International Phenomenological Society

Nietzsche on Ressentiment and Valuation

Author(s): Bernard Reginster
Source: Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 57, No. 2 (Jun., 1997), pp. 281-305
Published by: International Phenomenological Society
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Philosophyand Phenomenological
Research
Vol. LVII, No. 2, June 1997

Nietzsche on Ressentiment and

Valuation
BERNARD REGINSTER
Brown University

The paper examines Nietzsche's claim that valuations born out of a psychological
condition he calls "ressentiment" are objectionable. It argues for a philosophically
sound construal of this type of criticism, according to which the criticism is directed at
the agent who holds values out of ressentiment, ratherthan at those values themselves.
After presentingan analysis of ressentiment,the paper examines its impact on valuation
and concludes with an inquiry into Nietzsche's reasons for claiming that ressentiment
valuation is "corrupt."Specifically, the paper proposes that ressentiment valuation
involves a form of self-deception, that such self-deception is objectionable because it
undermines the integrity of the self, and that the lack of such integrity ensnares the
agent in a peculiar kind of practical inconsistency. The paper ends with a brief review
of the problems and prospects of this interpretation.

I. INTRODUCTION
In a well-known passage of the Preface to On the Genealogy of Morals,
Nietzsche writes that the book aims to answer two questions: "underwhat
conditions did man devise these value judgments good and evil? and what
value do they themselves possess?" (GM, Preface, 3).1 He also insists that
determiningthe origin of moral values is only a "means"to addresshis "real
concern," namely, "the value of morality"(GM, Preface, 5; cf. 6). In other

1
I will use the following standardabbreviationsto refer to Nietzsche's works:
A = TheAntichrist
BGE = Beyond Good and Evil
D = Daybreak
EH = Ecce Homo
GM = On the Genealogy of Morals
GS = The Gay Science
HTH = Human,All Too Human
WP = The Will to Power
Z = Thus Spoke Zarathustra
All the translationsare Walter Kaufmann's, except The Antichrist and Daybreak trans-
lated by R. J. Hollingdale.

NIETZSCHEON RESSENTIMENTAND VALUATION 281

words, the genealogy is primarily a critique: it seeks to assess the value of
moral value judgmentsby determiningtheirorigin.
At first sight, the origins in which Nietzsche is interested are essentially
historical. The Genealogy insistently calls for historical accuracy (see GM,
Preface, 7), and castigates other historians of morality for their lack of
"historical spirit" (see GM, I, 2, 17n) or for major flaws in their historical
methodology (see GM, II, 11-12); it makes bold, sweeping claims about the
history of Westernculture,and producesdocumentsand etymological analy-
ses to support them (see GM, I, 4-5, 15; II, 4-5). Nietzsche himself sug-
gests, however, that this emphasis on history is somewhat misleading: the
Genealogy's three essays are "studiesby a psychologist for a revaluationof
all values.-This book contains the first psychology of the priest." (EH, III,
'On the Genealogy of Morals'; my emphasis) A genealogy of moral value
judgmentsthus consists of an inquiryinto theirpsychological origin.2
Nietzsche's central claim is that moral values are born out of a peculiar
condition he calls "ressentiment."It is hardto overestimatethe importanceof
this notion in the Genealogy as a whole: althoughNietzsche does not always
develop his views with the requiredclarity, he unequivocally maintainsthat
the three central phenomenathat constitute, in his view, modern morality-
the distinction between good and evil, the feeling of moral guilt, and the as-
cetic ideal-all have their origin in ressentiment (see, respectively, GM, I,
passim; II, 11; III, 11). The present study will focus on the impact of ressen-
timent on valuation,to which the book's first essay is devoted.
Curiously enough, given its centrality,Nietzsche's psychological critique
of morality, his claim that it originatesin ressentiment,has been almost en-
tirely neglected by his interpreters.3I believe this negligence might be ex-

It is hard to believe that Nietzsche's insistence on historical scholarship in the Preface

reflects his actual intentions, as there is such a great discrepancy between the historical
documentation he calls for 'and the one he actually produces. I agree with Peter
Berkowitz that he must have had other objectives, though I remain uncertain about
Berkowitz's own proposal that Nietzsche "poeticizes" history in order to present essen-
tially ethical views (Nietzsche. The Ethics of an Immoralist [HarvardUniversity Press:
Cambridge,Massachussets/London,England, 1995], pp. 27-28 ). My own tentative view
is that, though the actual history Nietzsche does in the Genealogy is of questionable
value, the fact that a genealogical critique has a historical character is of considerable
significance. We will see that the diagnosis of a condition like ressentimentwould simply
be impossible without a history of the psychological development of the agent and of
his/her value judgments.
This is not to say that the notion of ressentimentitself has been completely overlooked in
the literature.Nevertheless, most of the (still few) studies of the notion of ressentiment
fail to address adequately,if at all, the normativedifficulties of a critique in terms of psy-
chological origins in general, and of ressentiment in particular.The most notable contri-
butions are Max Scheler, Ressentiment, W. W. Holdheim trans. (Schocken Books: New
York, 1961) and Gilles Deleuze, Nietzsche et la Philosophie (PUF: Paris, 1961), C IV. In
more recent literature,we find Henry Staten,Nietzsche's Voice (Cornell University Press:
Ithaca, 1990), C II; Rudiger Bittner, "Ressentiment"in Nietzsche, Genealogy, Morality,
R. Schacht ed. (U. of California Press: Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, 1994), pp. 127-

282 BERNARD REGINSTER

plained by the fact that the very idea of a psychological critique of morality
has caused commentatorsconsiderable philosophical embarrassment.Niet-
zsche's attack on morality is customarilyseen as taking place at one or both
of two levels. At the level of value theory, Nietzsche challenges some of our
most deeply held beliefs about what is valuable.4For example, he questions
the value of pity and of the democratic ideal of justice. At the metaethical
level, he opposes widespreadviews concerningthe natureand the scope of va-
lidity of moraljudgments.5Thus he arguesthat they have no legitimate claim
to universalvalidity.
The view that morality is objectionablebecause it originates in ressenti-
ment does not fit well with either of these two familiar forms of criticism.
Indeed, seen as an instance of either one of them, it is downrightfallacious.
The psychological origin of a judgment permits no inference concerning the
truth of its content or the scope of its validity. Even if a psychological in-
quiry could establish that the belief in the value of pity originates in ressen-
timent, that would still say nothing about whether or not pity is valuable,
and whether or not it is a value for all people irrespective of their particular
circumstances.
Thus, if it is concerned with the value judgments themselves, their truth
or the scope of their validity, Nietzsche's psychological critiqueis deplorably
wrongheaded. But if it does not pertain either to value theory or to
metaethics, then at what level does it operate?I will argue that Nietzsche's
psychological critiqueof valuejudgmentsis ultimatelynot fallacious because
it concerns not the value judgments themselvesbut the psychological state of
the agent whose value judgments are born out of ressentiment. Specifically,
such an agent-whom Nietzsche calls "the man of ressentiment"-is
"corrupted":he lacks integrityof self, a traitNietzsche regardsas essential to
"nobility"of character.
Admittedly, my diagnosis of the philosophical difficulty caused by Niet-
zsche's psychological critique as well as my proposed solution to it presup-
pose that he espouses a kind of cognitivism aboutmoraljudgments.And this
is, at least, questionable, as there is significant (though not unambiguous)
evidence that he ratherleaned towards non-cognitivism on this matter (see,

38; Robert Solomon, "One Hundred Years of Ressentiment: Nietzsche's Genealogy of

Morals" in Ibid., pp. 95-126.
4 Philippa Foot, for instance, emphasizes this aspect of Nietzsche's critique of morality in
"Nietzsche: The Revaluationof Values" in Nietzsche. A collection of critical essays, R.C.
Solomon ed. (Anchor Books: New York, 1973), pp. 156-68, and more recently in
"Nietzsche's Immoralism"in The New YorkReview of Books (Vol. XXXVIII, Number
11, 1991).
5 This line of interpretationis predominantin the literature.See, for example, John Wilcox,
Truthand Value in Nietzsche (University Press of America:WashingtonD.C., 1974), C I;
Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue (U. Of Notre Dame Press: Notre Dame, 1981), C 9;
Alexander Nehamas, Nietzsche. Life as Literature(HarvardUniversity Press: Cambridge,
Massachusetts/London,England, 1985), C VII.

