Abstract
In his essay “Resentments” the holocaust survivor Jean Améry presents a radical position about the fundamental moral role of “ressentiment” felt by the victim toward the perpetrator of the wrong. The article first examines the way Nietzsche’s concept of ressentiment is turned on its head. Secondly, it uncovers the surprising similarity of Améry’s view to P. F. Strawson’s theory of reactive attitudes in moral theory. Finally, Améry’s awareness of the tactlessness of the expression of resentment is carefully analyzed in terms articulated by Hans-Georg Gadamer and others. The ultimate point made by Améry concerning the backward-looking attitude of resentment consists of the tragic tension between its being the only genuine moral attitude toward Nazi crimes and its futility associated with the obstruction it necessarily puts in the way of the forward-looking tendency of social morality.
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Notes
- 1.
Jean Améry, ‘Resentments’, in J. Améry, At the Mind’s Limits, translated by Sidney Rosenfeld and Stella Rosenfeld (London: Granta Books, 1999), pp. 62–81. The English version of the German original uses the term “resentment” rather than the original ressentiment in the essay’s title, which may be conceptually justified although it comes with a price. At least in the English language, “resentment” has fewer negative connotations than the French “ressentiment” and has been used to refer to a potentially justified moral response (devoid of the elements of malice and envy that characterize ressentiment and from which Améry wants to distance himself). Such a validation of resentful reaction is what Améry’s essay attempts to establish. Yet resentment is usually a temporary response, while ressentiment is in its essence an ongoing, unyielding, and poisonous emotion—features which also capture an important role in Améry’s analysis. The problem of translation proves to be typically interpretation dependent, exposing the ambiguities in Améry’s text. For a detailed and philosophically sensitive discussion of this subtle difference, see Thomas Brudholm, ‘Revisiting Resentments: Jean Améry and the Dark Side of Forgiveness and Reconciliation’, Journal of Human Rights 5 (2006), pp. 7–26, and his later book Resentment’s Virtue: Jean Améry and the Refusal to Forgive (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2008), pp. 173–176.
- 2.
For the comparison between the natural forward-looking perspective (typically illustrated by Desmond Tutu and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa) and the moral backward-looking attitude represented by Améry, see David Heyd, ‘Ressentiment and Reconciliation: Alternative Responses to Historical Evil’, in Lukas H. Meyer (ed.), Justice in Time (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2003), pp. 185–197.
- 3.
Friedrich Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals, first essay, sections 7, 8, and 10, and second essay, section 11.
- 4.
Susan Neiman emphasizes Améry’s basic acceptance of Nietzsche’s judgment about the futility of ressentiment despite his attempt to ground morality on it. I believe Neiman is right since this reading highlights the tragic situation in which Améry finds himself. Susan Neiman, Evil in Modern Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002), pp. 264–265.
- 5.
Here I differ from Brudholm and Rosoux who try to list four “reasons” for Améry’s refusal to forgive (dignity, recognition, accountability, and coexistence). The question for Améry is not only why not to forgive (since forgiveness is not the only alternative to resentment) but whether resentment can at all be justified in rational, universal terms—particularly in the sense used in the discourse of social morality. Resentment is not really a choice but rather a given, although admittedly it involves a decision to maintain it, not to let it fade away (“I neither can nor want to get rid of [resentment]”). But since ressentiment cannot be treated in rational terms of social morality, the direct and tragic contradiction with the point of view of the non-victims in society is inevitable. See Thomas Brudholm and Valérie Rosoux, ‘The Unforgiving: Reflections on the Resistance to Forgiveness after Atrocity’, Law and Contemporary Problems 72 (2009), pp. 33–49.
- 6.
‘Resentments’, p. 68. Améry claims that German history cannot be treated by young Germans as consisting of Goethe and Mörike while ignoring Nazi poets and Himmler’s atrocities. But in a contradictory tone he believes that all the books printed in the Third Reich should be turned into pulp. There is a tension between the demand to include the Nazi period in German history and the fantasy of completely erasing it.
