Ressentiment and Political Wokeism
Overview: I offer a critical examination of On the Genealogy of Morals by Friedrich Nietzsche. While I contend his account of Christian morality fails, I argue Nietzsche’s work is not without its usefulness and provides a plausible psychological framework for understanding how people are drawn to contemporary issues of political correctness, in particular “wokeism.” In the end, I propose whatever else the status of Nietzsche’s moral ontology or epistemology may be, he nevertheless pinpoints something deep, true, and unsettling about human psychology that continues to motivate contemporary political behavior.
Ressentiment and Political Wokeism
Writes Neitzsche, It was the Jews who, in opposition to the aristocratic equation (good = aristocratic = beautiful = happy = loved by the gods), dared with a terrifying logic to suggest the contrary equation, and indeed to maintain with the teeth of the most profound hatred (the hatred of weakness) this contrary equation, namely, “the wretched are alone the good; the poor, the weak, the lowly, are alone the good; the suffering, the needy, the sick, the loathsome, are the only ones who are pious, the only ones who are blessed, for them alone is salvation—but you, on the other hand, you aristocrats, you men of power, you are to all eternity the evil, the horrible, the covetous, the insatiate, the godless; eternally also shall you be the unblessed, the cursed, the damned![1]
This paragraph summarizes Neitzche’s genealogy of morals well. Surely, orthodox Christians and Jews are bound to disagree with Neitzsche’s sweeping assessment, perhaps by suggesting his reductionist account of morality and religious history is explanatorily inadequate to cover the range moral and historical facts, not to mention, misrepresentative of the religious teachings themselves, and certainly question begging against the metaphysical status of moral values and obligations (i.e. that etymology is not moral epistemology, and certainly not moral ontology); but also, just a teensy bit far-fetched. Put that aside, since others have already critiqued Nietzsche's work along those lines[2].
What fascinates me here is just how relevant Neitzsche’s account of ressentiment (definition forthcoming) is today’s cultural climate of political correctness, sexual ethics, abortion, and claims about systematic racism. Thus, while ressentiment may not be able to adequately explain the origins of morality, as such – or even Christian morality – it does seem to offer some explanatory power concerning people who harbor an increasingly deep animus toward others within a certain social, racial, political, or economic category, and especially (perhaps ultimately) to those adhering to traditional conservative/religious beliefs. A few examples immediately spring to mind:
Instead of being virtuous in their chastity, those who abstain from sex until marriage are now frequently castigated as prudes. Or, instead seen defending innocent human life — itself a surely praiseworthy activity— those who oppose abortion are (allegedly) against the rights of women. Finally, instead of having the courage to follow facts even to the point of inconvenience, those who question gender ideology are, accordingly, afforded the label of intolerant bigot, transphobe, etcetera.
All this seems to be precisely the sort of inversion of values to which Neitzsche is speaking of; except it isn’t the result of Christianity; it is, if anything, a secular reaction to it.
The point? To subvert a morality one must refocus the moral data (or put some of the data out of focus) to bestir outrage in a new direction; to upset the population; to trigger a revolt. Women’s rights, for example, are important, and it is easy to see why people should be upset when violations occur. However, the tactic of diverting a population’s attention from the moral relevance of the innocent life inside a woman’s womb is deception, focusing instead on the (again, alleged) invasion of privacy, or the horrors of certain pregnancy situations, such as rape. This, I suggest, is what Nietzsche’s account is best at accounting for: not morality as such, but how to subvert, or perhaps invert, a moral culture when focusing on (or exaggerating) a limited moral data set to invoke outrage. “Truths gone made,” in other words, which is Chesterton’s definition of heresy. We will dive into this further in a moment.