NIETZSCHEON RESSENTIMENTAND VALUATION 283

e.g., TI, VI, 1). Nevertheless, this would not, I think, affect the interpretation
I propose.
Even if moraljudgments are nothing more than the expression of psycho-
logical attitudes, which would constitute, in a sense, the "origin" of these
judgments, merely exposing what attitude a given judgment expresses will
not amount to a critique of it. One must show what is wrong with this
attitude,and that amountsto showing that there is something wrong with the
agent's psyche. Furthermore,Nietzsche certainly does not believe that any
given value judgment is wedded to one, and only one, psychological attitude
which it is meant to express.6 Hence, showing that the origin of a given
value judgment is objectionable will not necessarily result in its wholesale
rejection. This, again, suggests precisely the interpretation I propose:
Nietzsche's psychological critiqueof value judgmentsis directedtowardsthe
agents who hold these judgments rather than towards the judgments
themselves.
This line of interpretation, however, immediately generates another
difficulty. Nietzsche remindsus, in the thirdessay of the Genealogy, that the
validity of any judgment, including presumablyany value judgment, is rela-
tive to the perspective formed by the "affects," "needs," "desires" and
"interests"of the agent who endorses it (GM, III, 12; see also WP, 481). Ac-
cording to perspectivism, there are no external norms or values, that is,
norms or values that transcend the perspective of the agent who espouses
them. But the view that ressentimentis objectionablebecause it undermines
the integrity of the self (the interpretationI propose) seems to presuppose
just such an external norm or value. To dispel this worry, I will suggest that
integrity is not an externalvalue, but, on the contrary,a value to which any-
one who seeks to satisfy needs, desires or interestsis committed necessarily,
if only implicitly. It is therefore always internal to the perspective of the
agent who pursueshis needs, desires or interests.
Before I begin, I should mention some of the limitations of the present
study. In this paper,I lay the groundworkfor an understandingof Nietzsche's
psychological critique of morality. I limit myself to an examination of the
natureof this critiqueas it is directedagainstvaluationsmotivatedby ressen-
timent in general. I do not attemptto answer the furtherand difficult ques-
tions of whetherand why specificallymoral valuationsare inspiredby ressen-
timent. The questions addressedin this paper logically precede these further
ones, and they are difficultenough.
Furthermore,I will also limit myself to an analysis of the phenomenonof
ressentiment and an examination of its impact on valuation. I will say very

6 This is notably true, for example, of the judgment that compassion is good: it might ex-
press genuine "nobility" (GM, I, 10) or "richness of personality" (WP, 388) or, on the
contrary, "ressentiment" (GM, III, 18; WP, 373), self-contempt (Z, II, 16) or the self-in-
terest of the weak (BGE, 260). For a general statementof this ambiguity,see BGE, 293.

284 BERNARD REGINSTER

little about the problems posed by the diagnosis of concrete cases of ressen-
timent. I will therefore not attempt to assess the empirical correctness of
Nietzsche's claim that Christianvalues actually are born out of ressentiment.
Although the task of diagnosis can often be difficult, I do not believe it is
impossible. But it demands,as a necessarypropaedeutic,what I endeavourto
providehere, namely a detailedanalysis of the phenomenonto be diagnosed.
The paper comprises three main parts. I will first propose an analysis of
ressentiment, then turn to the impact of ressentiment on valuation. In the
final section, I present the reasons why ressentiment valuation is essentially
corrupt,and I examine the peculiarnatureof Nietzsche's psychological criti-
cism, as well as the sources of its normativeforce.

I. RESSENTIMENT

1. Mastersand Slaves
Nietzsche startshis analysis of ressentimentby refininga distinctionbetween
the types of the "master,"or "noble,"and the "slave"which he introducedand
developed in works priorto the Genealogy (HTH, 45; BGE, 260). We know
from these early descriptionsthat the good life as the noble mastersconceive
of it includes "political superiority":"the noble felt themselves to be men of
a higher rank"(GM, I, 5; cf. also 6; BGE, 257-58). Nietzsche's use of the
notions of "(noble) master"and "slave" is ambiguous. They are now socio-
political categories, and now charactertypes. The noble mastersvalue politi-
cal supremacy qua noble in the socio-political sense, but we will see that
their valuing political power is not essential to their possessing a noble char-
acter. Nietzsche makes clear that nobility as a type of character is "the case
that concerns us here"(GM, I, 5; cf. 6).7 Accordingly, I will consider the cat-
egories of "noble"and "slave"in theirsocio-political sense as elements in the
illustration of an essentially psychological view which makes use of the
same notionsto denote specific charactertypes.
To the fundamentaldistinction between noble and slaves, the Genealogy
adds a new crucial refinement:it suggests that, within the noble class, two
subgroups compete for political superiority, namely the "knights"and the
"priests."Leaving aside the question of the historical plausibility of this ex-
ample (Nietzsche alludes to the war between the Romans ("knights")and the
Jewish ("priestly")people [GM, I, 16]), I want to draw out some of its psy-
chological lessons. The importantfact is that the priests, who are physically
"weak" and "unhealthy,"are defeated by the "powerful physicality" and
"overflowing health" of the knights, and consequently develop a pervasive

7 One consequence of this fact is worth noting. The socio-political predicament of the
agent who exemplifies a character-typemight (but need not) contributeto his developing
a characterof that type. A slave from the socio-political standpointmight well develop a
noble character.

NIETZSCHE
ONRESSENTIMENT
ANDVALUATION 285
sense of "impotence"(GM, I, 6-7). Some featuresof the example need to be
emphasized.
First, the salience of physical strength and weakness is a purely contin-
gent aspect of Nietzsche's example. The weakness of the priests creates their
feeling of impotence only because they hold it responsible for the loss of
their political supremacy.The noble knights seem to be generally intellectu-
ally deficient, in any case inferior in that respect to their rivals, the priests
(GM, I, 7). But this does not spawn a feeling of impotence because they do
not see this deficiency as the incapacityto realize theirvalues-indeed they do
not seem to regard it as a weakness at all. But there is no reason to think
that,in differentcircumstances,the feeling of impotencewould not be created
by intellectual,ratherthanphysical, weakness.8
Second, the feeling of impotence is not a temporarystate of mind caused
by an accidentalreversal of fortune.It must ratherhave become an essential
featureof one's self-assessment:the agent sees himself as irremediablyweak,
instead of temporarilylacking the strengthhe customarilyhas. Though Niet-
zsche is unclear on this issue, his analysis of ressentiment(as I understandit
here) presupposes that the priest believes he has tried everything he could
thinkof to regain power and failed. Accordingly,he does not see his defeat as
a fluke, but as evidence of his constitutional impotence (GM, I, 6), which
appearsto be, for that very reason, "incurable"(see GS, 359). It thereforein-
hibits any furtherattemptto recoverpolitical power.
Finally, the priest evidently refuses to accept, or resign himself to, his
impotence. The priest's sickliness does not eradicate his "lust to rule," but
only makes it "moredangerous"(GM, I, 6). Furthermore,ratherthan subsid-
ing, as it would in the case of resignation, the hatred the priest harborsto-
wards his victorious rivals, the knights, "grows to monstrous and uncanny
proportions"(GM, I, 7).
From this overview of Nietzsche' s example, we can derive the
fundamentalfeaturesof ressentiment.It is a state of "repressedvengefulness"
(GM, ibid.) which arises out of the combination of the following elements.
First, the "manof ressentiment"desires to lead a certainkind of life, which
he deems valuable: thus the priest, a member of the nobility, values a life
that includes political supremacy. Second, he comes to recognize his

8 Nietzsche explicitly suggests that certain forms of Christianity (presumably fideism),

which involve the condemnationof certainintellectualvirtues, precisely result from intel-
lectual impotence (see A, 52 ff.; GS, 359; WP, 154). This observationwill have important
implications for our understandingof Nietzsche's psychological critique. Philippa Foot
assimilates it to older, common forms of moral criticism (see Op.Cit., p. 22). She remarks
that philosophers such as Kant and Augustine are well-aware of the possibility of
discrepancy between professed and actual motivations. What troubles them in cases
where such a discrepancy occurs, however, is not the discrepancy itself, but the pres-
ence of immoral motives. I will argue that, on the contrary,Nietzsche is fundamentally
concerned with the discrepancy.