- 7.
Max Scheler, Ressentiment, translated by W. W. Holdheim (New York: The Free Press, 1961), p. 162.
- 8.
It is true that Améry contemptuously rejects calls for reconciliation of the victims with the criminals since he does not believe in a psychological or moral symmetry between the two parties. See on that Arne Johan Vetlesen, ‘A Case for Resentment: Jean Améry vs. Primo Levi’, Journal of Human Rights 5 (2006), pp. 27–44. But note that the ultimate point of the ethics of resentment is exactly the annulment of the humiliating superiority of the perpetrator over the victim by the continuous imposition on him of the awareness of his atrocities.
- 9.
Améry’s ambivalence toward revenge is also expressed in the way he characterizes those victims of Nazi crimes who seek reconciliation as suffering from “the masochistic conversion of a suppressed genuine demand for revenge” (‘Resentments’, p. 71). Nietzsche, with some Freudian supplement, could have easily put it exactly this way. But for Améry, revenge here is, originally, the “genuine” and morally correct response.
- 10.
‘Resentments’, p. 67; Brudholm, Resentment’s Virtue, p. 101.
- 11.
Brudholm (Resentment’s Virtue, pp. 152, 162–166) believes that for Améry social moral reform can be triggered by ressentiment. But since Améry explicitly says that a moral settlement between the victim and the perpetrator(s) is “absurd”, it is hard to see how Améry can be ascribed with such a belief. His whole point is that such a purging effect of resentment is fantastical, in the mind of the victim, going against natural inevitability. The absurdity of trying to go back in time (and bring the perpetrator into this process!) does not, however, mean that resentment is meaningless (even if it is pointless), since, as we shall presently see, resentment is reactive in its essential nature and we can coherently and without logical fallacy feel it toward necessary and unchangeable states of affairs. Accordingly, it seems that Améry does not believe in ressentiment as an “instrument” (or a “weapon”, as he puts it) in a struggle for a possible moral settlement, but more fundamentally as an expression of the highest moral order.
- 12.
P. F. Strawson, ‘Freedom and Resentment’, in P. F. Strawson (ed.), Studies in the Philosophy of Thought and Action (London: Oxford University Press, 1968), pp. 71–96. Thomas Brudholm has also pointed out the similarity between Améry and Strawson (Resentment’s Virtue, p. 94). However, it is quite unlikely that Améry actually knew Strawson’s article.
- 13.
‘Freedom and Resentment’, pp. 76–77.
- 14.
Although Strawson focuses on resentment, his personal reactive view of moral relations applies equally to the mirror image of resentment, namely gratitude. No objective theory can account for this important response (the lack of which is considered a grave sin) since it is based on the personal and subjective acknowledgment of the good will of the benefactor. It has been noted by philosophers that resentment, revenge, gratitude and forgiveness, being personal, cannot be shown by a third party (unlike meting punishment or apportioning compensation, which are their objective correlatives).
- 15.
Butler confuses between resentment and indignation since he understood the value of the natural response of resentment to evil as ultimately a social good. He argues that it highlights social bonds by being shared by all members of society and by promoting justice. Butler believes that more than virtue, the potential resentment of the offended party is the major disincentive for the offender. This notion of resentment is of course alien to Améry since it lacks any intrinsic value and can be justified only instrumentally. However, Améry acknowledges one aspect of the social perspective of resentment: although it is personal in nature, it must be “publicized” to have any meaning, to have any effect on both the perpetrators and society at large. Resentment, at least for Améry (though not for Nietzsche), is personal but not private. See Joseph Butler, Sermons, Sermon VIII.
- 16.
Jacques Derrida, Given Time: I, Counterfeit Money, translated by Peggy Kamuf (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).
- 17.
Marcel Mauss, The Gift, translated by Ian Cunnison (London: Cohen & West, 1954).
