Max Scheler - Ressentiment Quotes

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To a lesser degree, a secret ressentiment underlies every way of thinking which attributes creative power to mere negation and criticism. Thus modern philosophy is deeply penetrated by a whole type of thinking which is nourished by ressentiment. I am referring to the view that the true and the given is not that which is self-evident, but rather that which is indubitable or incontestable, which can be maintained against doubt and criticism.

Max Scheler
All the seemingly positive valuations and judgments of ressentiment are hidden devaluations and negations.

Max Scheler
The fake love of ressentiment man offers no real help, since for his perverted sense of values, evils like sickness and poverty have become goods.

Max Scheler
Whenever convictions are not arrived at by direct contact with the world and the objects themselves, but indirectly through a critique of the opinions of others, the processes of thinking are impregnated with ressentiment. The establishment of criteria for testing the correctness of opinions then becomes the most important task. Genuine and fruitful criticism judges all opinions with reference to the object itself. Ressentiment criticism, on the contrary, accepts no object that has not stood the test of criticism

Max Scheler
It is peculiar to ressentiment criticism that it does not seriously desire that its demands be fulfilled. It does not want to cure the evil. The evil is merely the pretext for the criticism.

Max Scheler
The old maid with her repressed cravings for tenderness, sex, and propagation, is rarely quite free of ressentiment. What we call prudery, in contrast with true modesty, is but one of the numerous variants of sexual ressentiment. The habitual behavior of many old maids, who obsessively ferret out all sexually significant events in their surroundings in order to condemn them harshly, is nothing but sexual gratification transformed into ressentiment satisfaction. Thus the criticism accomplishes the very thing it pretends to condemn.

Max Scheler
Ressentiment must therefore be strongest in a society like ours, where approximately equal rights (political and otherwise) or formal social equality, publicly recognized, go hand in hand with wide factual differences in power, property, and education.

Max Scheler
When we are told, in the same tone, that these people will be rewarded in heaven for their distress, and that heaven is the exact reverse of the earthly order (the first shall be last), we distinctly feel how the ressentiment-laden man transfers to God the vengeance he himself cannot wreak on the great. In this way, he can satisfy his revenge at least in imagination, with the aid of an other-worldly mechanism of rewards and punishments.

Max Scheler
Ressentiment is always to some degree a determinant of the romantic type of mind. At least this is so when the romantic nostalgia for some past era (Hellas, the Middle Ages, etc.) is not primarily based on the values of that period, but on the wish to escape from the present. Then all praise of the past has the implied purpose of downgrading present-day reality.

Max Scheler
To its very core, the mind of ressentiment man is filled with envy, the impulse to detract, malice, and secret vindictiveness. These affects have become fixed attitudes, detached from all determinate objects. Independently of his will, this man's attention will be instinctively drawn by all events which can set these affects in motion. The ressentiment attitude even plays a role in the formation of perceptions, expectations, and memories. It automatically selects those aspects of experience which can justify the factual application of this pattern of feeling.

Max Scheler