286 BERNARD REGINSTER

complete inability to fulfill this aspiration:he becomes "inhibited"by his
"weakness"or "impotence."Yet, and this is the thirdelement, his retains his
"arrogance"or his "lust to rule" (GM, I, 6), and his "will to power" remains
"intact" (GM, III, 15; cf. GS, 359), whereby Nietzsche suggests that he
maintains his commitmentto his original values, or retains his original pre-
tensions, and refuses to accept his inability to realize them.
It is this thirdfeaturewhich distinguishes ressentimentfrom other related
attitudes.The soul of the "manof ressentiment"is torn by a tremendousten-
sion between his desire to live the life he values and his belief that he is
unable to satisfy it. But this tension may spawn a variety of different
attitudes.At first blush, I can think of two obvious ways of alleviating such
a tension, neitherof which is chosen by the "manof ressentiment."

2. Resignation,reflectiverevaluationand ressentiment
First of all, the agent who is convinced of his impotence could simply resign
himself to it. Such a resignationwould have to be quite radical:it would not
simply consist in relinquishingone way of life he values but feels incapable
of living to adopt anotherwhich he finds just as valuable. It is ratherthe re-
nunciationof the kind of life he values most and the acceptanceof the unre-
deemable shame which goes with global failure. This alone would offer a
formidableincentive to resist resignation.
Nietzsche suggests that, in addition, an importantfeature of the priest's
predicamentmakes resignation to political inferiority all but impossible. As
a member of the nobility, the priest expects to enjoy political superiority.
Expectations, as I understandthe notion in this context, are essentially rela-
tive to the agent's estimation of himself. An agent might believe that a cer-
tain sort of life is worth living and yet not expect to be able to live it because
he has a very low estimationof himself, of his abilities and standing. Such is
the attitude of the slave: "not at all used to positing values himself, he also
attached no other value to himself than his masters attachedto him" (BGE,
261). Thus the slave accepts his masters' high estimation of the noble life
and theirlow estimationof himself, and thereforenever even forms the expec-
tation to live the life his mastersvalue. The attitudecharacteristicof the slave
is his resignationto a worthless way of life.
The situationis quite differentwith the priests who belong-and we must
underlinethis fact-to the nobility (GM, I, 6-7). The noble, it should be re-
memberedfeel "themselvesto be of a higherrank"(GM, I, 5). Like other no-
ble, but unlike the slaves, the priests fundamentallyexpect to live the sort of
life they find valuable, which is, in Nietzsche's example, a life that includes
political superiority.Accepting their impotence and inferiorityis all but im-

NIETZSCHEON RESSENTIMENTAND VALUATION 287

possible for the priestsprecisely because it clashes with theirmost fundamen-
tal expectation.9
Another obvious way to resolve the tension would be to abandon the
values which we are unable to realize througha process I will call 'reflective
revaluation.' We reflectively abandon a certain end when we realize, upon
reflection, that it does not have the value we hitherto attributedto it. For
example, we might think that alleviating or, if possible, eliminating the pain
of those who suffer, is a valuable end because we assume that suffering in all
its forms is bad. But our reflection soon turns out cases where suffering is
actually good insofar as, for example, it spurs growth and maturation.This
observation, along with other similar ones, might eventually lead us to
conclude that alleviatingthe sufferingsof othersis not always good.
Yet, the "man of ressentiment," the priest of the Genealogy, does not
reflectively abandon the values of the nobility. The explanation for this
might simply be that no betterway of life can present itself to his reflection.
Reflective revaluation could be seen as starting with the discovery of an
inconsistency in our system of values. Presumably, the resolution of this
inconsistency is ultimatelyguided by those values that are most centralto the
system and therefore most costly to give up. We might assume that, in
Nietzsche's own example, political superiorityis so central a value of noble
morality (again, the distinctivemarkof nobility is to feel oneself "of a higher
rank"[GM,I, 5]) that the likelihood of its reflective rejection is very small:
after all, it will usually be the standardfor the revision of other values found
to be incompatiblewith it.
The "manof ressentiment,"the priest of Nietzsche's example, cannot alle-
viate the tension between his desire for political supremacy and his felt in-
ability to fulfill it in any of the two obvious ways I just described. What,
then, is left to the individualin the throes of ressentiment?The priests, Niet-
zsche writes,

in opposing their enemies and conquerors were ultimately satisfied with nothing less than a
radical revaluationof their enemies' values, that is to say, an act of the most spiritual revenge.
For this alone was appropriateto a priestly people, the people embodying the most deeply re-
pressed priestly vengefulness. (GM, I, 7)

9 The notion of expectation is introducedto explain why the priest and the slave react dif-
ferently to their inability to satisfy a desire they nonetheless share. The agent's estimation
of himself, which fosters or undermines expectations, must be understoodin terms of a
feeling of entitlement which is related to a general conception of an "orderof things."
The priest expects to share in the attributes of nobility because it is somehow in the
"order of things" that he should. The slave does not develop such an expectation pre-
cisely for the same reason, since he accepts the noble conception of the "order of
things." Unfortunately,Nietzsche offers no account of the origin of this feeling of enti-
tlement: he only distinguishespsychological types in terms of its presence or absence.

288 BERNARDREGINSTER
So, the "manof ressentiment"has recourseto a quite peculiarform of revalu-
ation which I will call 'ressentimentrevaluation.'
Before I turn to the analysis of ressentiment revaluation, I should offer
some supportfor my claim that Nietzsche's "priest"is the personificationof
the "man of ressentiment."This is controversialbecause, on more than one
occasion, Nietzsche appears to maintain that ressentiment revaluation is a
"slave revolt" (e.g., GM, I, 10). Nevertheless, I believe that Nietzsche saw a
profound affinity between the "priestlytype" and ressentimentfor a number
of reasons of which I will mention only the most importantones.
First, in Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche had alreadyoffered an account
of master and slave moralities from which both the notion of ressentiment
and the type of the priest are conspicuously absent (BGE, 260). These two
notions are introducedtogether in the account of the Genealogy, which sug-
gests thatNietzsche sees an intimateconnectionbetween them.10
Ressentiment revaluationcannot be the work of the slaves, for, as Niet-
zsche repeatedly insists, the slave does not create values, a privilege which
belongs exclusively to the masters(cf. BGE, 261). The slave, Nietzsche sug-
gests, blindly accepts his masters' values-and this is, arguably,what makes
him a "slave" (in the psychological sense) in the first place. The so-called
"slave morality"is not the system of values which the slave does create, but
which he would create, on the mere "supposition"he were capable to do so
(BGE, 260).
Ressentimentrevaluationis a "slave revolt" not because it was fomented
by the slaves, but because it consists in negating "noble values" (see GM, I,
7-8), and so presumablyfavors the "slave"or the "commonman."But there
is abundantevidence that the revolt was in fact lead by the (Jewish) priests,
whom Nietzsche describes as a segment of nobility, albeit an essentially
"unhealthy"one (GM, I, 6-7).11

