In part one, we covered the phenomenon of ressentiment in detail. Although I have tried to lay out the terminology again for the benefit of the reader, reading the first essay would aid greatly in understanding the present one.

Introduction

We must now turn to the question whether Christian morality in general and Christian love in particular as such constitute a resentful system of values, characteristic of the slave morality that Nietzsche so diligently warns against in his writings. Upon an initial analysis, there would seem to be some currency to the accusation. After all, we are continuously admonished in the gospels to have concern for the poor and downtrodden; meanwhile, humility is exalted to the highest place in the table of virtues. In the Sermon on the Mount, we are told unambiguously that it is in fact “the meek [who] shall inherit the earth,” not those the world considers strong (Mt. 5:5). We find the apostle Paul waxing eloquent upon this theme when he unabashedly declares that “God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty” (1 Cor. 1:27). This being the case, it is hard to read Paul’s statement “when I am weak, then am I strong” (2 Cor. 12:10) as anything other than a not so subtle hint as to his own sure election.

Read straightforwardly, it is hard not to read the above as a textbook case of the value delusion of which we had cause to speak in our first essay. Have not noble and vital values been turned upon their head? The supreme Deity exalts the weak and checks those who are strong according to the world. Ostensibly, we are being goaded to treat with suspicion power, wealth, status, and other such endowments antique man would unequivocally consider to be goods. Of course, such men may redeem themselves, provided they renounce such goods completely, or to a lesser degree by at least having respect for the weak and imparting to them some share of the goods they find themselves in possession of.

Interpreted cynically, Christianity is a system of values contrived by persons of a slavish spiritual constitution, masquerading as the absolute truth. Such persons, impelled by the Will to Power that moves both noble and ignoble, make use of this system as an instrument of psychological manipulation to control those who are vitally stronger than them. In a word, Nietzsche’s slave morality.

Ressentiment and Moral Value Judgment

Max Scheler considers one of the most important discoveries of modern ethics to be that of the existence of several “moralities.” By morality he means “a system of preference between the values themselves.”^[1] For Scheler, the relativists err in confounding the existence of a plurality of value preferences with the relativity of the values themselves. All the relativists have succeeded in showing is that “different ways of acting have been deemed useful for ‘human welfare.’”^[2]

Scheler takes for granted that the rules of preference between the values themselves vary according to historical circumstance. One civilization at a certain time in a certain place cultivates those values particular to its own existence. Paradoxical though it may seem, it is often the relativists themselves that come off as absolutists; they cannot help but view various past epochs as mere stages in some ineluctable process leading to the triumph of the present-day morality, to which the moral relativist quite coincidentally adheres.

We must hasten to add here the importance of Scheler’s phenomenological approach to the question for what follows. He is at pains to distinguish the morality itself in concreto from the morality as it exists abstractly in a given philosophical system of morality; in other words, what interests Scheler are the actual rules of preference that govern a nation or era, and not their intellectual attempts to understand said values.^[3]

Scheler finds himself in agreement with the sentiment, clearly stated in our introduction, that Christian values are susceptible to being subverted into ressentiment values. Nevertheless, he believes that Christian values are not fundamentally resentful per se. The same cannot be said for what Scheler terms modern bourgeois morality, sown on the soil of ressentiment around the thirteenth century and culminating in the French Revolution.^[4] According to Scheler, most of Nietzsche’s critiques of Christianity apply not to Christianity as such, but rather to a kind of bourgeois Christianity.

On the Christian and Greco-Roman Conceptions of Love

Central to critiques of Christianity is the Christian concept of love. Nietzsche himself speaks of Christian love as the fruit borne by a more fundamental hatred and ressentiment.^[5] Christian love, so the story goes, is the source, the original sin leading directly to many of our modern woes. In the name of Christian love, we have loved and therefore valorized that which is weak. It is here the doctrinaire Nietzschean contends that Christianity has imposed upon us its decadent slave morality. What is noble and strong is devalued, and weakness under the guise of meekness and humility is valorized; those who are weak claim superiority over those more hale and robust.

Here we must grant that this is indeed the fruit borne by a very certain type of Christian. Many a Christian has made use of his faith as a vehicle for his own ressentiment. However, it is worth noting that nearly any ideology or belief system, however noble it may be in itself, is susceptible to becoming a weapon of resentment in the hands of an embittered person. As something of an aside, I cannot help but see the intense vitriol against Christianity found amongst many so-called vitalists and modern pagans online as a kind of deeply held ressentiment, which is on evident display in the way such persons conduct themselves.

For Scheler, the Greco-Roman concept of love is primarily conceptualized as a form of “desire” or “need.”^[6] The lover lacks something that he finds supplied in the beloved, and in possessing the object of his love, he is rendered thereby more perfect and complete. It stands to reason that such a form of love would be alien to the most perfect of beings, who is in need of nothing.

According to Scheler, Christianity sharply distinguishes agape or caritas from eros and amor. Understood as agape, Christian love is fundamentally something noble, in the sense we described in our previous essay; it is a movement from that which is higher to that which is lower, motivated not by a sense of any lack or need in oneself, nor by a decline in vital force precipitating the organism downwards towards a less vital state, but rather by a sense of inner abundance and self-sufficiency, a desire to raise up and ennoble that which is lower than itself.

Christianity goes a step further in identifying God with this love when St. John writes in his epistle that “God is love” (1 Jn. 4:8). The love that is identical to God is seen as the very ground of the world; in His perfect love and goodness, God desires to communicate that goodness and love to another. The world then is created or emanates from God as the effluence of His super-abundant goodness, an idea encapsulated in the Latin phrase bonum diffusivum sui (the good is self-diffusive).

God is in no way lessened or diminished by His act to create. On the contrary, it is the supreme manifestation of His super-abundant power. As we have discussed repeatedly, one of true nobility’s most essential characteristics is the impulse towards generosity, giving out of a sense of one’s inner abundance. Likewise, God, the most noble of all that is noble, shows forth the exuberance of His largesse in condescending to the world by creating it. Creation is an act of most perfect self-donation whereby the Deity is in no way diminished or reduced.

The primary difference, then, between Christian and Greco-Roman love is its direction. For the ancient Greek, love is a kind of striving or aspiration of the lower towards the higher, the unformed to the form, the μὴ ὄν to the ὄν, appearance to essence, ignorance to knowledge.^[7] Love is essentially an appetitive desire towards the ontologically superior, an ὀρέγεσθαι or ἐφίεσθαι. On such an account, all that loves is moved by another in some way. But God is the unmoved mover and therefore cannot be said to be a god of love. In this sense, it may be said that love or eros is fundamentally ecstatic.

Of course, Christianity likewise affirms love as eros. It is the love of the mystic whereby he seeks ecstatic union with the Divine and, in that union, to raise up his own being to that to which he cleaves. It is here that we discover something of a principle of the metaphysics of love. All eros, in the sense being discussed, corresponds to some higher agapic love that provides it with the necessary energy or power, so to speak, to be raised up and united to that which it strives towards. To illustrate, one could take the relationship between act and potency: just as act is prior to potency, so likewise is agape prior to eros.

Agapic, providential love – that which seeks to raise up that which is more lowly and ennoble it – is the highest form of love. Therefore, the true saint, sanctified by the work of the Holy Spirit, seeks to act as a conduit for the divine grace and love he has himself received and transmit it to those of a lower station. In such wise, the exalted nature of the saint exemplifies the agapic love of God, who is Himself not merely actus purus, but caritas pura.

As Scheler himself masterfully puts it, “Love is only the dynamic principle, immanent in the universe, which sets in motion the great ‘agon’ of all things for the deity.”^[8] Dante’s statement that it is “love that moves the sun and the other stars,” then is not a quaint metaphor but a metaphysical statement.^[9] God’s agape is the other side of eros, the infinite horizon towards which erotic desire strives; it is the power to raise up that which is moved beyond itself. In a word, insofar as anything whatsoever has found itself outside the chaotic abyss of non-being, it is only through the creative endowment of self-kenotic love.

Such is the infinite fecundity of God’s self-kenotic love that, in giving Himself, He is in no wise diminished; He is always infinitely more than all that He has ever given, and He shall give infinitely more than He has hitherto bestowed. He delights in making Himself manifest, and yet, when He shall have made Himself known a hundredfold more than even now, all the more impenetrable and inscrutable shall remain the Divine Darkness.

Scheler puts the Greco-Roman and Christian views of love in greater opposition than I perhaps would, but this is accounted for by recalling his phenomenological approach. He would not dispute that one might find several instances of the Christian love described here. Moreover, perhaps somewhere one might even happen upon statements among Greek authors describing something like Christian agape (perhaps, say, in Neoplatonic accounts of the gods’ providential care for the world). Nevertheless, he would contend, from a phenomenological perspective, that the value of Christian love did not predominate among the Greeks in the way it did for Christian civilization.

