Trajectory (plain list)
Ressentiment
Named in the Genealogy as the creative force of slave morality, anticipated in Beyond Good and Evil, and still audible in the late psychology of strength and reactivity.
1886 · Anticipates
Beyond Good and Evil · §260
Beyond Good and Evil (1886)
Slave morality sketched before the Genealogy: the revolt of the powerless invents values from below.
In a tour through the many finer and coarser moralities which have hitherto prevailed or still prevail on the earth, I found certain traits recurring regularly together, and connected with one another, until finally two primary types revealed themselves to me, and a radical distinction was brought to light. There is MASTER-MORALITY and SLAVE-MORALITY,--I would at once add, however, that in all higher and mixed civilizations, there are also attempts at the reconciliation of th…
Bei einer Wanderung durch die vielen feineren und gröberen Moralen, welche bisher auf Erden geherrscht haben oder noch herrschen, fand ich gewisse Züge regelmässig mit einander wiederkehrend und aneinander geknüpft: bis sich mir endlich zwei Grundtypen verriethen, und ein Grundunterschied heraussprang. Es giebt Herren-…
Sources: gutenberg:4363 · gutenberg:7204
1887 · Introduces
On the Genealogy of Morality · I §10
On the Genealogy of Morality (1887)
Ressentiment named as the creative force of slave morality — values born of reactive hatred.
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. While every aristocratic morality springs from a triumphant affirmation of its own demands, the slave morality says "no" from the very outset to what is "outside itself," "different from itself,"…
Sources: gutenberg:52319
1887 · Develops
On the Genealogy of Morality · I §13
On the Genealogy of Morality (1887)
The lamb and the bird of prey: the fiction of a neutral subject who “could have” acted otherwise.
But let us come back to it; the problem of another origin of the _good_--of the good, as the resentful man has thought it out--demands its solution. It is not surprising that the lambs should bear a grudge against the great birds of prey, but that is no reason for blaming the great birds of prey for taking the little lambs. And when the lambs say among themselves, "These birds of prey are evil, and he who is as far removed from being a bird of prey, who is rather its opposite…
Sources: gutenberg:52319
1887 · Develops
On the Genealogy of Morality · III §14
On the Genealogy of Morality (1887)
The sick as the greatest danger; ressentiment infects the health of the strong through pity and ideals.
The more normal is this sickliness in man--and we cannot dispute this normality--the higher honour should be paid to the rare cases of psychical and physical powerfulness, the _windfalls_ of humanity, and the more strictly should the sound be guarded from that worst of air, the air of the sick-room. Is that done? The sick are the greatest danger for the healthy; it is not from the strongest that harm comes to the strong, but from the weakest. Is that known? Broadly considered…
Sources: gutenberg:52319
1887 · Comments on
On the Genealogy of Morality · I §10 → Beyond Good and Evil · §260
On the Genealogy of Morality (1887)
Genealogy names what BGE typologised: resentment as slave morality’s creative force.
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. While every aristocratic morality springs from a triumphant affirmation of its own demands, the slave morality says "no" from the very outset to what is "outside itself," "different from itself,"…
Sources: gutenberg:52319
1887 · Develops
On the Genealogy of Morality · I §14
On the Genealogy of Morality (1887)
Ideals manufactured in grimy workshops — resentment overheard as the forge.
Will any one look a little into--right into--the mystery of how _ideals are manufactured_ in this world? Who has the courage to do it? Come! Here we have a vista opened into these grimy workshops. Wait just a moment, dear Mr. Inquisitive and Foolhardy; your eye must first grow accustomed to this false changing light--Yes! Enough! Now speak! What is happening below down yonder? Speak out that what you see, man of the most dangerous curiosity--for now _I_ am the listener. "I …
Sources: gutenberg:52319
1887 · Develops
On the Genealogy of Morality · II §11
On the Genealogy of Morality (1887)
Justice against the plant of resentment — reactive revenge relocated.
A deprecatory word here against the attempts, that have lately been made, to find the origin of justice on quite another basis--namely, on that of _resentment_. Let me whisper a word in the ear of the psychologists, if they would fain study revenge itself at close quarters: this plant blooms its prettiest at present among Anarchists and anti-Semites, a hidden flower, as it has ever been, like the violet, though, forsooth, with another perfume. And as like must necessarily ema…
Sources: gutenberg:52319
1887 · Develops
On the Genealogy of Morality · III §15
On the Genealogy of Morality (1887)
Sick physicians of the sick — ressentiment’s institutional form in the ascetic ideal.
If you have understood in all their depths--and I demand that you should _grasp them profoundly_ and understand them profoundly--the reasons for the impossibility of its being the business of the healthy to nurse the sick, to make the sick healthy, it follows that you have grasped this further necessity--the necessity of doctors and nurses _who themselves are sick_. And now we have and hold with both our hands the essence of the ascetic priest. The ascetic priest must be acce…
Sources: gutenberg:52319
1888 · Comments on
Twilight of the Idols · Things I Owe to the Ancients §4
Twilight of the Idols (1888)
Late contact with Greek psychology of strength versus the reactive modern temper.
I was the first who, in order to understand the ancient, still rich and even superabundant Hellenic instinct, took that marvellous phenomenon, which bears the name of Dionysus, seriously: it can be explained only as a manifestation of excessive energy. Whoever had studied the Greeks, as that most profound of modern connoisseurs of their culture, Jakob Burckhardt of Bâle, had done, knew at once that something had been achieved by means of this interpretation. And in his “_Cult…
Sources: gutenberg:52263