All of this has led to our current moment of political “Wokeism,” which, so far as I can tell, is little more than weaponized ressentiment, whereby people invoke a genuine concern for social justice to justify everything from character assassinations and forced resignations, to the toppling of statues, social media pile-ons, the silencing of political viewpoints, and so on. I’m confident the reader can call to mind their own recent examples of so-called Cancel Culture; they’re essentially everywhere.[3]
Concerning ressentiment, this word Nietzsche leaves untranslated from its original French to imply something of a sort of super-envy; a particularly biting description of which can be found in Max Scheler’s analysis, who describes ressentiment as, “a self-poisoning of the mind which has quite definite causes and consequences. It is a lasting mental attitude, caused by the systematic repression of certain emotions and affects which, as such, are normal components of human nature. Their repression leads to the constant tendency to indulge in certain kinds of value delusions and corresponding value judgments. The emotions and affects primarily concerned are revenge, hatred, malice, envy, the impulse to detract, and spite.”[4]
Neitzche himself would contend the notion of “good” was -- etymologically speaking, throughout a significant swath of history -- strongly associated with power and nobility and aristocracy. To be weak and downtrodden was in some sense to be bad, evil. Says the German philologist, Now the first argument that comes ready to my hand is that the real homestead of the concept ‘good’ is sought and located in the wrong place: the judgment "good" did not originate among those to whom goodness was shown. Much rather has it been the good themselves, that is, the aristocratic, the powerful, the high-stationed, the high-minded, who have felt that they themselves were good, and that their actions were good, that is to say of the first order, in contradistinction to all the low, the low-minded, the vulgar, and the plebeian. It was out of this pathos of distance that they first arrogated the right to create values for their own profit, and to coin the names of such values: what had they to do with utility?[5]
Eventually, the enslaved masses so resented their lot that they devised a revolt, but, because they were too feeble to initiate a truly physical overthrow, they conducted a moral revolt – an inversion of values, as it were. The purpose? To get people to see the good as evil, and vice versa, to restructure society and displace the powers that be.
Nietzsche claims it was the Jews who were primarily successful in this revolt, All the world's efforts against the ‘aristocrats,’ the ‘mighty,’ the ‘masters,’ the ‘holders of power,’ are negligible by comparison with what has been accomplished against those classes by the Jews—the Jews, that priestly nation which eventually realised that the one method of effecting satisfaction on its enemies and tyrants was by means of a radical transvaluation of values, which was at the same time an act of the cleverest revenge.[6]
Importantly, ressentiment signals not just jealousy, but blame. Thus, the man or woman of ressentiment, as it were, is looking for somebody to scapegoat, which typically involves some person of Category X (insert race, economic status, political affiliation, religion, etcetera) who is to be blamed because of their being Category X. Ressentiment is not merely an acknowledgement of one’s failings or lack of unearned benefits or lower social/economic status, but an attempt to explain one’s particular lot in life as precisely not a matter of personal responsibility, unintended (apparent) misfortune, or perhaps just a confluence of factors some of which may be irreducibly complex, but the result of somebody else, end of story. The parallels to contemporary society are, I suggest, unsettling.
To reiterate, and expand upon, some contemporary examples playing up ressentiment: People who promote the abolition of abortion are frequently portrayed as oppressive to women, perhaps even misogynists[7]; whereas those who question same-sex marriage are depicted as wanting to deny basic human rights; further, people who derive unearned benefits (perhaps from being in a majority population; itself often correlative with skin color) are not only “privileged” but the principle reason why others who are not included in that category have failed to attain status, success, and so on. The claims are not just largely ad hominem, but meant to invoke outrage – indeed, a form of ressentiment. It is not just that such assertions are (at best) lacking in nuance and overlooking other important explanatory factors for why disparities occur[8], but they are always morally manipulative, charging people’s emotions. i.e. intended at inciting revolt.
We see this in Nietzsche: The revolt of the slaves in morals begins in the very principle of resentment becoming creative and giving birth to values—a resentment experienced by creatures who, deprived as they are of the proper outlet of action, are forced to find their compensation in an imaginary revenge.[9]
An imaginary revenge? This sounds like how certain public voices have tried to explain the predicament of obesity within the African American community on racism.[10] The problem here is not just one of overlooking other possible explanatory factors (i.e. genetic variations[11], general upward trends in America’s eating habits/caloric consumption[12], family upbringing[13], or just personal-responsibility) but casting blame on other people for something people dislike about their current situation, or see as problematic.
Undoubtedly, stress may cause people to make less than ideal food decisions and I certainly wouldn’t deny that racism may play some explanatory role. But how explanatory could that be? (Who in their right mind, when evaluating the issue of obesity in America, would try to reduce it to just one thing in any instance??) Even if racial differences are observed in the data pool racism cannot be *the* cause of obesity – how could it be, because obesity affects people of all backgrounds – lest we want to assume racism is working in all directions to make people fat. I suggest the same moral-move is being made as mentioned above: focusing on some truth – whatever its degree – at the expense of other relevant and perhaps more significant truths, to invoke outrage; in a word, ressentiment.