In summary, Christianity affirms both forms of love. It leaves room for the erotic, ecstatic form of love that serves as the impetus for union with the divine. Nevertheless, it recognizes as the highest manifestation of love the self-giving, gratuitous, and providential love of superior spiritual beings and ultimately of God for that which is of a more lowly estate.

In this sense, God Himself is said to be love. And insofar as God is the first cause of all things, one can say that the divine love itself is causal. Love then is the cause of the being of all things. On a charitable reading, one can see in such an understanding of Christian love the Neoplatonic idea of the Good. For Neoplatonism, the Good is simply the One as cause of all things. It represents the infinite fecundity of the ultimate source of things that brings them into being, conserves them, and ultimately (even if mediately through the intermediate beings) exercises providential care over all things.

But is this Christian love? It surely is, although it is certainly fair to say that the idea is much more clearly stated in Christianity qua love than it is in Neoplatonic thinkers. Christian love reaches its consummate expression in the person of Jesus Christ, who deigns to become incarnate, and being impassible, He consents to suffer, endure an ignominious death upon a Roman cross and descend to the depths of Hades, the lowest depths of becoming, in order to save that which is lost, not simply that He may, as it were, grovel therein, but rather that He may raise all these things up to their true dignity.

Christian Love as Act and Light

Through Christian love we are enabled to transcend the natural sphere and override our natural instincts, such as hatred for our enemies, desire for revenge and retaliation, etc.^[10] Here love is not a mere state or feeling, but a “non-sensuous act of the spirit.”^[11] In this regard, Christianity puts paramount emphasis upon the active nature of love; action represents love’s primary catalyst for further growth. In Christianity, love becomes an end in itself. Love constitutes the summum bonum, no longer merely a static, final horizon towards which all things strive, but an act; here love is valued as love, not merely for its results.^[12]

Not only is love the highest end, but it is extended to all indiscriminately – whether friend or foe, rich or poor, good or evil; after all, God is no respecter of persons (Acts 10:34). Just as God sends the rain upon the just and the unjust, so likewise the devotee of Christian love is called upon to extend his love to all universally and become thereby conformed to his Creator.

As Scheler details, Christian love sees itself as responsible and guilty before all those in whom it has yet to take perfect root. “Whenever I see the badness in another,” writes Scheler, “I must feel partly guilty, for I must say to myself: ‘Would that man be bad if you had loved him enough?’”^[13] We find a similar sentiment in Dostoevsky’s much-celebrated novel The Brothers Karamazov in the figure of Elder Zosima, who later in life was converted by the example of his older brother, Markel. After visiting a political exile in town, Markel became a militant unbeliever, refusing the prescribed fasts of the Church and denying God. Sometime after, he developed consumption, on account of which his health sharply declined. The severe, terminal decline of his health occasioned a major change in his mentality; he began again to believe in God, treat the servants and his mother with kindness, and insist that we all live in paradise and refuse to see it. He would bless the birds and ask forgiveness for all, repeating the phrase that “we are guilty before all and for all.” His brother later succumbed to his illness.

The essence of this teaching Zosima recapitulates in his discourses, recorded by the character Alyosha in the novel. Dostoevsky writes:

If the wickedness of people arouses indignation and insurmountable grief in you, to the point that you desire to revenge yourself upon the wicked, fear that feeling most of all; go at once and seek torments for yourself, as if you yourself were guilty of their wickedness. Take these torments upon yourself and suffer them, and your heart will be eased, and you will understand that you, too, are guilty, for you might have shone to the wicked, even like the only sinless One, but you did not. If you had shone, your light would have lighted the way for others, and the one who did wickedness would perhaps not have done so in your light. And even if you do shine, but see that people are not saved even with your light, remain steadfast, and do not doubt the power of the heavenly light; believe that if they are not saved now, they will be saved later. And if they are not saved, their sons will be saved, for your light will not die, even when you are dead. The righteous man departs, but his light remains.^[14]

No doubt when Zosima speaks of being saved even after the death of a righteous man, he is speaking autobiographically of the impact his older brother had had on him. Zosima himself had gone through a period of riotous and dishonest living, culminating in a duel where he was prepared to take the life of another human being. Even so, the “light” of his brother’s example, along with other circumstances, acted upon his soul and brought him to God. He later became a monk, the exemplar of the spirit-bearing elder Dostoevsky was seeking to portray.

The Root of Christian Love

In its true core, Christian love is entirely free of ressentiment, although, as stated by Max Scheler, it is capable of being distorted in such a way that makes it hardly distinguishable from ressentiment.^[15] Though there are certainly outward signs, ressentiment in several respects is a matter of intention and inner disposition. Love can be true and sincere, coming from a position of benevolence, inner strength, and abundance; however, love can likewise become a mere conceit, a moralistic guise donned in a thinly veiled effort to assert oneself in a covert manner. In the first, non-resentful case, love is evoked by a desire to share with others the abundance that one finds oneself in possession of, whether that be one’s wealth or inner spiritual resources.

The knight of Christian love stoops to that which is lowly: the poor, the sick, those who are unsightly. He does not do so, however, on account of these negative qualities, so as to render them positive values in themselves; for to do so would render such a person guilty of value inversion, the terminal stage of value delusion. In this way, he overcomes his natural aversion towards such negative states and comes to see the image of God behind that which is most downtrodden and despised by men.

Illustrating this very point, Scheler cites the case of Francis of Assisi to good effect:

When Francis of Assisi kisses festering wounds and does not even kill the bugs that bite him, but leaves his body to them as a hospitable home, these acts (if seen from the outside) could be signs of perverted instincts and of a perverted valuation. But that is not actually the case. It is not a lack of nausea or a delight in the pus which makes St. Francis act in this way. He has overcome his nausea through a deeper feeling of life and vigor!^[16]

Here Scheler is quick to distinguish this sentiment from that of modern attitudes, which seem to wallow in the morbid in order to valorize it, while making little of that which is magnanimous. Such a juxtaposition he deftly encapsulates – half-anticipating the contemporary meme of the “bug-man” – with the words: “Those people [moderns] saw something bug-like in everything that lives, whereas Francis sees the holiness of ‘life’ even in a bug.”^[17]

When Christ admonishes his disciples to “take no thought for the morrow” (Mt. 6:34) and to treat with indifference both food and raiment (Mt. 6:25), it is not because the health of the organism or the procurement of one’s livelihood is of absolutely no value; rather, the Savior wishes to remind us that obsession with “self-preservation” and its other myriad concomitant cares are signs of a weaker life, one bustling about anxiously, eking out a mere existence. On the other hand, the impulse towards expansion, love, and self-sacrifice are signs of vital and spiritual abundance.

After all, the Lord, life itself incarnate, gave humanity the supreme example of this truth. Such was the infinite abundance of His self-giving love and life that He abandoned all sense of pusillanimous self-preservation and gave His life for “his friends,” which He instructs us is the highest expression of love (Jn. 15:13). He who is life itself did not consider life a scarce Malthusian resource to be either selfishly hoarded or judiciously distributed to an elect few, lest the vital reservoirs should run dry.

The supreme act, then, of life is in giving itself and communicating itself to others. In submitting to death, Christ Himself has overcome death. The firstborn from the dead is He who in perfect self-sacrificial love willingly relinquished His very own life. Such was the power of this act, that death was transmuted into life, a life He calls upon all not only to participate in, but to participate in abundantly.^[18]

This self-sacrificial conception of life is a far cry from that of the Darwinistic conception of self-preservation. Such a vital disdain for “mere existence” has much in common with Nietzsche’s own conception of life. According to Nietzsche, life conceived as Will to Power, expansion, and self-expression at times demands of itself to give itself up; paradoxically, as with Christianity – though Nietzsche himself would eschew such a comparison – life often finds its highest expression in self-sacrifice.^[19]

Nevertheless, I don’t wish to obnoxiously belabor the point and to insist too strenuously that Nietzsche was in fact a Christian. To do so would surely be absurd. I merely wish to draw attention to the fact that Christianity, as we are conceiving of it here, and Nietzsche on this point are agreed: contra certain resentful theories of life, true vitality is characterized by an abundance, self-expansion, and even at times a lavishly wasteful liberality that runs counter to the so-called instinct for self-preservation.

The Descent of Love

We could write much more on the topic at hand, but what has been written is more than sufficient to prove the central point of the essay: pace Nietzsche, Christian love is not essentially tainted by the original sin of ressentiment. With Scheler, we concede that certain Christians or certain forms of Christianity can preach a love scarcely distinguishable from ressentiment. Moreover, it can even be true that the exoteric form of Christianity and its several doctrines are susceptible to being perverted towards resentful ends. However, our main contention has been that the core of Christian love is not fundamentally resentful.

