for it becomes, according to Nietzsche, in large part (though certainly not exclusively) a 
religious
 phenomenon. He alleges that the priests, the “truly great haters in world history,” have perfected the means for achieving the consolation
ressentiment
 delivers. This consolation does not imply physical violence, for Nietzsche does not view Christianity as a threat to the bodily safety of others (the Crusades and Inquisition notwithstanding).

True, impotence can trigger aggression and rage. An extremely powerful and biological response to the subjective experience of endangerment and cruelty, aggression contributes to the shaping and the vitalization of the self. The rage is a response to a perceived sense of threat and danger, a response that, over time, can become the central, organizing force behind personality. The inclination to rage in a persecuted minority such as the ancient Jews and early Christians incurs Nietzsche’s scorn, though one might expect a more compassionate response. Nietzsche’s outrage that Christians were winning the battle for cultural supremacy in the West nearly two thousand years later made compassion unthinkable.

The notion of impotence underlying Nietzschean 
ressentiment
 figures even more prominently in Scheler’s analysis:

The 
ressentiment
 of cripples or of people of subnormal intelligence is a well-known phenomenon. Jewish 
ressentiment,
 which Nietzsche rightly designates as enormous, finds double nourishment: first in the discrepancy between the colossal national pride of “the chosen people” and a contempt and discrimination which weighed on them for centuries like a destiny, and in modern times through the added discrepancy between formal constitutional equality and factual discrimination. Certainly the extremely powerful acquisitive instinct of this people is due—over and beyond natural propensities and other causes—to a deep-rooted disturbance of Jewish self-confidence. (
Ressentiment
, pp. 33–34)

Scheler, who was born Jewish but later converted to Roman Catholicism, attributes to Jews a “powerful acquisitive instinct” and general impotence to satisfy that instinct. Here “chosen people” is understood not as “chosen to serve” but “chosen for special privileges.” European Jews were, of course, manifestly disempowered, hence an obvious reason for their impotence to acquire material goods. It seems odd to overlook this social fact in alleging their susceptibility as a group to 
ressentiment
. Be that as it may, we are to understand impotence as a necessary, though not sufficient, cause of 
ressentiment
. Today, psychoanalysts call “narcissistic injuries” grave wounds to one’s self-esteem which are coupled with feelings of impotence.
Ressentiment
in the sense I borrow from Nietzsche would be the emotional culmination of various, particular narcissistic injuries.

The Value of 
Schadenfreude

Nietzsche distinguishes between good and bad 
Schadenfreude
, but even
Schadenfreude
of the debasing sort escapes Nietzsche’s censure. Despite some ambivalence about 
Schadenfreude
, Nietzsche recognizes certain benefits in our own setbacks. He maintains that the noble stand to profit a great deal from precisely what the Judeo-Christian injunction to love others as ourselves aims to prevent:

Examine the lives of the best and most fruitful people and peoples and ask yourselves whether a tree that is supposed to grow to a proud height can dispense with bad weather and storms; whether misfortune and external resistance, some kinds of hatred, jealousy, stubbornness, mistrust, hardness, avarice, and violence do not belong among the favorable conditions without which any great growth even of virtue is scarcely possible. The poison of which weaker natures perish strengthens the strong—nor do they call it poison. (
GS,
 Section 19)

Nietzsche remarks in several different places that whatever adversity does not kill us will make us stronger (
Twilight of the Idols
 I, Section 8 and 
Ecce Homo
 I, Section 2). These passages recall Nietzsche’s acknowledgment of the ultimate value of bad conscience (
GM
 II, Section 18), and his vigorous affirmation of the value of the apparently negative. Zarathustra says that “pain too is a joy” and maintains that to say “yes” to a single joy is also to say “yes” “to all woe,” because “all things are entangled, ensnared, enamored” (
Z
 IV, Section 19). An analysis of Nietzsche would be incomplete without mentioning the life-giving dialectic between negative and positive forces in his thought.

Because Nietzsche deemed self-mastery the highest degree of power, he prized suffering and struggle as contributing “style” to character. Ultimate power consists not only in overcoming the negative in existence but also in controlling and channeling one’s impulses—not in condemning and fighting them, as Christians are enjoined to do. Though he may condescend to Christians in particular or the weak in general, Nietzsche neither fears nor abhors “being 
schadenfroh
 with a bad conscience,” nor does he demonize those who succumb to 
Schadenfreude
. Just as Nietzsche compassionately allows that many people can’t survive without Christianity, so too does he believe that the lives of many people would be sadder still without 
Schadenfreude
.