Now, one mustn’t say – nor should they say – there is no truth in the claims fueling ressentiment. In fact, it is precisely because there is (typically) some truth that otherwise exaggerated assertions can be effective. However, the question is how explanatorily sufficient are these proposals, and my contention is they often play only a minor role in the situations where they are being invoked by those who are not so much interested in getting to the best explanation, but, rather, the most politically convenient explanation, particularly as useful for staging a political movement by fostering ressentiment.
It is precisely because we are such moral creatures that we can be manipulated when the moral facts are distorted or presented unevenly. We see violations of human rights as something worth fighting against, but the question that is seldom asked in contemporary political conversation is whether something counts as a right in the first place, and how we come to that conclusion. The manipulative play invoking ressentiment is to take something we normally care significantly about – say, equal rights under the law – accuse some category of people of violating that precious entity, or preventing us from having it altogether, which channels moral outrage, often to the point of overriding reason. Divisions are created. People are scapegoated.
However, and to push back on Neitzche’s example of the Jewish transvaluation of good and evil, I think the transvaluation of morals is more subtle than initially presented. It is not that people are somehow duped into seeing evil as such as good, and vice versa — that would be impossible. There is no culture, for example, that sees stabbing your friend in the back as a virtue, as C.S. Lewis pointed out (what you must do is convince that person that your friend is actually your enemy). The inversion, rather, is one of not seeing the complete moral picture, in getting people to see only a limited perspective, such that a policy or practice may appear good, but when considered in relation to all the relevant data, is, in fact, immoral.
For example: it is alleged that women are not afforded equal rights under the law to rule their own bodies where abortion is outlawed, perhaps because men cannot tolerate the idea of equality of sexes. Of course, this is a flagrant distortion, because there is a morally relevant fact to be considered and we all know what that is. The life of the unborn. Yet one can see how this could fuel ressentiment between the sexes, because the argument is frequently presented with an incomplete set of moral facts, and may even be presented alongside anecdotes of genuinely sexist men to supply plausibility (guilt by association is a powerful rhetorical tactic). Either way, the phenomena of transvaluation is not of people wanting evil for the sake of evil because they somehow see evil as good, but only seeing part of the moral picture, and so favoring one good (say, privacy or bodily autonomy) at the expense of a higher, more important good (the right to life). They fail to consider the moral rule which is relevant to the situation, and so immoral acts are engaged in, even though they perceive their actions to be good, or have at least been able to rationalize them as such. Furthermore, because of how the situation is presented, they are able to feel legitimately angry at those who hold the opposing view, because they legitimately believe (or have rationalized themselves into the belief) that such opposition is inherently oppressive, evil, maligned.
Returning to another example, it is often alleged that conservatives/religious want to deny marriage equality to people with same-sex attraction, but again, the critical question is whether marriage (properly understood) is something than can actually be attained between people of the same sex, or whether we are talking about something different. Such a question bears heavily on whether any rights are actually being denied. But since that question is frequently omitted, ressentiment is fostered, since for many people, it does seem like certain people are being treated unfairly, perhaps because of Person Y’s religious or political beliefs, which may appear in themselves arbitrary or unprincipled. And certainly that would be worth fighting against, in many instances.
So it is not as if morality is being completely rewritten; really, if anything, it is only selective application of moral intuitions that drives ressentiment. People, I contend, typically care about the same things (fair play, justice, etcetera); the question is simply whether they are considering all the relevant moral facts when making their political decisions. I argue that concerning ressentiment the answer is almost always in the negative. It is precisely because the data is being presented in a skewed or distorted or incomplete fashion that people are being morally manipulating into making what are otherwise immoral decisions when all the relevant data is accounted for.