Ressentiment is a disease that, when fully metastasized, distorts the very value-perception of its host. This distortion of value perception is what we call value delusion. Value delusion terminates in what is called value inversion. When value inversion sets in, the entire value hierarchy is perverted to such a degree that positive values are evaluated negatively, and negative values are taken for positive values. Ressentiment is then at its base a fundamentally negative phenomenon, the main drive of which is to detract and deny.

In this respect, ressentiment is opposed to nobility of spirit, characterized by an abundance that knows no scarcity. Such nobility of spirit is coextensive with Christian love. Once ressentiment has terminated in value inversion, its unfortunate subject finds himself in the outer moral darkness, identifying with that which is furthest removed from God. But so too does Christian love extend to this outer darkness and even to Hades itself. It descends to the lowest depths of human existence. However, the intent is entirely different. Ressentiment valorizes the darkness and calls it light, whereas Christian love desires to raise up and restore that which is fallen and bring it back to the light.

^[1] Max Scheler, Ressentiment, trans. Lewis B. Coser and William W. Holdheim (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1998), 60.

^[2] Scheler, Ressentiment, 59.

^[3] Scheler, Ressentiment, 61.

^[4] Scheler, Ressentiment, 62.

^[5] Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, First Essay, §8.

^[6] Scheler acknowledges various concepts of love among the Greeks, although this conception, phenomenologically speaking, predominates among them.

^[7] Scheler, Ressentiment, 64.

^[8] Scheler, Ressentiment, 65.

^[9] Dante, Paradiso 33.145.

^[10] Scheler, Ressentiment, 64.

^[11] Scheler, Ressentiment, 66.

^[12] Scheler, Ressentiment, 66.

^[13] Scheler, Ressentiment, 67.

^[14] Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1990), bk. 6, chap. 3(h).

^[15] Scheler, Ressentiment, 67.

^[16] Scheler, Ressentiment, 70.

^[17] Scheler, Ressentiment, 70.

^[18] “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly” (Jn. 10:10).

^[19] Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, §13; The Gay Science, §349; Twilight of the Idols, “Skirmishes of an Untimely Man,” §14.

Whither shall I cast my gaze,
Made futile not by lack of sight,
But by darkness all around,
Devoid of warmth, consoling light?

Have I plunged beyond the pale
Where reacheth not salvific grace
That warmeth hearts, instilleth faith
That pure of heart might see Thy face?

Languishing, my strength declineth
And courage dieth away;
All lust for life doth flee from me
Whilst in this grave I lay.

Say, when this age doth meet its term,
And consummate in Thee,
And Thou dost come upon the clouds,
Shalt Thou remember me?

I did love Thee, so I swear,
And yet do love Thee still,
But diabolic wiles entrapped
Mine inconstant will!

And so in this obscurest jail
I grope for freedom’s gate,
In hope there’s time to change my tale,
Reclaim a kinder fate.

Those awkward questions and your smile
The way you looked at me
All served one end: to me beguile,
Love’s dupe and hostage free.
My thoughts alone to you do tread,
Whilst I do lie upon my bed,
My heart beats faster, too!
A moment more I cannot bear
Without your tender love and care!

Forgive me, dear, if I seem mad —
I think I’m growing ill —
But please do tell what think you bad
With love to have one’s fill?
Such is the lot of Cupid’s thrall
And those who for a maidan fall
Most ravishing like you!
And day by day my soul does long
Yet more to you alone belong!

I’d start the Trojan War for you
And sail to Dardan shores,
And brave what Hector’s armies threw
If only I’ll be yours!
Your form so soft and charms so rare
The curly tresses of your hair
Do cause my soul to pine
Until again I chance those eyes
And all in you I idolize!

I cannot take it! please, pray tell!
What speaks your heart of me?
And do I make your breast to swell,
And fill your soul with glee?
Say, do you think about me oft
And feel as though you’re borne aloft
By thrones and cherub wings?
If so, I beg, give me a sign,
And bind your fate by vow with mine!

For now, my dove, I bid adieu...
But wait! th’ address, th’ address!
Where’s your abode? What shall I do?
Whence shall I seek redress?
I am undone! Such is my woe:
That gentle gaze shall never know
The verse I’ve wrote for you!
A dreadful lot by all unmatched!
My joy from me unfairly snatched!

And here I sit despairing now
Within this room alone,
And hoping that my words somehow
Might to your eyes be shown.
A Tuscan bard did once expound
Tis’ love that makes the heav’ns go round
Upon their charted course.
And yet she seems to me but frail
Who can’t e’en bring to you my mail.

By this I dare to ward against the lot
Of every love engendered ‘neath the sun:
Oblivion, forgot and set to naught,
The flame of love extinguished – life undone!

But when black death does end this earthly strife
And Lethe pitiless engulfs my soul,
Where drowns the reminiscence of our life –
Rebirth’s acerbic draught and costly toll –
Then you, the brightest chapter of my age,
Shall scarcely be effaced from memory’s page!

“Dionysus cut to pieces is a promise of life: it will be eternally reborn and return again from destruction.”
— Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power

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The Challenge of Dionysus

One of the most important philosophical debates of our time is that of Christ vs. Dionysus. The votaries of the latter contend for a radical affirmation of life. What is more, they insist on affirming life as it is, and not a life deferred to some time in the remote future, for which the earnest believer hopes under the name of “eternal life,” a species of life entirely heterogeneous to that which we have experience of in our present mortal bodies. Of this eternal life St. Paul testifies when he writes: “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for those who love him” (1 Cor. 2:9). So enticing was the promise of a life beyond the grave, beyond the bounds of this mortal life with its sundry ills and innumerous sorrows, that many a soul embraced the new religion with great fervency. For almost two millennia, countless persons harbored the hope of a life beyond, endured their hapless lot, expectant of a greater reward.

In the case of some, the zeal for acquiring this eternal life reached such a feverish pitch that they abandoned the world and renounced all its goods; a vow was made to live a harsh and austere life. Difficult though it were, they undertook this grave affair with a child-like joy in their belief that the good Lord shall return them a hundredfold of all that had been given up for His sake. And so the pious sound of the psalms of these aspirants for the life of the age to come resounded throughout the halls of many a medieval monastery. Hermits, having abandoned even the company of men, uttered their solemn prayer of desperation unto God for the grace that they might be granted admission to the kingdom of eternal bliss.

At first glance, it would seem that the life of a Christian is that of a life deferred, and such is the claim of many modern acolytes of Dionysus. The Christian shirks from life, which he considers to be a reality fallen from some primordial Edenic state, to which we shall return in the eschaton. Perhaps, the Christian affirms the world but with a condition: the world is to be redeemed. It is imperfect, he cannot accept it how it is. The suffering he endures is ultimately a result of sin and as such represents some accidental accretion to reality that is to be done away with at the second parousia.

On the contrary, the Dionysian proffers a radical embrace of becoming; he rejects – or is at least agnostic of – the static future of what allegedly constitutes eternal life. As we have already said, he accepts life as it is. He embraces his fate – both weal and woe. While the fundamental orientation of his being is primarily that of joy, nonetheless he considers suffering to be an integral part of life. The sea of becoming is in a perpetual state of ebbing and flowing. Such is its natural rhythm. The Dionysian adept revels in this eternal cycle of joy and suffering. He knows that the former cannot be truly enjoyed without enduring the latter. Dionysian life is that of radical acceptance of the world of becoming, for life as it is, and more particularly that of his own life. The Dionysian man continually cultivates a love of his own fate, an amor fati.

Christianity and the Affirmation of Life

True Christianity radically affirms life as it is. I have already made use of the phrase “as it is” several times. My use of this qualification has been an intentional reference to a very intriguing YouTube video produced by G. P. Xavier entitled Jordan Hall’s Dionysian Christianity[1] and likewise a discussion of the video I had with and on our weekly podcast, the Take Heart Podcast. It is not my pretension to write a response that would necessarily satisfy Xavier, nor any self-styled Nietzschean, but merely to present what I believe to be the truth.

In his video, Xavier is nothing but irenic in his treatment of Christianity, from which is absent any trace of rancor or ressentiment. One cannot accuse him of straw-manning Christianity; he openly states that it is an unfair characterization of Christianity to say that it is in its essence a religion of ressentiment. Of course, there are many cases where the Christianity of particular Christians might be based in ressentiment, and certain aspects of Christianity certainly can lend themselves to ressentiment if interpreted in a particular manner. The main charge he lays at the foot of Christianity is quite different – he asks the question: can Christianity affirm life as it is?