II. RESSENTIMENT AND EVALUATION

Someone who values political power above all but loses it through defeat
will naturallyseek revenge as a way to restorehis challenged superiority.But
in the "man of ressentiment" vengefulness is "repressed"(GM, I, 7), or
"submerged"(GM, I, 10). The source of this repressionis the feeling of im-
potence: ressentiment,Nietzsche writes, is "the self-deception of impotence"

10 Nietzsche describes the account of master and slave moralities he offers in Beyond Good
and Evil as a "typology" (BGE, 186), and not a "genealogy": it merely records the dif-
ferences between the two moralities, but does not explain their origin, in particularthe
origin of slave morality.It is thus very temptingto considerthat both the notion of ressen-
timent and the type of the priest are introducedprecisely to provide such an explanation.
The choice of the Jewish people as a paradigmaticinstance of a "priestlypeople" makes
the connection between priestliness and nobility particularlyevident. The Jewish people
share the noble feeling "to be of a higher rank"since, after all, they regard themselves
as the "chosen people."

NIETZSCHEON RESSENTIMENTAND VALUATION 289

(GM, I, 13). The repression of vengefulness is in effect, in the example we
have been considering,a repressionof the desire for superiority.
Repression must be carefully distinguishedfrom the control of this desire
as it is commandedby its reflective revaluation,and from the renunciationin
which the acceptance of one's inability to satisfy it consists. Repression, as
Nietzsche appearsto understandit, is the ultimate compromiseof the person
who values a desire, believes he is unable to satisfy it, but neither
(reflectively) abandons its value nor resigns himself to his impotence. The
consequence of this repression, or perhaps rather its manifestation, is the
"revaluation"by the "man of ressentiment"of the values he feels unable to
realize.
As the notion of ressentiment revaluation is quite complex, it might be
illuminating to contrast it with a variety of phenomena that are closely
related to it but from which it must carefully be distinguished. These are,
respectively, 'sour grapes' revaluation,reflectiverevaluation,and finally psy-
chological inertia and weakness of will. I will conclude this section with a
brief examinationof a salient featureof ressentimentevaluation,the primacy
of negation,and a word on the distinctionbetween ressentimentand the moral
notion of resentment.

1. Ressentimentand 'sourgrapes'
At first glance, ressentiment revaluationmight seem akin to the revaluation
illustratedby Aesop's famous fable of the fox and the sour grapes.12 Unable
to reach the grapes it covets, the fox attemptsto get rid of its feeling of frus-
trationby persuadingitself that the grapes were sour and so were not what it
wantedanyway. Nietzsche's emphasison the spiritualcharacterof the priest's
revenge might suggest that he imitates the fox. He might tell himself that
the military superiorityof the knights and their physical power do not consti-
tute genuine power. "I do not wage war," we might imagine him proclaim-
ing, "becausethe physical power which sustains military superiorityis not a
markof real power:real power lies exclusively in spiritualachievements."
In this case, the priest would not change his values, nor would he believe
he cannot, ultimately,realize them. His revaluationwould only concern what
will bring about that realization: as not all grapes are sweet, so not every
form of power is 'real' power. Thoughhe is not deceived aboutwhat desire he
wants to satisfy, he is deceived about what will and will not satisfy it.
But in fact the priest's revaluationis far more radical than the fox's. As a
result of his defeat at the hands of the warriors,he denies the value of politi-
cal supremacyaltogether. And by the same token he condemns all the atti-
tudes that help to secure and sustainit, namely the lust to rule, arrogance,ha-
tred, envy, revengefulness,and the like. In otherwords, the values themselves

12 I am indebtedto Scheler for this comparison.See op. cit., C I.

290 BERNARD REGINSTER

 are changed. If the fox were to emulate this revaluation,it would have to say
not that the grapes are sour but ratherthat sweetness itself is evil.
The priest, on this view of his revaluation, need no longer be deceived
about what kind of power will satisfy his craving for superiority,for he now
persuadeshimself that his failure to gain it does not matterto him anymore.
He now judges power, and the domination of his fellow humans, an unwor-
thy goal. He instead begins to preachthe value of neighborlylove and politi-
cal equality.
Though he is not deceived abouthow to satisfy his desires, the priest, Ni-
etzsche insists, is nevertheless still deceived: he is deceived about which de-
sires he wants to satisfy. Nietzsche goes even further:the priest is not just
deceived in failing to recognize the importancehe places on political power,
he also fails to recognize that his devaluation of power is still motivated by
his repressed but enduring desire for it. Thus, on the Christianvaluation of
love, Nietzsche writes: "Oneshould not imagine it grew up as a denial of that
thirst for revenge, as the opposite of Jewish hatred!No, the reverse is true!
That love grew out of it as its crown" (GM, I, 8). The priests who so
vehemently condemn the thirst for "spoil and victory" of the noble "blond
beast" (GM, I, 11) are in fact pursuing the very same "goals ... -victory,
spoil, and seduction"(GM, I, 8).
The devaluationof power motivatedby ressentimentthus turnsout to be a
last-ditch effort to gain it. The priest professes to embrace values and ideals
he deems incompatible with power and political superiority,which he now
regards as evil. But his unacknowledged wish is that his altruistic "good
deeds," for example, will bring him at last a taste of that power he still
craves: "Thehappinessof 'slight superiority,'involved in all doing good, be-
ing useful, helping, and rewarding,is the most effective means of consolation
for the physiologically inhibited"(GM, III, 18).
Before I examine this importantlast claim in more detail, I must empha-
size a point of some significance. I must admit that some of Nietzsche's texts
are plausibly interpretedin terms of 'sour grapes' revaluation(see, e.g., GM,
I 10 & 13).13 On such an interpretation,the priest apparentlypersuadeshim-
self that the physical superiorityof the warriorsis not "real"power and, ac-
cordingly, that his defeat at the hands of the warriorsdoes not make him in
any significant way inferior or "impotent."In this case, the priest deceives
himself about the state of the world, not about his own values. The phrase
"self-deceptionof impotence"(GM, I, 13) Nietzsche once uses to characterize
ressentimentreflects the ambiguityof his view: on my overall interpretation,
impotence is the cause of self-deception, but not its object (i.e. that about
which the agent deceives himself), whereason the readingI just sketched out,
self-deceptionis the object of deceptionand, presumably,also its cause.

13 This is the view (apparently)adoptedby RudigerBittnerin op. cit.

NIETZSCHEON RESSENTIMENTAND VALUATION 291

 In spite of this ambiguity, I believe that Nietzsche's considered view is
that ressentiment revaluationis not simply a case of 'sour grapes' revalua-
tion: it involves self-deception about the values themselves, and not just
about the means to realize them. Ressentimentrevaluationtakes on this radi-
cal characterfor the following reason. The fox does not believe it is utterly
unable to get sweet grapes altogether,only the particularones that are out of
its reach. By contrast, the priest appearsconvinced that he simply does not
have what it takes to wrestle political power away from the knights whose
superiorstrengthhe has experienced,we might imagine, often enough to rec-
ognize his own constitutional weakness. It is the belief that political power
is irretrievablybeyond his reach which forces him to his wholesale devalua-
tion of it.

