Ressentiment

Abstract

This chapter attempts to circumscribe the character of ressentiment, the affect that plays a prominent role in Nietzsche’s genealogical account of Christian morality. This affect, and the revengefulness that is closely associated with it, is a response to suffering when it is construed as challenging the agent’s standing, understood in a fundamental non-moral sense of having the world reflect her will, or having her presence in the world make a difference in it. Suffering is so construed when it is experienced from the perspective of a special drive, the will to power, or the drive toward bending the world to one’s will. Revenge aims to bolster or restore power when it is threatened, and the adoption of the conceptual apparatus of Christian morality, including its new values, is a particular way to do so: by altering the agent’s will (her values), it alters what counts as power for her.