By life as it is, Xavier means life as phenomenologically experienced by us in the world we inhabit. Many are this life’s joys and consolations, but just as numerous are its sorrows and afflictions. For the Dionysian, this ever-recurring cycle of weal and woe constitutes the natural rhythm of life; we cannot revel in life’s delights without simultaneously enduring its many trials and tribulations. Xavier concedes that Christianity does not reject suffering wholesale; in fact, the meaning of suffering occupies a central role in Christian theology. After all, is not the central theme of Christianity the vicarious death of Christ upon the cross? Moreover, St. Paul says of himself – and by extension of all other believers – that he “fills up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions” (Col. 1:24). And Christ Himself calls upon His disciples to bear the heavy yoke of suffering when He bids all that would follow Him to “take up their cross and follow [Him]” (Matt. 16:24).

But what is the meaning of suffering in Christianity? Xavier contends that for Christianity the meaning of suffering is primarily redemptive or soteriological. Though suffering found its way into the world through sin and is as such an evil, nevertheless it can serve as an instrumental good, insofar as it leads to the greater good of salvation and growth in the virtues. To the extent, then, that suffering serves some salvific end, Christianity may affirm it. On this view, it is said that Christianity does not affirm suffering as some integral part of the world, but rather as an alien and invasive element repugnant to the world’s true nature. On such an account, suffering is affirmed only as something instrumental and, ultimately, transitory.

As a Christian, it would be unbecomingly contrarian of me to characterize the above account as false. Christianity indeed preached the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven, a kingdom – as Christ testified to Pontius Pilate – that is “not of this world” (Jn. 18:36). As for suffering, we are told that the creation has been “subjected to vanity, not willingly” and that it “groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now” (Rom. 8:20, 22); however, just as this unnatural state took its beginning from the primordial fall of man from grace, so likewise has Christian revelation prophesied of its term at the end of the age, when the Heavenly Jerusalem shall descend in its full glory. Then “the last enemy that shall be destroyed is death” (1 Cor. 15:26).

This is all true, as far as it goes, and it would be foolish to deny it in the hopes of appeasing the inveterately doctrinaire Nietzschean. Be that as it may, we do intend to answer the Nietzschean charge as to whether Christianity can affirm life as it is. With this in mind, we wish to put forward an understanding of Christianity that radically embraces life and becoming, not only as ideally envisioned either in some Edenic state long ago or in an eschatological state in the very remote future, but as it exists as given in our experience.

The first modest step we shall take towards such an interpretation of Christianity is accepting even the fallen aspects of life. Eckhart’s understanding of mortal sin represents the view we are trying to get across:

Yes, that man would indeed be established in God’s will who would not wish that the sin into which he had fallen had never been committed; not because it was against God, but since, through that, you are obliged to greater love, and, through that, brought low and humbled.[2]

Eckhart states that if one is “rightly placed in the will of God” – in a state of grace, as Catholic theology would have it – then one ought not to regret even his mortal sins, as they have served some role in forming the destiny that has made us who we are at present; even though mortal sin, considered in itself, is an evil, nevertheless it is a relative good in that it served to a greater end. So scandalous was Eckhart’s view at the time that it merited papal censure.

We may rightly extend this attitude not only to our conduct, but to all of life. All that has befallen us, whether weal or woe, is radically embraced as an integral part of our fate. This is a step in the right direction, but it may be objected that even what has been outlined here is nothing but a slightly more sophisticated instrumentalization of life, such as was critiqued above. Such a criticism would indeed be correct were we to rest satisfied with what has been written above, but we must go beyond even this.

The fundamental disposition to be embraced by the soul desiring to embrace the world of becoming and all its vagaries is that of Gelassenheit.[3] Its fundamental meaning consists in the habit of the soul whereby one simply “lets things be.” One allows the world of phenomena to be as is without subjecting it to imagined values, ideas as to what it should be. Such an attitude is not to be mistaken for indifference to the world; rather, the world is taken on its own terms.

Overcoming and Affirmation

The fundamental assumption of Xavier’s challenge seems to be that life as such can only be truly affirmed if it is the highest of values. But such a view is surely mistaken. Drawing on Aristotle, the Scholastics distinguished between so-called noble goods (bona honesta) and instrumental goods (bona utilia). The latter are valued only insofar as they serve as a means to a higher end, whereas the former are desired for their own sake. However, to be desired for its own sake is not to say that something represents the highest end or summum bonum. Something can be an end in itself without being the highest of all possible ends. Xavier’s challenge, however, seems to imply that in denying life as it is the status of being the highest value, Christianity cannot fully affirm it; and this would suggest that ends not constituting the highest end cannot be truly affirmed. Such a conclusion, however, is truly absurd. While maintaining that Christianity affirms life, we don’t believe it inconsistent to deny life the title of constituting the highest value.

It is the contention of Christianity that life’s most radical affirmation consists in its being overcome. Many of today’s self-styled Vitalist revels in the ethos of Antiquity and some go so far as to consider themselves followers of the old gods of Europe. Among them some think that they find therein a radical affirmation of life absent in Christianity. However, in many places, we might rightly characterize the understanding of such men myopic and distorted. After all, Hercules after having completed his twelve labors was permitted to drink of the celestial ambrosia and admitted into the company of the Olympian gods. No one would accuse the account of the Theban hero as a denial of life, for his apotheosis represents nothing less than life’s greatest triumph.

Likewise, when an athlete receives the prize for his striving in competition, no one refuses him his duly merited reward on the grounds that such would constitute a denial of the labor and struggle he exerted during the course of his trial. The contest, the struggle are not a mere means for acquiring the prize; after all, it is the great game, the competition, the striving of the athletes that we remember and not the award ceremony. The latter is a celebration and affirmation of the former.

Christianity teaches that this life we know shall be overcome. Like any competition, reward is promised to those who strive and overcome. And those who heroically overcome shall be rewarded with a life that transcends life, something beyond life; but as in the case of the athlete who strives, this overcoming of life and the subsequent remuneration of those that strive represents the greatest celebration of a life well lived.

The teachings of Christianity on the subject in question are patient of several competing interpretations. Going forward, all forms of Christianity must, first and foremost, reject any and all ticket-like accounts of soteriology. Ticket views of soteriology are those which, again, serve merely to instrumentalize all that occurs in becoming as mere means for being admitted through the pearly gates when our earthly sojourn has met its term.

We do not intend at all to denigrate the final end of all things, but far too much attention is drawn to it at times in a way that is detrimental to all subordinate ends. Put somewhat more lucidly, at times far too much space is devoted to the question of soteriology, which all too often results in a kind of nihilism of becoming.

I don’t wish to wade too deeply into the universalism debate, but I do think it necessary here to make a few remarks on the subject, insofar as it concerns the question at hand. What I primarily want to say is that both sides of the debate cannot through their account of soteriology provide an adequate answer to the question of the meaning of becoming. The so-called infernalist would claim that life cannot truly have meaning if we all shall be granted entrance into heaven, or if we aren’t faced with the choice of being able to eternally reject God, whereas the universalist crowd insist that life would be rendered absurd should even a single soul perish.

Whatever the merits of either view, both camps tend to frame the meaning or purpose of becoming in terms of one’s eschatological destiny. While, admittedly, I am quite sympathetic to the universalist position, nevertheless there is an element of truth to some of the critiques of infernalists; some of the universalists do seem to minimize the significance of our striving in this life, though I would never, of course, concede that eternal conscious punishment constitutes some morbidly necessary conditio sine qua non for life to be endowed with meaning.

Should we fail to adequately repent in this life – so goes the universalist narrative – or recognize God as the Good, that transcendent horizon towards which all desire is oriented, God will subject us to the purgatorial fires of His divine love until we shall finally see the illusory nature of evil and the futility of our striving for anything other than God. Sooner or later, we will all see the light.

Here, the universalist will rightly object that sin on such a view is taken seriously. The earlier we recognize our true end, the faster we put an end to our suffering and are invited to participate in the bliss of eternal life. Surely, any man of sound mind would prefer to forgo eons of psychically anguishing corrective punishment.

For the time being, we shall assume that the New Testament presents a universalist vision of soteriology, that no one shall find themselves outside the number of the saved, and that the entire creature in symphonic harmony shall cry out its eschatological “hosanna,” after that great Son of the Morning has “walked his one quadrillion miles,” put an end to his great rebellion, and submitted himself to Him who is all in all. Let it be so. Nevertheless, there are many passages in the New Testament that place peculiar emphasis on the meaning of this present life. We are warned by Christ that “the night cometh, when no man can work” (Jn. 9:4). Our present life is likened unto laborers laboring in a field; all who labor are promised their penny for a day’s work, provided they enter the hirer’s employ before the 12^th hour (Matt. 20:1-16). Here, we also cannot fail to mention the sober admonition of St. Paul who reminds us that “we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that everyone may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad” (2 Cor. 5:10). Irrespective then of the final end of mankind, this present, embodied life is of especial importance. The distinction being drawn between the work of our present life and ultimate soteriological fate might seem a fatuous one, but it is one that St. Paul himself seems to hint at when he writes in 1 Corinthians 3:15 that “if any man’s work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire.” The man himself is saved, though his work is burned up, and there is no mention here of such a man being given another chance to create some new work which shall stand the test.