2. Ressentimentrevaluationand reflectiverevaluation
Unlike reflective revaluation, ressentiment revaluationis not motivated by
the recognition that certain attributes,like political supremacy,really do not
have the value that was hithertoattributedto them. Ressentimentrevaluation
is ratherdriven by the way in which the "manof ressentiment"relates to the
attributeswhose value he ostensibly denies: he still values them, but feels
unable to acquire them, and yet he refuses either to give up his desire for
them or to accept his inability to acquire them. Nietzsche's central insight
consists in seeing ressentiment revaluation as the eminently paradoxical
attemptto accommodatethis twofold refusal.
On the one hand, the revaluationaccommodatesthe feeling of impotence
of the "manof ressentiment"by exempting him from the pursuit of an ideal
he regardshimself unableto realize:

When the oppressed, downtrodden,outraged exhort one anotherwith the vengeful cunning of
impotence: "let us be different from the evil, namely good! And he is good who does not out-
rage, who harmsnobody, who does not attack, ..."-this, listened to calmly and without previ-
ous bias, really amountsto no more than: "we weak ones are, after all, weak; it would be good
if we did nothingfor which we are not strong enough"(GM, I, 13).

Paradoxically,on the other hand, the revaluationalso accommodates the

"repressed"desire of the "man of ressentiment."This desire in fact uncon-
sciously motivates its own devaluation:
You preachers of equality, the tyrannomaniaof impotence clamors thus out of you for equal-
ity: your most secret ambitions to be tyrants thus shroud themselves in words of virtue. Ag-
grieved conceit, repressed envy ... erupts from you as a flame and as the frenzy of revenge.
(Z, II, 7)

In the last analysis, ressentiment revaluation is predicated upon the unac-

knowledged hope that turningaway from the frustrateddesires, and pursuing
the very opposite values, somehow will at last bring about the satisfaction of

292 BERNARDREGINSTER
those desires: "these weak people-some day or other they too intend to be
strong, there is no doubt of that, some day their kingdom too shall come"
(GM, I, 15). Ressentiment revaluation is thus the priest's way of securing
the satisfaction of his desire in spite of his conviction that he does not have
what it takes to satisfy it.
Nietzsche's central insight about ressentiment valuation is perhaps best
summarizedin the following text: "Masterstroke:to deny and condemn the
drive whose expression one is, to display continually, by word and by deed,
the antithesis of this drive-" (WP, 179). The "man of ressentiment" pro-
fesses to act accordingto some ideals but he is in fact motivatedby desires he
regards as incompatible with the realization of those ideals. Such a discrep-
ancy between the values that appearto the agent to motivate him and the de-
sires that really do need not be a manifestationof ressentiment:it could just
as well be the result of psychological inertia, or of weakness of will. A brief
comparativeanalysis of these phenomenashould strengthenour grasp of the
distinctive featuresof ressentiment.

3. Ressentiment,psychological inertia and weaknessof will

Consider first the case where the agent has reflectively abandonedold values
and adoptednew ones. If we are to avoid overintellectualizingthe process of
revaluation, we must admit that the desires she has reflectively devaluated
might occasionally, unbeknownstto herself, motivate her. This phenomenon
is well documented,for example, in narrationsof radicalmoralconversions.14
Remark,however, that these old desires act ratherlike motivationalresidues:
they derive their force from the psychological inertiaexercised by old habits,
or by a deeply entrenchedconditioning. Though they have been rejected by
reflection, the old desires might occasionally still motivate the agent. But
they no longer belong among the agent's values since she rejected them, and
they played no motivatingrole in this rejection.
The desires whose value is ostensibly denied by ressentimentrevaluation,
on the contrary, remain actively and not just inertially motivational. They
themselves(along with the feeling of impotence)motivate their own apparent
rejection by the agent. Since the adoption of the new values is at bottom
motivated by the (frustrated) desire to realize the old ones, any action

14 For example, in his Confessions (Trans. R.S. Pine-Coffin [Penguin Books, 1961]), Saint
Augustine recounts his efforts to strike down his pride in orderto devote himself humbly
to the love of God. Acutely aware of the difficulties of any such conversion, he observes
for example that "even when I reproach myself for it, the love of praise tempts me.
There is temptationin the very process of self-reproach,for often, by priding himself on
his contempt for vainglory, a man is guilty of even emptierpride"(Book X, 38). As I un-
derstandit, the crucial featureof Augustine's example is that the reprehensiblemotive of
personal glory, however powerful, is only residual. It is not a case of ressentiment insofar
as the very valuation of humility is not motivated by pride, though the effort to become
humble always risks being recuperatedby it.

NIETZSCHEON RESSENTIMENTAND VALUATION 293

performed in accordance with these new values is necessarily (really)
motivated by the old ones. In the case of psychological inertia, by contrast,
the old values are genuinely abandoned in favor of the new ones, so that
relapsingin the old ways is a mere psychological accident,not a necessity."1
Consider now the case of weakness of will. Among the most interesting
instances of weakness of will are varieties of self-destructive behaviour. In
those instances, the agent knows what is good for her and even has the desire
to do it, and yet, sometimes to her own bafflement, she winds up doing
something that conflicts with this desire. We find again a discrepancy be-
tween 'apparent'desires, which relateto her professedvalues, and 'real' ones,
which actuallymotivate her actions.
We must observe that weakness of will involves no confusion on the part
of the agent aboutthe desires she values: what is weak is her determinationto
pursue them. In fact, it is precisely because there is no confusion at the level
of values that it makes sense to speak of weakness of will. The weak-willed
agent acts against her will: weakness of will is characterizedby a genuine
conflict of desires, won by those desires the agent does not value.
On Nietzsche's view, the "man of ressentiment"is weak, but not weak-
willed. He is weak because he does not have what it takes to realize his val-
ues, not because he lacks the will to pursue them. His will is, on the con-
trary,prodigiously strong, so strong indeed that it is not even altered by his
conviction that he is too weak to fulfill its demands. But unlike the weak-
willed individual, he becomes fundamentallyconfused about his values. His
professed values are merely apparentand adoptedas covert means to realize
his repressed (real) desires. Hence, there is no real conflict between the
apparentvalues and the real desires: pursuingthe ones does not require that
one renounce pursuing the others; it already is pursuing the others.
Nietzsche's priestspreachequalityand universallove-with a vengeance.
The distinctive feature of ressentiment revaluation is therefore the fact
that it is motivated by the very desires it proclaims to condemn. Nietzsche
finds a confirmationof this discovery in reflecting on what he presents as a
particularlysalient featureof ressentimentrevaluation,namely the primacyof
negation.

15 The agent will also react very differently to the disclosure of his motivational deception.
The reflective agent (leaving aside the special case of the agent who takes excessive
pride in his moral achievements) will accept the disclosure without difficulty. It is merely
a mistake or an accidental relapse which he will not see as evidence of an essential
weakness, but rather as the natural resistance of old habits to new ways. The "man of
ressentiment," by contrast, will refuse, "as a matterof principle"(WP,179), to acknowl-
edge that his actual motivation is not his professed one. I have already pointed out that
this self-deception is indeed essential to the success of the implicit project of his revalua-
tion: it still covertly aims to realize the values it denies in spite of the agent's conviction of
his inabilityto do so.