Of course, there is another way to bestir ressentiment, which is connected to many of the examples above, and that is through redefinition of terms, something Neitzche himself, in tracing etymological origins of words, would probably be infinitely fascinated to witness in our contemporary political climate. One convenient example of such is racism. For I believe it is fair to say that most people have understood racism to involve the belief that some races possess more moral worth than others (metaphysically, racism involves a fallacy of accident). It is a vile attitude, enacted through individual action and belief, and worthy of condemnation. However, recent movements and published work centered on combating racism have drastically changed the traditional understanding, such that racism is more often linked to a system which has little to do with individual behavior.[15] The consequences of such redefinition are that a person can be racist (or a white supremacist) simply in virtue of being part of a system in which disparities exist, a system which may (admittedly) have no individual racists whatsoever.
I do not intend to argue for or against the idea of whether systems can be racist (personally, I find the claim unintelligible, but leave that aside); I only mean to point out what an exceedingly Nietzschean move this is. Racism is a rhetorically charged term, such that hardly any person in polite society wants that label attached to them. It is a term (thankfully) most people have become repulsed by, because of the moral depravity of racist behavior. The rhetorical move of redefining racism, then, involves the harnessing of this cultural disgust, manipulating it and re-channeling it. Thus, it is used to foster ressentiment. People now culturally despise racists, see them as evil and worth opposing. Only now people who are not racists — and would normally not be deserving of condemnation — are by simple re-definition racists whether they know it or not, and frequently on the receiving end of moral invective, via ressentiment.
I offer only a diagnosis, with no prescription. I cannot pretend to be hopeful in this situation, because when moral energies are furiously manipulated, it is hard to see how they can be quickly set right again. Perhaps for the ultimate analysis, we must turn away from Neitzche, and toward Plato -- who Ed Feser recently argues predicted Woke Tyranny[16] -- to better understand why Plato considered democracy the basest of all political regimes, overrun by emotion and appetite, whereas what is highest and most noble (reason) in human persons, is set aside. In other words, perhaps Plato provides insights into what makes the fostering of large-scale ressentiment possible in the first place — that is, a society that lacks virtue and moral understanding, and has for some time— and, perhaps, ideas on how to reverse course, if such a reversal is possible.
Notes:
[1] Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, at Project Gutenberg, at Gutenberg.org, 30.
[2] “We believe that the Christian values can very easily be perverted into ressentiment values and have often been thus conceived. But the core of Christian ethics has not grown on the soil of ressentiment. On the other hand, we believe that the core of bourgeois morality, which gradually replaced Christian morality ever since the 13th century and culminated in the French Revolution, is rooted in ressentiment. In the modern social movement, ressentiment has become an important determinant and has increasingly modified established morality.” Source: Max Scheler, “Ressentiment” at Humanities & Social Change International Foundation, at hscif.org.
[3] Ross Douthat, “10 Theses About Cancel Culture” at The New York Times (14 July 2020), at nytimes.com.
[4] Scheler, “Ressentiment,” 4.
[5] Nietzsche, Genealogy, 20.
[6] Ibid, 30.
[7] Jill Filipovic, “A new survey shows what really interests ‘pro-lifers’: control of women,” at The Guardian (22 August 2019) at TheGuardian.org.
[8] Thomas Sowell offers a careful analysis of social and economic disparities and marshalls considerable evidence in favor of his thesis that disparities cannot be explained by any one factor, including discrimnation, in his book Discrimination and Disparities (Thomas Sowell, Discrimination and Disparities [Basic Books: New York, NY], 5 March 2019.
[9] Nietzsche, Genealogy, 35.
[10] Black Women OWN the Conversation, Twitter post, 16 September 2019 at twitter.com
[11] Guanjie Chen, et al, “Genome-wide analysis identifies an african-specific variant in SEMA4D associated with body mass index,” Obesity: A Research Journal (13 March 2017), at https://doi.org/10.1002/oby.21804.
[12] Drew Desilver, “What’s on your table? How America’s diet has changed over the decades” at Pew Research Center (13 December 2016), at pewresearch.org
[13] Laura A. Gray, et al, “Family lifestyle dynamics and childhood obesity: evidence from the millennium cohort study,” BMC Public Health (2018), at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5971431/.
[14] “The Truth Behind Racial Disparities in Fatal Police Shootings,” at Research@Michigan State University (2019) at research.msu.edu.
[15] Robin DiAngelo, White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism (Beacon Press, Boston), 26 June 2018.
[16]Edward Feser, “Plato Predicted Woke Tyranny,” at Edward Feser blog (17 July 2020), at edwardfeser.blogspot.com.