We ought, therefore, to work while it is day and labor that the work of this present life shall stand the ultimate test, not merely as some condition of future bliss, but for its own sake. We’ve already cited the example of an athlete who strives that he might overcome his competitors. Though he receives a reward for his overcoming, who would be so bold as to assert that the award ceremony renders redundant the entire competition. Likewise, we may adduce the example of a great artist. He feels compelled by the spirit of creativity that inspires him to create his great work of art. A truly great work of art is great in itself. Of course, since the good is diffusive of itself (bonum diffusivum sui), the artist will desire to communicate the beauty contained in the work to others that it might be contemplated by them. He might thereby accrue to himself their admiration and recognition. This does not, however, render the great work of art merely an instrumental means for acquiring renown. It has a value in and of itself.

In this we might liken our present life unto some great canvas of becoming. Life’s great task is to produce therefrom as beautiful a work as possible in the time allotted to each according to the opportunities and limitations inherent to one’s own situation. If we are truly to affirm life, we must do so in the manner of a true artist with a true love for the work of art in itself, not in the manner of an indifferent elementary student in art class that creates simply the bare minimum to “pass” and thereafter tosses the work of his hands into the waste bin.

A true affirmation requires us to go beyond what Kierkegaard terms “infinite resignation.” In infinite resignation, one simply surrenders the entire finite world for the infinite. Kierkegaard’s knight of faith, however, in a profound act of faith believes that in the infinite he shall truly reclaim that which is finite. Nothing shall be lost. It is not enough for him to be promised in the long-hereafter some celestial simulacrum of what has been forfeited in time, nor shall he rest content, though he were remunerated a hundredfold after the Lord’s promise. No, the knight of faith believes that nought shall be lost of all of finite being, of all of becoming. All that has been brought to pass is of infinite value, not as merely some intermediate stage whereby eternal life is to be attained, neither because the infinite pleasure of heaven shall engulf the comparatively minuscule sorrows of life in this vale of tears.

In summary, true Christianity can affirm life as it is. While Christianity admits of a state higher than life – denying it the title of the highest value – nevertheless, Christianity does not thereby refuse to embrace life, even the fallen aspects of life. Pace Xavier, Christianity believes that the overcoming of life itself represents life’s greatest triumph and affirmation. While those who strive in this life are promised the reward of a life beyond life itself, nonetheless, it is taken for a noble good, an end in itself. And true enlightenment consists in not seeking a reward. The wise do not ask of the world to be other than it is. They simply let it be. They play their part in the cosmic play put on by the great Dramaturge of all. They participate without regret in the great bacchic dance of becoming, even losing themselves in it, to create something beautiful, and make their contribution to the great act of manifestation.

A Neoplatonic Epilogue – Christ and Dionysus in the Cosmic Drama

One might characterize Platonism as the doctrine that all things exist, though all in their proper manner. In this way, true Platonism outdoes Nietzsche in that it affirms not simply life, but everything in whatever way it might exist. The philosophy of the future is a synthesis of Platonism and Vitalism, of Plato and Nietzsche. At such a thought, Nietzsche is no doubt rolling in his grave, but fate indeed loves irony. These two figures are destined to come together.

Providence would have it that Nietzsche has become modernity’s great prophet of becoming, much like Heraclitus was to Antiquity. Just as Plato sublimated Heraclitus into his own system, so too must a new, modern Platonism sublimate Nietzsche into its own system. Any philosophy which shall fail to embrace life and becoming shall find itself no longer credible to modern persons. Modern persons in equal measure are in need of both Christ and Dionysus.

Dionysus and Christ represent the two different aspects of the cosmogonic process. Zagreus, or Dionysus torn to pieces, represents the monad of the descent of unity into multiplicity. According to reconstructions of the myth from various sources, Dionysus is said to have been chosen by Zeus as his successor to rule the cosmos, but this drove his royal consort, Hera, to jealousy. She then incited the Titans to kill the child. The Titans fell upon the god and dismembered him limb from limb, which they then attempted to consume. Athena saved the heart of Dionysus from which Zeus rebirthed him from Semele.

Olympiodorus of Alexandria rightly interprets the myth as representing the descent of unity into multiplicity.[4] Dionysus is the monad of the multitude. The original unity of the world of being is “dismembered” and brought into division. In the Neoplatonic schema, this is the procession – πρόοδος or exitus, in Greek and Latin, respectively – of all things from their primordial cause. In Dionysus, we have all descended into the world of becoming; the god of wine has inebriated us with the spirit of immanence that we too might revel with him in the cosmic dance of becoming and lose ourselves in the immediacy of the world of multiplicity. As descended souls, we have submitted ourselves to the dual lot of all devotees of the twice-born Liberator – joy and sorrow, birth and death, creation and destruction, the perpetual rhythm of all that is subject to becoming.

According to the Orphic legend, Zeus destroyed the Titans with a thunderbolt, reducing them to ashes; and from these ashes, human nature was created. Thereby, man is said to possess a dual nature, at once Titanic and divine, the remains of the Titans having been imbued with the divine soul of Dionysus. The Titanic and the Dionysian simultaneously represent the force of division, multiplicity, and the descent into the world of becoming, but they do so from different points of view. The Titanic is the negative moment of multiplicity, descent as pure negation of the monadic unity, whereas the Dionysian represents the descent of the divine into becoming while always maintaining its ultimate orientation towards its primordial unity.

Dionysus does not desire to negate becoming in his ultimate orientation towards the return to that primordial unity he possessed, nor has he become spiteful on account of his dismemberment and involvement in the lower world, but rather considers it the special province of his providential care. Dionysus wishes to impart his blessing on all of becoming, to embrace it. He would not have it destroyed, but re-enfolded without loss in the primordial unity from which it descended.

It is Christ who came to initiate the return of all things to their Source. Paradoxical though it may seem, Christ likewise represents the nadir of the descent of all things. The divine becomes incarnate in Christ. As Dionysus fell prey to the conspiracy of jealous Hera at the hands of the theicidal Titans, so likewise did Christ find Himself the victim of the Sanhedrin’s conspiracy, which made use of the Roman sword to put Him to death. Christ’s descent, however, differs from that of Dionysus. Christ’s incarnation and descent into the world is not merely mythic and aeonic, but enters into time and space itself, representing the full consummation of Dionysus’ initial descent. Christ’s incarnation and death is the temporal enactment of Dionysus’ pre-eternal descent into the world of becoming.

At the dawn of the manifestation of all things, Dionysus was torn limb from limb. At the end of the descent, not one of Christ’s bones was broken (Ps. 34:20, Jn. 19:36). The Titanic forces of the world, which first mutilated Dionysus’ body, could not violate the integrity of Christ’s. His death is stronger than life, it does not represent the first moment leading to further dissolution and fragmentation. No, Christ’s death represents the dialectical end of the descent. His death is life and resurrection and signals the beginning of the return of all things. St. Paul states as much when he writes: “that in the dispensation of the fulness of times he might gather together in one all things in Christ” (Eph. 1:10).

In every liturgy, the unbroken body of Christ is broken, and in its breaking reconstitutes the unity of all things, that primordial unity of which we all have a share in the Kingdom of Heaven. He calls upon us to remember this unity; after all, the Kingdom of Heaven is not something afar off in some remote future. No, the Kingdom of Heaven is ever present within each of us (Lk. 17:21).

The return of all things to their Source in no wise serves as a negation of becoming. On the contrary, Christ’s gathering up of all things in Himself is His “yes” and “amen” to all that has come to pass. Like Dionysus, He imparts His benediction upon all of becoming. He becomes becoming, uniting in His person the eternal with the temporal, the infinite with the finite, being with becoming.

The return to the Source is not a simple retracing of steps, whereby all of becoming is rendered, essentially, an embarrassing mistake, an unnecessary detour from the divine abode. The going forth of all things is not rendered superfluous after the return. The Good was compelled to diffuse itself, to communicate its being, including in a finite mode; but that same Good desired to call that which is finite to partake in its eternal ground, occasioning the return. In the return, something is, as it were, retained or gained that would not have been had the procession never taken place; nevertheless, that which is gained is discovered to have been its eternal possession.