294 BERNARD REGINSTER

4. Theprimacy of negation
Even though the priests belong to the nobility, the form of revaluation in
which they engage out of ressentimentdiffers from a typical noble creationof
values in a numberof ways. Nietzsche describes a particularlysalient feature
of this contrastas follows. On the one hand, "every noble morality develops
from a triumphantaffirmationof itself' (GM, I, 10; BGE, 260). The nega-
tion of what is alien, opposite to itself comes only as "a by-product, a side
issue, a contrastingshade"(GM, I, 11). On the other hand, ressentimentval-
uation is primarily the negation of the dominant code of values: "from the
outset,"Nietzsche writes, it "says no to what is 'outside,' what is 'different,'
what is 'not itself;' and this No is its creative deed. The inversion of the
value-positing eye ... is of the essence of ressentiment"(GM, I, 10; see WP,
172, 350). Contraryto noble morality, the invention of "evil" is "the origi-
nal thing, the beginning, the distinctive deed in the conception of a slave
morality" (GM, I, 11). The creation of alternativevalues and ideals is sec-
ondaryand wholly subordinatedto this negativetask.
The distinctive feature of a morality born out of ressentiment is thus the
priority given to the negation of other opposite values. It seems as if what
mattersmost to the "manof ressentiment"is not the new values and ideals he
brings into the world but the negationof those thatare alreadythere and dom-
inant. But both noble and ressentimentvaluations involve the affirmationof
some values and the negation of others. So what could this difference in pri-
ority possibly mean?
The priorityof negation cannot simply be temporalpriority.There are all
sorts of reasons other than ressentiment why an agent would want to pro-
claim which values he denies before divulging which values he affirms.And
it cannot be priorityin the orderof practicalreflection either:without the (at
least implicit) affirmation of some new values, the rejection of old ones
would be groundless. Practical reflection cannot proceed without
presupposing some standard of value under the guidance of which it is
conducted.
I suggest that, for Nietzsche, the primacy of negation in ressentimentval-
uation is a primacy in motivation: what drives the valuation is not the
affirmationof new values, but only the desire to 'deny older ones. But pre-
cisely this should arouse our suspicion: if the negation of old values is not
motivated by new ones, then by what? My (tentative)proposalis the follow-
ing: the old values themselvesunderlietheir own negation.We must examine
this answercarefully.
At first blush, it suggests that the difference between noble and ressenti-
ment revaluationis the following: the latter form of valuation is thoroughly
driven by old values whereas the former is inspired by radically new ones
whose creation owes nothing to the older values. The problem with this sug-

NIETZSCHEON RESSENTIMENTAND VALUATION 295

gestion concerns the origin of the new values affirmedby the noble. The idea
thatthey are createdex nihilo, in completeindependencefrom the older values
is ratherimplausible, hardly even intelligible as a picture of the creation of
values. It is more plausible to see the new values as connected in some re-
spect with the old ones: what basis do we have, indeed, to revise older values
if it is not a subset of these older values themselves?
This threatensto obscurethe contrastbetween noble valuationand ressen-
timentvaluation:they are now both found to rely on older values. The crucial
differencelies in precisely which older values drive the revaluation.In ressen-
timentrevaluation,the values thatmotivate the denial are the very values one
ostensibly rejects. By contrast,other forms of revaluation,including presum-
ably noble revaluation,retain some subset of the older values as providing
the terms for rejectingthe rest.

5. Ressentimentand resentment
The English 'resentment'can be used to refer to the phenomenonNietzsche
calls 'ressentiment.' However, it is also used in a more restricted moral
sense. 16 Moral resentmentmust be distinguishedfrom Nietzschean ressenti-
ment since the latteris introducedto explain the origin of the morality which
the formerpresupposes.I believe we should distinguishthem as follows.
If the priests truly believed that the political superiorityof the warriorsis
'evil,' then the treatmentinflicted on them by the warriorsshould provoke
their indignation, or their resentmentin the restrictedmoral sense. Political
power would not be something they value so that lacking the ability to se-
cure it would not be cause for shame. On the contrary, they might rather
judge the unbridledaggressiveness of the warriorsa markof moral weakness
(see GM, I, 13 & 14).
But indignationand resentmentare by no means the first reactions of the
man of ressentiment to his defeat: shame and self-contempt are (GS, 359).
His defeat causes him shame because his fundamentalaspirationsinclude en-
joying the political supremacyachieved by his victors (see GM, I, 15). It is
because political power mattersto them thattheir defeat arouses ressentiment
in the priests, and not just indignationor (moral)resentment.
In other words, the fundamentaldifference between ressentimentand re-
sentment is that resentment appears to presuppose the condemnation of its
object and constitutes a reaction of disapproval to its occurrence, whereas
ressentiment rests on the implicit endorsement of the very values embodied
by those towards whom it is directed. Among the affects associated with
ressentiment, Nietzsche attaches a particular importance to vengefulness

16
Notably, this is how the notion is used in the discussion of "reactiveattitudes"initiatedby
Peter Strawson in his "Freedomand Resentment"in Proceedings of the British Academy,
vol. xlviii (1962), pp. 1-25.

296 BERNARD REGINSTER

because it is the naturalreaction to failure of those who expect success. But
the purpose of revenge is not the punishment of a deed of which one dis-
approves. Rather, if I have been defeated, my revenge essentially aims to
restore my challenged superiority;the priest's revenge remains ultimately
driven by his craving for power, not by righteousindignation.

III. RESSENTIMENT AND INTEGRITY

1. Theproblem of self-deception
Nietzsche's most common objection to ressentiment revaluation is that it
involves "falsification,""lie," "mendaciousness"or "counterfeit"(GM, I, 10,
14, 15; II, 11; III, 19; see also, e.g., EH, Preface, 2-3; IV, 7; and more). But
Nietzsche also believes that all these cases of deception are in fact cases of
"self-deception" (see especially GM, I, 10, 13; see also III, 13 for the
particular case of "ressentiment against life"; cf. A 55). I have already
suggested that the "manof ressentiment"is self-deceived aboutthe values he
ostensibly embraces. Thus, 'deep down,' the priest really values and desires
the political power which his rivals the knights monopolize, but winds up
convincing himself that it is not desirableafter all.
Some of Nietzsche's texts might suggest the following objection to my
interpretation(e.g., GM, III, 15; A, 26). In these texts, the priest seems quite
clear about what he wants, namely political power. Accordingly, the revalua-
tion of noble values, which includes the denial of the value of political
power, is but the central piece of a cunning strategy to confound his oppo-
nent-a strategywhich, moreover, turnsout to be largely successful (GM, I,
16). There is no self-deception involved here, and no reason to reproachthe
priest for having recourse to deception:it is a meansjustified by his ultimate
end, political supremacy.
The scenario underlyingthis objection, however, leaves out ressentiment
altogether.If the revaluationis a piece of fully controlledself-conscious strat-
egy, it is not clear that the priest ever lost confidence in his abilities, or the
sense of his own power. But the feeling of impotence is an essential ingredi-
ent of ressentiment. Hence, the objection fails to establish that a valuation
motivatedby ressentimentdoes not involve self-deception.
A more serious difficulty arises from Nietzsche's use of self-deception as
the basis of his objection.The readerof Nietzsche who learns, first in Beyond
Good and Evil, then again in the closing sections of the Genealogy, that de-
ception is not necessarily harmful (BGE, 1; GM, III, 24-27), that it might
even be a "conditionof life" (BGE, 4), is bound to be profoundlyperplexed
by the scathing indictment of self-deception in the latter book's first essay.
Two observationsshould overcome this difficulty.
First, a brief examinationof Nietzsche's critique of the value of truthre-
veals that its aim is less to show that deception is good than to question our

NIETZSCHEON RESSENTIMENTAND VALUATION 297

belief in the unconditionalvalue of truth.Nietzsche's own conclusion is not
that truthhas no value at all but that it has no unconditional value (GM, III,
24 & 27). The inspection of other texts makes clear that truthremains a fun-
damentalvalue for Nietzsche, thoughone relativeto the realizationof an ideal
of integrity of self he associates with nobility of character."Truthfulness"is
a, if not the, distinctive feature of nobility (GM, I, 5; cf. GS, 2; A, 50). We
may thus safely assume that the self-deceptioncreatedby ressentimentis ob-
jectionable for Nietzsche, and proceedto ask what aboutit is objectionable.
Second, to believe thatNietzsche's condemnationof self-deceptionrelates
directly to the value of truthand knowledge would be misguided. Self-decep-
tion, it should be pointed out, is not just a case of deception (i.e. deception
about oneself). Deception is a lack of knowledge, while self-deception is a
lack of acknowledgmentof what, 'deep down,' one knows, or believes, to be
true. Deception cuts the agent off from reality but, unlike self-deception, it
causes no split within the agent's self. What Nietzsche finds troublingabout
self-deceptionis precisely such a self-division.'7

