12 quotes
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.
Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912)
The “kingdom of God” has become the “other world,” which stands mechanically beside “this world”—an opposition unknown to the strongest periods of Christianity.
Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912)
We have a tendency to overcome any strong tension between desire and impotence by depreciating or denying the positive value of the desired object.
Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912)
Antiquity believed that the forces of love in the universe were limited. Therefore they were to be used sparingly,and everyone was to be loved only according to his value.
Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912)
All the seemingly positive valuations and judgments of ressentiment are hidden devaluations and negations.
Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912)
When we cannot obtain a thing, we comfort ourselves with the reassuring thought that it is not worth nearly as much as we believed.
Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912)
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.
Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912)
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.
Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912)
The ultimate goal of the arriviste’s aspirations is not to acquire a thing of value, but to be more highly esteemed than others. He merely uses the “thing” as an indifferent occasion for overcoming the oppressive feeling of inferiority which results from his constant comparisons.
Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912)
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.
Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912)
In the ancient notion of love, on the other hand, there is an element of anxiety. The noble fears the descent to the less noble, is afraid of being infected and pulled down. The “sage” of antiquity does not have the same firmness, the same inner certainty of himself and his own value, as the genius and hero of Christian love.
Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912)
If the awareness of our limitations begins to limit or to dim our value consciousness as well—as happens, for instance, in old age with regard to the values of youth—then we have already started the movement of devaluation which will end with the defamation of the world and all its values. Only a timely act of resignation can deliver us from this tendency toward self-delusion.
Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912)