Therefore, let us neither strive to flee from the world of becoming, as something alien, towards an eternity imagined to be opposed thereto, nor let us neglect our eternal ground, for these two are ever joined in an ineffable, nuptial union. Let us rather always give thanks to our Source and rejoice in the cosmic play, in which Twice-Born Dionysus eternally struts upon the stage.

Finis.

[1] G. P. Xavier, “Jordan Hall’s Dionysian Christianity? (Response to ‘But Why Christianity?’),” YouTube video, 2025,

The video itself is a response to a discussion between Jon Vervake, Jordan Hall, and Johnathon Pageau.

[2] Meister Eckhart, “Counsels on Discernment,” in Meister Eckhart: The Essential Sermons, Commentaries, Treatises, and Defense, trans. Edmund Colledge and Bernard McGinn, Classics of Western Spirituality (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1981), 261–62.

[3] In the Middle High German of Eckhart, the term is gelâzenheit (derived from the verb gelâzen, meaning to let go, relinquish, or surrender). In the theology of Eckhart, the term refers, first and foremost, to an absolute spiritual detachment and complete yielding of the self to God’s will. In Modern German, the spelling evolved to Gelassenheit. Heidegger later repurposed the term in his later philosophy to describe “releasement” toward things—a receptive, non-calculative “letting-be” of beings.

[4] Olympiodorus, Commentary on Plato’s Phaedo, ed. and trans. L. G. Westerink (Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Company, 1976), 1.3–6.

The Vitalist Challenge to Christianity

One of the strongest challenges Christianity currently faces comes from what may be called the “Vitalist Right.” The Vitalist Right is fundamentally Nietzschean. Essential to Nietzsche’s life-affirming philosophy is the opposition between master and slave morality.[1] The values of the strong flow forth from an inner abundance and self-sufficiency, whereas the slavish values of the weak are but an epiphenomenon of the slave’s ressentiment.[2]

Ressentiment is something of a technical term in Nietzsche. The affect characteristic of ressentiment is similar to that of revenge with the main difference being that revenge is often relatively short lived; one exacts one’s revenge, and the affect dissipates. Ressentiment, however, consists in the internalization and habitualization of this state of mind. The weak tend to fall victim to ressentiment precisely because their weak stature, non-assertive constitution, or low position in society hinder them from immediately avenging offence or injury to their person. Bereft of any outlet to requite oneself, this impulse for revenge (or any other number of negative emotions) is then internalized. Thereafter, it metastasizes and begins to condition the entire value horizon of a person.

It is the contention of Nietzsche and the modern Vitalist Right that the ethos of Christianity is based upon ressentiment. After all, Christianity is a religion that calls upon its adherents to love the downtrodden; it worships a God whose “strength is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor. 12:9). Its God died on the cross and became a cosmic victim at the hands of his persecutors, against which he refused to retaliate. This same God exhorts us to love our enemies and pray for them that despitefully use us (Matt. 5:44). Perhaps, there could be a noble interpretation of this passage according to which one magnanimously brushes off personal offences, as it were, transcending them as beneath oneself.

However, this same God promises his followers that no evil deed will go unpunished and that at the end of the age their persecutors shall be consigned to eternal torment. In this vein, one is reminded of Tertullian’s almost gleeful depiction of the Roman governors and magistrates burning in the flames of hell[3]. On such a reading, Christianity would seem to be the religion of ressentiment par excellence, a faith characterized by an almost pathological discontentedness driven by the believer’s own impotence and perpetually unrequited thirst for revenge that he believes will one day be satisfied in some wispy life beyond.

Based on such a characterization, many on the right have accused Christianity of being a decadent ideology that appeared at the last crepuscular gleam of a moribund and declining Roman Empire and served as the final catalyst of its demise. The very same thinkers on the right construct a genealogy of modern Wokeism that can be traced all the way back to Christianity. On their view, Christianity was the Wokeism of its day. Wokeism is what you get when you transpose the values of Christianity onto a secular and materialist milieu. They simply take the old formulas of “the weak, the poor, and the downcast” and afford them a modern interpretation: racial and sexual minorities, migrants, or whatever happens to be politically expedient at the time for a decadent elite.

For such reasons, many on the Vitalist Right have been calling for the abandonment of Christianity, which has for so long served as the religious and theological base for right-wing and conservative thought. Christianity must be jettisoned, so the reasoning goes, as it is merely just the earlier stage of a dialectical process that has ineluctably brought us to the present moment, which we all so much despise. Such is the state of the current discourse on the subject.

Max Scheler and the Phenomenology of Ressentiment

Among the most robust responses to the accusations put forth by Nietzsche and the Vitalist Right has come from the German philosopher Max Scheler, whom Martin Heidegger eulogized as “the strongest philosophical force in modern Germany, nay, in contemporary Europe and in contemporary philosophy as such.”[4] Scheler wrote on a great myriad of subjects ranging from phenomenology and metaphysics to social theory and philosophical anthropology. The work which primarily concerns us is his 1912 book Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen, translated into English as simply Ressentiment.[5]

Scheler’s Phenomenological Approach

In his preface to the work, Scheler states that his approach to the subject matter will be phenomenological[6]. The object of his inquiry, ressentiment, will be treated as a singular unit of experience. In this regard, he states that ressentiment, as given in our experience, is phenomenally simple. He gives the example of friendship. We may analyze the concept of friendship, break it down into its constituent parts, even furnish it with a definition, but the concept we may arrive at, however carefully and correctly formulated, is nevertheless not necessarily friendship as it is given to us in experience. In point of fact, a sizable part of mankind certainly “knows” what friendship is in its concrete givenness, even if it would struggle to properly define it. Many other human phenomena could likewise be easily adduced (such as love) where most human beings are familiar with the phenomenon even if they struggle to adequately define it. This isn’t to say that Scheler will shy away from characterizing ressentiment and giving an account of it, which he will most certainly do. Scheler is simply saying that the starting point of his treatment will be ressentiment as given in experience, evidenced by his liberal use of examples in the first chapter.

The Scope and Sources of Ressentiment

For Scheler, Nietzsche’s great discovery is that ressentiment serves as one of the main bases in human value systems.[7] In this respect, one of Nietzsche’s chief culprits is of course Christianity. To understand whether or not the essence of Christianity is fundamentally resentful, we must first understand the nature of ressentiment to which this first essay is dedicated.[8]

Scheler’s first characterization of ressentiment is the following:

Ressentiment is 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.[9]

In ressentiment, this “self-poisoning” becomes something of a habituated internal state and not simply a transient desire for immediate reprisal or self-defense directed at a definite object. After all, one could hardly accuse a person of being resentful for striking after being struck. Such a phenomenon we could not even call revenge. Revenge has two essential characteristics: first, it represses the impulse for immediate reprisal; secondly, it does so precisely because it assesses that the chances of carrying out its will are minimal. Thus, the impulse for revenge is normally based upon a felt sense of impotence or powerlessness before one’s circumstances.[10]

Now, there may be several accidental reasons as to why one’s chances of exacting revenge in the present are low. However, the cases most likely to lead to ressentiment are exactly those were the reason for the low probability of success are grounded in some fundamental weakness of the person in question: a frail bodily constitution, a servile disposition, lack of resources, or lowly position in society.[11] Although, etiologically, the desire for revenge constitutes one of the main sources for the emergence of ressentiment, revenge itself is not ressentiment; revenge, as such, has a definite object. True desire for revenge often dissipates when vengeance has been taken, when the person exacting it feels that the object of his revenge has received a punishment commensurate to the injury he had inflicted. This is not so with ressentiment.

If revenge is particular in scope, the scope of ressentiment is universal. We can illustrate this with one of the characteristics of ressentiment – the impulse to detract. We have all met this kind of person. For this “friend,” there is no achievement too great which he shall allow to pass without gracing it with his unsolicited criticism. He revels in making others the butt of his jokes, though bears with little magnanimity when the same honor is afforded to him. He can always be counted on to say something negative, however positive the situation. To put the matter shortly, so unrivaled is he in the art of diminishing that nothing at all shall scare escape his power to detract! And the moment you finally express your displeasure with his unbeseeming conduct, he looks at you almost bewildered with the words “dude, it was just a joke.” He is a fundamentally unserious and unhappy person.

In the man of ressentiment, this impulse to detract has become something of a habit, an internal state of mind. Moreover, as such, it seeks no specific object. It is merely a mental schema, the inputs of which are a matter indifferent. While the impulse to detract very lucidly illustrates the universality of ressentiment’s object, it is itself not a sufficient condition for ressentiment, but a single proprium thereof. Besides revenge and the tendency to detract, Scheler likewise cites envy, spite, and Schadenfreude as common sources of ressentiment.[12]

Nevertheless, none of these emotions are ressentiment itself. All of us throughout the course of our lives are subject to these affects to one degree or another. They constitute an integral part of the normal range of human emotions that makeup the human the psyche. Ressentiment arises when these emotions are suppressed. Scheler states:

“If an ill-treated servant can vent his spleen in the antechamber, he will remain free from the inner venom of ressentiment, but it will engulf him if he must hide his feelings and keep his negative and hostile emotions to himself.”