2. Nobility and Integrity

At the beginning of the Genealogy, Nietzsche announcesthat he is interested
in nobility not so much as a political or sociological concept, but ratherin-
sofar as it is a quality of "soul"or "character"(GM, I, 5). The early noble's
''predominancedid not lie mainly in physical strength but in strength of
soul-they were more whole human beings" (BGE, 257).18 "Strength of
soul" and "wholeness" evoke a certain notion of integrity, which therefore
standsout as a crucialfeatureof nobility of character.
Nietzsche appears to have both a narrow and a broad conception of in-
tegrity. In the broad sense, integrityis associated with a kind of "wholeness"
(BGE, 257), "autonomy"(GM, II, 2), a sense of "responsibility"for oneself
(GM, II, 2; BGE, 272). Integrityin the narrowsense is "integrityin matters
of the spirit"(A, 50): it consists of the possession of qualities like "honesty"
(GM, I, 10; III, 19), "truthfulness"(GM, I, 5), or "intellectual conscience"
(GS, 2).

17 Nietzsche himself draws a stark contrastbetween deception and self-deception when he

makes it clear that he does not object to lies as such, but only to what he calls "dishonest
lies," the lies of those who cannot "open their eyes to themselves"-namely, those who
are self-deceived (GM, III, 19).
18 Some of Nietzsche's depictions of the "noble, powerful"men are notoriously disturbing:
"triumphantmonsters who perhaps emerge from a disgusting procession of murder, ar-
son, rape, and torture, exhilarated and undisturbedof soul" (GM, I, 11). Even such an
apparentlyunredeemabletext, however, contains subtle importantclues: what the noble,
powerful men do, Nietzsche finds "disgusting";the fundamentaltrait he wishes to isolate,
and of which he apparentlyapproves, is that they do what they do "undisturbedof soul."
I will argue that this latter phrase does not denote a lack of conscience or reflectiveness,
but rathera kind of psychic harmony.
 Nietzsche tends to identify nobility with integrityin the broad sense. But
he insists that the noble person is also truthful because, as I will argue
shortly, truthfulness(or integrity in the narrowsense) is a necessary condi-
tion of integrity in the broad sense. By contrast,the "manof ressentiment,"
who is self-deceived and thereforenot truthful,lacks integrityin both senses.
Nietzsche says thathe is fundamentally"corrupted"(EH, IV, 7).
As Nietzsche conceives of it, the integrity (in the broad sense) of the no-
ble person is a quality of her relationto her values:

The noble type of man experiences itself as determiningvalues; it does not need approval;it
judges, "whatis harmfulto me is harmfulin itself'; it knows itself to be that which first'accords
honor to things; it is value-creating.(BGE, 260)

Whatever else might be involved in the idea of creation of values (and

much is involved indeed), it certainly designates a privileged relationship
between an agent and her values: they are genuinely her own. An agent lacks
integrity, therefore, if her professed values are not genuinely her own: she
proclaimsto embracecertainvalues and to act accordingto them while she is
inspired not by the recognition of their value but by "ulteriormotives" (GS,
359).
The creation of values is, in Nietzsche's words, the agent's "self-
affirmation"(GM, I, 10; BGE, 260): it expresses her own view of what sort
of life is worth living. Nietzsche warns against supposing that self-
affirmationin the creation of values amounts to capriciously declaring good
whatever desire happens to be, at the moment, the strongest. A painful and
protractedtrainingin self-controland self-knowledgeis necessary "to possess
the right to affirmoneself (GM, II, 3; cf. BGE, 188). To be entitled to claim
her values as her own creation, in other words, an agent must meet specific
exactingrequirements.19
One o4 those requirementsis of particularimportancehere. It seems clear
that to value something is differentthan to desire it, even if, as Nietzsche be-
lieves, one must desire something to value it. The idea of valuation actually
evokes a discriminationamong one's desires, and thereforereflection,choice,
and rejection. Valuationsare thus reflective endorsementsof desires. Though
Nietzsche does not make this perfectly clear, he appears to believe that an
agent genuinely endorses a desire only if he acknowledges the other desires
which conflict with the one he chooses.

19 These ideas cut to the heart of Nietzsche's philosophical psychology. In Daybreak, pub-
lished some seven years before the Genealogy, he already introducedand developed the
distinction between values that are merely "adopted" and those that are truly one's
"own" or "original," as well as the idea that to create and live by values that are
genuinely one's own is most demandingand consequently very rare (see D, 104 ff.). The
question of what makes a valuationgenuinely one's own is extremely complex. I am here
considering only one necessary condition of it which self-deceived agents cannot meet.

NIETZSCHEON RESSENTIMENTAND VALUATION 299

 The nature of this acknowledgment is very complex. Obviously it in-
volves the knowledge that the satisfaction of certain desires is incompatible
with the realization of the chosen value. If the agent does not know that a
value precludes the fulfillment of certain desires, she does not really under-
stand the value and therefore cannot genuinely embrace it. In addition, she
must naturallyalso remain aware that she has any of those desires herself, if
she does-i.e. she must not be deceived about herself.
But this knowledge cannotbe sufficient:even the most self-deceived agent
might know which desires her values condemn to frustrationand yet unwit-
tingly pursue their satisfaction. She only "represses"these desires, Nietzsche
suggests, which means that they are still active but beyond her control. In re-
pressing a desire which conflicts with her values, she knows that following
these values means frustratingthatdesire, but she fundamentallyrefuses, or is
unable, to accept the implicationsof this knowledge for her own life. And in
rejecting the implications of her professed values for her own life, she ulti-
mately rejects the values themselves.
For example, she might profess to embrace the value of equality and un-
derstandthat it prohibitsthe monopolizationof power. But if the price of her
continuing commitment to the value of equality is that she must repress or
deceive herself abouther craving for power and the significance it has in her
life, legitimate questionsmust be raised aboutwhetherand to what extent she
genuinely endorsesthe value of equality.20
There is no genuine endorsement of a value, therefore, without the ac-
knowledgment of those of our desires which conflict with its realization. To
acknowledgethe presenceof conflictingdesiresand to acceptthe fact thatthey
have to be left unsatisfied demands unflinchinghonesty with ourselves. But
the required honesty is precisely what the "man of ressentiment" lacks:
"While the noble man lives in trust and openness with himself ..., the man
of ressentiment is neither uprightnor naive nor honest and straightforward
with himself. His soul squints"(GM,I, 10).
Remember,moreover,thatthe "manof ressentiment"is peculiarlyself-de-
ceived. He does not simply ignore the presence of desires incompatiblewith
the values he proclaimsto embrace,but he also ignores the fact that he is ac-
tually motivated to embrace those values by the very desires they condemn.
Hence, without integrity in the narrow sense (honesty and truthfulness), a
person cannot regard her values as genuinely her own creation, and conse-

20 The acceptance condition does not necessarily eliminate all conflict between values and
desires, but it demands a particularattitudetowards it. We have genuinely endorsed our
professed values if a conflict between them and incompatible desires results in a self-
conscious control of the latter,ratherthan in their repression.Nietzsche explicitly distin-
guishes between the cases where the values bring about the "control"of the desires, and
the cases where the values "inhibit"or "extirpate"the desires. See, e.g., WP, 384, 870, &
928.

300 BERNARD REGINSTER

quently lacks integrity in the broad sense, namely nobility itself (see EH, I,
2).

