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by katabasis 1336 days ago
The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche had a famous critique of Christianity and modern Western morality that operated along similar lines, spelled out most famously in the book "On the Genealogy of Morals". He contrasts Classical virtue-based morality with the contemporary notion of the inherent virtue of suffering.

> People who suffered from oppression... and who were denied any effective recourse by relative powerlessness—developed a persistent, corrosive emotional pattern of resentful hatred against their enemies, which Nietzsche calls ressentiment. [1]

In his view modern society was poisoned by "ressentiment", leaving people unable to find authentic happiness as a result.

[1]: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nietzsche/
1 comments
s1artibartfast 1336 days ago
Interesting idea.

It is hard to tell from the quote, but is he claiming that that modern views infer virtue from holding hatred/ resentment?

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katabasis 1336 days ago
I think that for Nietzsche ressentiment is more of a toxic by-product that is generated when traditional aristocratic or virtue-based morality (where "good" equals success, excellence, victory, etc) is inverted into modern morality (where all the things that were previously held as bad like weakness, meekness, victimhood, etc are now "good"). He associated this so-called "slave morality" with Christianity but he also saw it as a coping mechanism that came about as humans learned how to contend with increasingly structured and regimented societies.

In his view this was an obstacle to true human flourishing, and he hoped for some kind of creative renewal where people invented new values that were more authentically life-affirming.

Wikisource has the book online: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Genealogy_of_Morals

Nietzsche is probably one of the most misinterpreted philosophers out there (I definitely consider him a thinker to "handle with care"), and I'm not necessarily advocating for the correctness of his views. But I think it's interesting to see how previous thinkers have anticipated a lot of our current debates and questions.

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