- 18.
The author of Améry’s biography shows in detail how all the major elements of his ressentiment are already expressed in his 1935 novel, The Shipwrecked: hate, loneliness, collective identity, physical pain and suicide. Irène Heidelberger-Leonard, The Philosopher of Auschwitz: Jean Améry and Living with the Holocaust (London: Tauris, 2010), pp. 35–37. I should add that Améry’s book On Aging (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994) can also be read in the light of the theme of ressentiment—in this case (again) the irreversibility of time, the physical pain, the loneliness and the futile revolt against a natural process that cannot be changed. The book displays the same tone of anger, redirected from the historical to the natural. Although the grumpiness of old people lacks the specifically moral quality of ressentiment, the two are phenomenologically similar and may be psychologically correlated.
- 19.
See his response to Wiesenthal’s famous “question” about forgiveness to a dying SS officer in Simon Wiesenthal, The Sunflower (New York: Schocken Books, 1997), pp. 105–109. Actually, Améry denies that forgiveness is a moral issue. It is psychological or theological and hence, for Améry, irrelevant. From the political point of view, he is not clear whether forgiveness makes any difference: on the one hand he declares that it “is quite irrelevant”; yet a page later emphatically adds, “Politically, I do not want to hear anything of forgiveness!”
- 20.
There is an ongoing debate whether there are “suberogatory acts”, the mirror image of supererogatory acts, namely acts which are wrong although not morally prohibited. I doubt there is such a category. But if there was, resentful actions may have been a good example. See Julia Driver, ‘The Suberogatory’, Australasian Journal of Philosophy 70 (1992), pp. 286–295.
- 21.
See David Heyd, ‘Tact: Sense, Sensitivity, and Virtue’, Inquiry 38 (1995), pp. 217–31.
- 22.
Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, translated by Joel Weinsheimer and D. G. Marshall (London: Sheed & Ward, 1989), p. 16.
- 23.
Herbert Marcuse, One Dimensional Man (London: Sphere Books, 1968), introduction.
- 24.
Ibid., p. 58.
- 25.
This is yet another indication that, unlike Brudholm’s reading, Améry does not believe in the power of his ressentiment to bring forth a moral transformation of the German people. The social changes in German society after the war are inevitable and could not have been otherwise. The Marcuse-like description of the laws of the system of postindustrial economy and mass media belongs exactly to the natural forces over which Améry says we have no control. This explains the absurdity of his situation in the very act of giving the radio lecture on ressentiment.
- 26.
But as Margaret Walker correctly notes, this resentment is equally futile as that directed at the actual perpetrators. I am less sure though that she is right in claiming that although resentment cannot be “satisfied”, it can still be “answered” (according to Améry). See Margaret Urban Walker, Moral Repair (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 142.
- 27.
I cannot enter here into the question of Améry’s suicide which is often discussed in comparison to Primo Levi’s. See Arne Johan Vetlesen, ‘A Case for Resentment: Jean Améry vs. Primo Levi’, Journal of Human Rights 5 (2006), pp. 35–40; Heidelberger-Leonard, The Philosopher of Auschwitz, pp. 65–72. The two were different in personality and character, as Levi himself clearly remarked. But beyond that, as their correspondence shows, the double experience of homelessness and torture, from which Levi was spared, made it hard for Levi to comprehend Améry and his ethics of resentment. Yet, as Vetlesen notes, no one knows whether Levi’s own suicide was not a late concession that Améry was right, which puts his long-time opposition to ressentiment in perspective.
- 28.
I owe special thanks to Eli Pitcovski, the co-editor of this volume, for his sharp comments and constructive suggestions, many of which I have gladly embraced.
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Heyd, D. (2019). The Ethics of Resentment: The Tactlessness of Jean Améry. In: Ataria, Y., Kravitz, A., Pitcovski, E. (eds) Jean Améry. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28095-6_5
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