The “inner venom of ressentiment” is cultivated precisely in the person who, for various reasons, is unable to act out these negative emotions. Suppose the ill-treated slave has a particularly vindictive master, who ill bears any visible sign of disgruntledness on the part of his servants. In such a case, due to his lesser position, the slave will be compelled to feign a sanguine and obsequious attitude. His dissatisfaction, anger, and other negative affects must be internalized where they will result in severe internal psychic pressure. Again, worthy of note here is the powerlessness of the slave before his external environment. The necessity of suppression is predicated on a fundamental weakness on the part of the slave, and it is weakness, for Scheler and Nietzsche, that serve as one of the most fertile soils upon which the tender flower of ressentiment takes root.

Several additional remarks concerning the universality of ressentiment’s scope must be made. As already discussed above, unlike individual negative affects, ressentiment’s scope is universal in nature. On this basis, we are likewise permitted in asserting that ressentiment’s object is essentially indefinite. This is not to say that its object is entirely random or extends to absolutely all of being – something that manifests itself only in the most pronounced cases of nihilism – but rather that the resentful person latches onto some particular characteristic concerning which he has a negative association. Subsequently, any person, thing, or phenomenon which happens to fall under this rubric becomes the object of his malcontent. The characteristic is often specific to the person, though, again, since the source of ressentiment is usually a feeling of weakness, the nature of this characteristic is quite frequently based on power relations – the resentment of the rich by the poor, the physically strong by the weak, and the attractive by those more unsightly

For Scheler, the man of ressentiment has a defective capacity for perceiving value,[13] and more particularly his own value. His understanding of his value is thoroughly comparative and therefore relative. He does not recognize his value is something inherent to him, but as something ascertained only in comparison with others.

In this respect, he lacks a kind of self-sufficiency, and it is self-sufficiency that typifies the “noble man.” This is not at all to say that the noble man does not engage in comparison, an entirely normal and legitimate human activity; however, for him, comparison does not constitute an absolute precondition for his apprehending his own value. Scheler writes that the noble man possesses:

“a completely naïve and non-reflective awareness of his own value and of his fullness of being, an obscure conviction which enriches every conscious moment of his existence, as if he were autonomously rooted in the universe.”[14]

The value or identity, if you will, of the noble man is something entirely self-contained, not derived or arrived at through comparison. When a truly noble individual engages in comparison, his nobility renders the act of the comparison pure and innocent. He can see without prejudice the value in others without negating his own. When he encounters a flaw or vice in another, it neither inflates him with pride, nor serves as cause to rejoice at another’s ill. When he perceives a good that another possesses, if it be a good he himself is able to acquire without defrauding another thereof, he finds here something towards which to strive; if the good is something he cannot procure – whether on account of circumstances or his own natural endowment and constitution – he finds in this good a cause for admiration and rejoicing.

We can say therefore that nobility of spirit is non-reactive and positive, grounded in an inner abundance and strength in contradistinction to ressentiment, which is fundamentally reactive and negative. To illustrate the difference, we may juxtapose two forms of romanticism. In the case of German literature, Scheler cites Hölderlin as an example of what we might term “positive” romanticism; the poet’s love for antique Hellas is primary, he basks in the sun of her cultural riches; he finds in her a certain congeniality with his own spirit. Much different for Scheler is the case of Friedrich Schlegel’s nostalgia for the Middle Ages. The main difference lies in that Schlegel’s idealized Middle Ages is not valued in itself but insofar as it serves as a background against which Schlegel can devalue and attack the present. In our modern context, we could just as easily cite the trad subculture as a striking case of resentful romanticism. Who except perhaps a person himself blinded by ressentiment cannot help but notice that nearly every trad post contains a thinly veiled attack upon the present. “The past is great because it is not the present” – this is the implicit foundation of the entire trad industrial-complex, which is but one of many modern vectors along which the deadly virus of ressentiment spreads its contagion. The cited examples suffice to illustrate the negative and reactive nature of ressentiment; the resentful romantic’s assessment of the past can only be ascertained in its relation to the present which he abhors. The value of the past is obtained through a negation of the present.

The resentful romantic is engaged in a flight from the present. He has a deeply engrained desire to escape it and to withdraw to a time he imagines to have existed. If only he could do this – so he believes – then all his problems would cease to exist, his life would be suffused with a meaning the tyranny of the present deprives him of. Ultimately, this flight from the present is but an epiphenomenon of a more fundamental drive of ressentiment – the flight from oneself. The present is that which is immediately given in consciousness. When we begin to shirk from the immediacy of present consciousness by mediating it through the mental representation of the past we wish to inhabit, we are avoiding ourselves insofar as we ourselves are the present subject of this act of consciousness.[15] This is consonant with all that of which we have spoken with regard to the resentful man. His spirit is without a heading, rudderless in a sea of perpetual doubt, possessing no anchor in himself. In vain does he direct his gaze inward where he encounters a most obscure abyss the depths of which he fears to plumb. And so timidly he looks without and hopes thereby to behold his own image in the deceitful mirror of comparison. But what he sees in fact is not a true image at all but a simulacrum, an idol which he unwittingly dedicates to the false god of ressentiment.

On this account, the man in the clutches of ressentiment is in perpetual flight from himself. And what is flight from oneself but an aversion to oneself? The Greeks described the forces of attraction and aversion mythopoetically as love and hate. This being so, the paradigmatic man of ressentiment is a man overcome by self-hatred. This may seem paradoxical at first glance; it would seem that he feels slighted by a supposedly hostile environment besetting him on every side. The immediate object of his venomous hate seems to be external to him. This is only superficially the case. He hates the world because he hates himself. However, the experience of an unmediated antipathy to his own existence is unbearable psychologically, and so he sublimates it by projecting his self-hatred onto the world.

How greatly does the disposition of he that is noble differ from that of the resentful man! The former possesses a spiritual nobility, a kind of inner abundance and strength. While the man of ressentiment is characterized by self-hatred, he who is noble is marked by self-love. It may be objected here that such a pathos is incompatible with a Christian anthropology and is indistinguishable from the cardinal sin of pride. In this regard, we would remind the reader of the golden rule “love thy neighbor as thyself.” Love for neighbor is rooted in the love of oneself. Ressentiment does not permit one to love himself and therefore he is incapable of loving his neighbor, but a noble man loves himself and therefore loves his neighbor. If one clouded by resentment feels a fundamental aversion or hatred towards the world, a man of spiritual nobility feels everywhere an attraction toward and love for that which is external to him. The fundamental orientation of his being is that of love and gratitude.

Ressentiment and Value Delusion

Having taken root in an individual, the spiritual malady of ressentiment begins to distort his perception of reality itself, more specifically of values. A certain delirium sets in which Scheler calls value blindness or value delusion. In the case of value delusion, there takes places a “lowering [of] all values to the level of one’s own factual desire or ability.”[16] As a means of illustration, we may recall a classic fable of Aesop of the fox and the sour grapes. A hungry fox eyes a cluster of ripe grapes. He tries persistently for a time to acquire them, though they remain ever out of his reach. After many attempts, exhausted and frustrated, the fox gives up. As a kind of post-hoc rationalization to soothe his pride, the fox mutters that “the grapes were probably sour anyway.” The fox cannot have the grapes and so he feels the psychological need to devalue them. Of course, this in no wise actually serves to lessen their value objectively; the grapes remain a good and therein consists the nature of value delusion.

Embittered that some good remains ever elusive, ressentiment seeks revenge against it. It desires to deny and negate all that lies outside its power of attainment. In this respect, ressentiment betrays its pusillanimous nature; it fears expanding its aspirations beyond its meager power, and so it reconciles itself with the narrow horizons of its own capabilities. Examples of this are ready at hand: he who is not rich denies the value of riches; one malformed refuses to afford the prerogative of beauty to the comely; the impotent considers of no account the authority of one endowed with power. All that aspires beyond the paltry limits of the resentful man’s capabilities serves as an odious testament to the perpetual frustration of his will. Because of this, he constructs a system of values gerrymandered around his factual capabilities. Since the borders of his moral landscape always conform to his de facto state of affairs, he always boasts a moral superiority, albeit superficial, over his peers,

This inability to see the value beyond the bounds of one’s own factual desires and capacities represents one aspect of value delusion. We may call this value blindness. Scheler distinguishes this attitude from what he terms resignation.[17] Resignation is a conscious act whereby one acknowledges that some good lies beyond one’s reach. It differs from the above-mentioned sentiment in that it affirms the value of the good in question. It refuses to construct an illusory hierarchy of values on the basis of its limitations.