Strong people do not need the consolation
Schadenfreude
offers. What does a strong person, one of life’s winners, look like? Nietzsche tells us:

A well-turned out person...has a taste only for what is good for him; his pleasure, his delight cease where the measure of what is good for him is transgressed...He exploits bad accidents to his advantage; what does not kill him makes him stronger...He is always in his own company, whether he associates with books, human beings, or landscapes...He believes neither in “misfortune” nor in “guilt”: he comes to terms with himself, with others; he knows how to 
forget
—he is strong enough; hence everything must turn out for his best. (
Ecce Homo
 I, Section 2; VI, Sections 266 and 267)

Winners do not fixate on misfortunes—their own or anyone else’s. Winners do not hold grudges. Winners do not have to banish feelings of bitterness and resentment toward others, because winners never really have these feelings. Where Schopenhauer insists that all suffering is deadly serious, Nietzsche’s winner denies that any suffering is.

For Nietzsche, strong people cannot be harmed. This sounds a lot like Socrates’s claim that a good person cannot be harmed (Plato, 
Apology
 41D, 30, D–C). The bad things that can happen to us, Nietzsche and Socrates concur, are of no real importance. The strong do not need the compassion or pity of others, for the strong have themselves. That is enough. Being good or strong, we instinctively focus on and care for ourselves in order to deprive the external world of power over us.

Finally, it cannot be said of Nietzsche that his genius lay more in knowing how to dismiss Schopenhauer’s objections to
Schadenfreude
than in his practical insights on how to undermine or circumvent the
Schadenfreude
of others. Nietzsche recognizes that it can be unpleasant to discover that others are celebrating our misfortunes. Sounding Machiavellian, he warns that “he who exercises a great inner influence upon another must allow free rein to that other from time to time, and on occasion even induce resistance in him: otherwise he will inevitably make for himself an enemy” (
HH
 I, p. 576). Nietzsche also advises us to display our unhappiness, “and from time to time be heard to sigh; for if we let others see how happy and secure we are in spite of suffering and deprivation, how malicious and envious we would make them” (
HH
 II, p. 334)!

How well Nietzsche would have understood the media’s concentration on the sufferings of movie stars, supermodels, rock stars, princesses, themselves often all too ready to speak of unhappy childhoods, bad marriages, aging problems, difficult offspring. We, like the media, simultaneously revere and fear the distance we perceive between divas and ourselves. The suffering of a superstar bridges the gap between him and us; savvy superstars know how to benefit from their own struggles. Our pain and suffering can deflect the envy of others. One of the best ways to circumvent the envy of others is to persuade them that we are struggling in some importantly difficult way. Our public suffering amounts to our private advantage because of the proclivity of others to take pleasure in our misfortunes.

Ressentiment
 holds no positive value for Nietzsche, unlike 
Schadenfreude
. I have argued in this and previous chapters for the moral acceptability of our own 
Schadenfreude
. Should we extend this moral acceptability to the
Schadenfreude
of others? Should we call their celebration of our setbacks moral? Yes.

We moderns like to think that we can control our aggression better than our forebears. We do not turn to spears and beatings nearly so often to express our dissatisfaction with others. At the dawn of a new millennium, however, the objections of others take a different shape. Moral beliefs do battle with one another in the minds of people who do not think alike. Sometimes these battles show up in our public speech; more often, though, we keep them to ourselves. Civilization evolves, and we now find ourselves in the West in a political culture significantly different from that of the last century.

When we object to the political or moral views of others, we more often than not find ourselves changing the subject of conversation. We have learned to be, or at least appear, tolerant. Curiously, we find ourselves in the same position of the high priests who, according to Nietzsche, thought up 
ressentiment
 as a way of mentally avenging ourselves on people we cannot stop.

Nietzsche offers us a way out of this impasse. Far from simply (and falsely) denying that we take pleasure in the setbacks of other people (particularly people who disagree with us), we ought to recognize
Schadenfreude
as a largely inevitable consequence of living in community with others. We ought to strive to make ourselves the sort of people who do not revel in the misfortunes of others. And we ought to recognize how useful the laughter of others can be. As others prey upon our misfortunes as evidence of our supposed mistakes, we ought to examine our lives carefully. Either we will agree with others and recognize the folly of our ways, or we will disagree with them and strengthen our resolve to live as we see fit. The objections of others can strengthen us. Such strengthening, however, will reinforce and deepen the moral divisions between us and them.
Schadenfreude
will live on and on.

Our civilization has in fact advanced, at least with regard to the frequency of physical attacks on others. The spears of yesterday have become the
Schadenfreude
of today. Luckily for us,
Schadenfreude
does not kill. The greatest value of
Schadenfreude
attaches to the legal institution of punishment, I will argue in the next chapter. Punishment restores and preserves social equality, the disruption of which Nietzsche locates at the heart of 
Schadenfreude
. The failure to punish wrongdoers will not only erode political authority, but will also erase a social opportunity to celebrate the suffering of a wrongdoer. Like Emile Durkheim, Nietzsche views popular passions as the driving force of legal punishments.