When value delusion reaches its terminal state, it begins not simply to negate that which transcends its capabilities, but to turn values on their head by engaging in value inversion.[18] Now he without riches is no longer content merely denying the value of wealth. Riches are now understood to be an evil that ought to be shunned and likewise with every other purported positive value. This inversion of values is in part an attempt to assert control over what ressentiment perceives to be a hostile external environment. In general, human beings are social creatures, strongly attuned to social rules and strictures. When strongly rooted social values are transgressed, it is experienced in the subject as shame, which acts as a deterrent to such actions. Therefore, ressentiment’s attempt to invert values is fundamentally a drive to control the behavior of others through covert means.

It is here that we return to the beginning of our article. Having acquainted ourselves with brief outline of Scheler’s account of the phenomenology of ressentiment, we must ask ourselves the question: was Nietzsche right when he accused Christian morality as being founded on ressentiment? Do Christian values constitute a covert means for slaves to revolt against their masters, against a higher man, to assert power over those they believe oppress them? This is indeed a serious charge, which we intend to cover in our next article Ressentiment: Christian Morality and Christian Love.

[1] Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Books, 1966), §260: “There are master morality and slave morality…The moral discrimination of values has originated either among a ruling group whose consciousness of its difference from the ruled group was accompanied by delight-or among the ruled, the slaves and dependents of every degree…dents of every degree. In the first case, when the ruling group determines what is “good,” the exalted, proud states of the soul are experienced as conferring distinction and determining the order of rank. The noble human being separates from himself those in whom the opposite of such exalted, proud states finds expression: he despises them. It should be noted immediately that in this first type of morality the opposition of “good” and “bad” means approximately the same as “noble” and “contemptible.” (The opposition of “good” and “evil” has a different origin)… It is different with the second type of morality, slave morality. Suppose the violated, oppressed, suffering, unfree, who are uncertain of themselves and weary, moralize: what will their moral valuations have in common? Probably, a pessimistic suspicion about the whole condition of man Wi find expression, perhaps a condemnation of man along with his condition. The slave’s eye is not favorable to the virtues of the powerful: he is skeptical and suspicious. subtly suspicious, of all the “good” that is honored there-he would like to persuade himself that even their happiness is not genuine.”

[2] Nietzche, On the Genealogy of Morals, trans. Walter Kaufmann and R.J. Hollingdale (New York: Vintage Books, 1967), I, §10: “The slave revolt in morality begins when ressentiment1 itself becomes creative and gives birth to values: the ressentiment of natures that are denied the true reaction, that of deeds, and compensate themselves with an imaginary revenge. While every noble morality develop~ from a triumphant affirmation of itself, slave morality from the outset says No to what is “outside,” what is “different,” what is “not itself’; and this No is its creative deed. This inversion of the value-positing eye-this need to direct one’s view outward instead of back to oneself-is of the essence of ressentiment: in order to exist, slave morality always first needs a hostile external world; it needs, physiologically speaking, external stimuli in order to act at all-its action is fundamentally reaction.”

[3] Tertullian, De spectaculis. XXIX: “”How I shall admire, how laugh, how rejoice, how exult, when I behold so many proud monarchs, and fancied gods, groaning in the lowest abyss of darkness; so many magistrates who persecuted the name of the Lord, liquefying in fiercer fires than they ever kindled against the Christians.”

[4] Martin Heidegger, “In memoriam Max Scheler,” in The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic, trans. Michael Heim (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984), 50–52.

[5] Max Scheler, Ressentiment, trans. Lewis B. Coser and William W. Holdheim (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1998).

[6] See Scheler, “Prefatory Remarks,” ibid. 23–26.

[7] Ibid. 27.

[8] Like Scheler, we will bracket this question for a latter essay.

[9] Scheler, Ressentiment, 29.

[10] Ibid. 29-30. Scheler calls the “thirst for revenge… the most important source of ressentiment.”

[11] Nietzche, On the Genealogy of Morals, I, §13: “That lambs dislike great birds of prey does not seem strange: only it gives no ground for reproaching these birds of prey for bearing off little lambs. And if the lambs say among themselves: “these birds of prey are evil; and whoever is least like a bird of prey, but rather its opposite, a Jamb--would he not be good?” there is no reason to find fault with this institution of an ideal, except perhaps that the birds of prey might view it a little ironically and say: “we don’t dislike them at all, these good little lambs; we even love them: nothing is more tasty than a tender lamb.” To demand of strength that it should not express itself as strength, that it should not be a desire to overcome, a desire to throw down, a desire to become master, a thirst for enemies and resistances and triumphs, is just as absurd as to demand of weakness that it should express itself as strength.”

[12] Scheler, Ressentiment, 31.

[13] See Krug’s articles where he discusses value-ception:

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Philosophical Ear Training

Music 1: Klimt…

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9 months ago · 21 likes · 12 comments · Krug

and

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10 months ago · 12 likes · 2 comments · Krug

[14] Scheler, Ressentiment, 37. Cf. Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, §287: “What is noble? What does the word “noble’ still mean to us today? What betrays, what allows one to recognize the noble human being, under this heavy, overcast sky of the beginning rule of the plebs that makes everything opaque and leaden? It is not actions that prove him-actions are always open to many interpretations, always unfathomable-nor is it “works.” Among artists and scholars today one finds enough of those who betray by their works how they are impelled by a profound desire for what is noble; but just this need for what is noble is fundamentally different from the needs of the noble soul itself and actually the eloquent and dangerous mark of its lack. It is not the works, it is the faith that is decisive here, that determines the order of rank -to take up again an ancient religious formula in a new and more profound sense: some fundamental certainty that a noble soul has about itself, something that cannot be sought, nor found, nor perhaps lost. The noble soul has reverence for itself.”

[15] Nietzsche makes a more general critique of this phenomenon when discussing the “Will to Truth.” He accuses those who embody this mentality as desiring to mediate their relation to becoming through thought. This thought represents for Nietzsche an unnecessary mediation of reality, a rejection thereof. It is his contention that the Will to Truth is often wielded as a weapon to deny the supreme value of life. See Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, pt. 2, chap. 34.

[16] Scheler, Ressentiment, 41.

[17] Ibid.

[18] See also Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, I, §7 and Beyond Good and Evil, §260.

“Time is a moving image of eternity.” With these words, Plato embryonically set forth what can be termed a Platonic historicism. Within a Platonic metaphysical framework, one can persuasively argue for a kind of historicism. All that exists descends from the First Principle. The First Principle causally diffuses itself through a hierarchal series of entities until we get to the spatio-temporal world with which we our familiar in ordinary consciousness.

These series of entities are characterized by a relations of participation; lower beings participate in the higher, whereas the higher beings are participated by the lower members of the series. As the descent continues, so does multiplicity and difference; but this multiplicity and difference is always grounded in a higher unity, which it seeks to express.

The cosmos in which we exist is designed to most fully and richly express the infinitely fecund First Principle of all. This great multitude descending from the First Principle or the One has been termed the “chain of being” or the “pleroma of being.” Only a great diversity of things can most adequately express the super-essential richness of the First Principle.

Traditionally, the fullness of this “chain of being” has been understood mostly in a vertical sense: the pleroma consists in the great diversity of beings in the hierarchy descending from the One. However, one can also understand this in a horizontal sense. The fullness of the transcendent One and its participated intermediaries are likewise borne out in time itself. Proclus in his Elements hints at this in his treatment of eternity and time and its relationship to the nature of wholeness and parthood.

Essentially, that which is eternal as such constitutes an integral whole enjoying the entirety of its being and life all at once (this is where Boethius got his definition of eternity from). Time is the fragmentation of life and being. Certain entities are subject to becoming and, as it were, experience their life and being in a fragmented manner. One such being is man. Men are born, live their life in progressive stages, grow old, and eventually die. But man is also a part of a larger whole – mankind.

Mankind – and if we abstract further the entire cosmos – is likewise subject to the flux and fragmentation of time. We have not only the extended life of an individual but of a family, tribe, nation, and of the entire world. Likewise, the cosmos has undergone many stages in its development. Mankind and the whole cosmos is seeking to express that primal unity it participates in eternally, but it is doing so progressively in time.

This is why, for the modern Platonist, history considered broadly is not simply a series of relatively meaningless contingencies swallowed up in the sea of eternal forms but a magnificent spectacle revealing in a finite and temporal manner the fullness of God.

The above represents a rough outline for a Platonic form of historicism. Notwithstanding a few caveats, in writing his Philosophy of History, Hegel stands as one of the great forerunners for properly philosophical history. Modern Platonists ought to follow his example by rendering a proper philosophical account of the movement of history.

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