3. The Value of Integrity

I remarkedearlierthat, althoughNietzsche deploresthe self-deceptioncreated
by ressentiment, he also denies the absolute value of truthand truthfulness.
We now see that their value depends on the integritywhich they make possi-
ble. Ressentiment generates a particularrelation between an agent and his
values which is objectionablebecause it amounts to a "corruption(Verderb-
en)," "unselfing(Entselbstung)"or "depersonalization(Entpersbnlichung)"of
that agent (EH, IV, 7). By creating and fostering self-deception, in-other
words, ressentimentcorruptsor dis-integratesthe self.
Nietzsche's psychological critiqueof value judgmentsthus depends on his
valuation of the integrity of the self. By associating it to nobility of charac-
ter, Nietzsche signals his commitmentto the value of integrity. But we still
need an explanationof the value of integrity,which specifies what is so valu-
able about it, and shows how it is compatiblewith Nietzsche's perspectivism
about values. I will first examine what sort of constraints Nietzsche's per-
spectivism places on his psychological critiqueof valuejudgments.
The view that ressentimentis objectionablebecause it underminesthe in-
tegrity of the self seems to presuppose an external norm of the very sort
which perspectivism prohibits. By an external norm, I mean a norm which
transcendsthe perspective of the agent. Perspectivismis the view that every
belief, including beliefs about norms and values, is ultimately relative to the
perspectiveformed by the affects, needs, desires and beliefs of the agent who
adopts it (see GM, III, 12; WP, 481). For that reason, it has been proposedto
construe Nietzsche's criticisms of other views (including his psychological
criticisms) as a kind of internal critique,i.e. one that relies exclusively upon
the perspective (and therefore the affects, needs, desires and beliefs which
constituteit) of the agent who accepts those views.21
Nietzsche's writings initially hint at two more or less obvious versions of
this attempt, both of which, I will argue, are ultimately unsatisfactory.The
first version goes roughly as follows. To detect ressentiment at the root of
certain valuationsis to show that they are actually motivated by the very de-
sires they condemn. On this version of his view, Nietzsche himself need not
think that these desires are objectionable,but the agent whose values are in-

21 This view is articulated, for example, in Daniel Conway, "Genealogy and Critical
Method" in Nietzsche, Genealogy, Morality, R. Schacht ed. (U. of California Press:
Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, 1994), pp. 318-33. Though I believe that Nietzsche's
psychological critiqueis 'internal,'I do not think it can be so for the reasons advancedby
Conway (and, frequently, by others as well). I discuss this point in my "Review of Niet-
zsche, Genealogy, Morality" in Ethics, Vol. 6, 2, January 1996, and in more detail in
"Perspectivism,Criticism,and SpiritualFreedom"(forthcoming).

NIETZSCHEON RESSENTIMENTAND VALUATION 301

compatible with them must do so and, accordingly,should give up his valua-
tions altogether.22Nietzsche occasionally seems to espouse such a view, as
when he argues,in general terms, that "theorigin of moral values is the work
of immoral affects and considerations"(WP, 266), or, in particular,that the
valuationof equalityis motivatedby a desire for superiority(Z, II, 7).
Yet, this version of the critiquecannot be his considered view. The moti-
vation for adoptinga certainvalue, however objectionable,is not a groundfor
rejecting it because, as he insists quite explicitly, the psychological origin of
a valuation has no bearing on its truth-value:"Originand critique of moral
valuations. The two things do not coincide, as is often supposed"(WP, 69n;
see also HTH, 225). Thus, even if the priest's endorsement of the value of
equality is motivated by his desire for superiority,it could still be true that
equality is good and thatthe quest for it should not be given up altogether.
The second version of internal criticism exploits in a different way the
paradoxicalnatureof ressentiment revaluation.On this interpretation,ressen-
timent revaluationis motivated by the desires it condemns because it consti-
tutes an elaborate, if unconscious, strategy to bring about their satisfaction.
Here, Nietzsche's objection would be that such a strategy is ineffective, or
even self-defeating. By encouragingthe agent to turnaway from his real de-
sires (which he feels he could not satisfy otherwise), ressentimentrevaluation
makes it in effect impossible to secure their satisfaction. Thus, in preaching
equality and neighbourlylove, the priests would not really recover the superi-
ority they lost to their rivals, the knights. Their "revenge"would be merely
"imaginary,"not real (GM, I, 10).23 This interpretationis untenable, how-
ever, as Nietzsche makes it unequivocallyclear that ressentimentrevaluation
can, and does, succeed in bringingaboutthe satisfactionof the desires that se-
cretly motivate it. Thus, the priests' devaluationof political power did actu-
ally restoretheir supremacy(see GM, I, 7 & 16).
We thus need to look for another construal of Nietzsche's criticism.
Unfortunately,we seem to have exhausted the most promising possibilities
offered by the text. One remaining possible interpretation exploits the

22 This line of interpretationis nicely summarizedby RaymondGeuss in The Idea of a Criti-

cal Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp. 43-44. It is not clear
whether Geuss argues that the agent with objectionablemotivations should cease holding
the belief altogether or cease holding the belief on the basis of these motivations, i.e. re-
align his motivationswith his values. If the latter,Geuss's view is closer to my own.
23 I must admit, as I indicated earlier, that GM, I, 10 is plausibly interpretedin terms of
'sour grapes' revaluation. The priests' revenge is "imaginary"in the sense in which the
fox's conviction that he did not miss an opportunityfor sweet grapes is imaginary.Thus,
the priest persuades himself that the physical superiority of the warriors is not "real"
power and, accordingly, that his defeat at the hands of the warriorsdoes not make him in
any significant way inferior or "impotent."Nevertheless, the objection I raise holds for
this reading as much as for my own: one cannot object to the revenge motivated by
ressentiment on the groundsthat it is merely "imaginary"since its success turns out to be
very real.

302 BERNARD REGINSTER

 suggestion that ressentiment revaluationis a self-defeating strategy. It also
admittedly involves some extrapolation,and presents problems of its own.
Unlike the two interpretationsjust mentioned, this one considers squarely
Nietzsche's insistence that ressentiment"unselfs"or "corrupts"the integrity
of the self. I thereforesubmit that ressentimentrevaluationis self-defeating
in a very peculiar way which must be related to the claim that ressentiment
"unselfs."
It is crucial to understandexactly what the corruptionof integrityamounts
to. Ressentiment does not just generate a conflict between professed values
and actual motivations, but it creates a highly paradoxical state of mind in
which the very adoption of new values is motivatedby the desires they con-
demn, and the pursuitof the new values is an unconscious, last-ditch attempt
to satisfy those desires. The "manof ressentiment"is thus divided between
two sets of desires (andvalues):the apparentdesires(andvalues) which he has
as a result of his revaluation, and the real desires (and values) which are
"repressed"but nonethelesscovertly motivatehis revaluation.
The problem, as I argued earlier, is not that the "man of ressentiment"
cannot satisfy his real desires by devaluating them. Rather, I submit, the
problem is that, were he to obtain this satisfaction, the "man of ressenti-
ment"could not wholeheartedly enjoy it. Ressentiment, in other words, cuts
off the conditions of satisfactionof a desire from the conditions of enjoyment
of that satisfaction.24According to the "psychological logic"25of ressenti-
ment, the "manof ressentiment"believes 'deep down' that he succeeded in
satisfying his real desires precisely by turning away from them. Embracing
those desires again, in orderto enjoy their satisfactionwholeheartedly,would
remove the very condition of a satisfaction he is convinced he could not ob-
tain otherwise. The "man of ressentiment" is thus left pathetically hanging
between the impossibility to enjoy the satisfaction of desires he does not re-
ally have, and the impossibility to enjoy the satisfaction of desires he has,
but cannotembrace.
Consideronce more Nietzsche's example. Unable to secure the superiority
he desires, the priest devaluates it and devotes his energies to the pursuit of
equality and neighbourly love, an enterprisehe judges radically opposed in
value to the struggle for power. His unacknowledgedhope, however, is that
helping or assisting others, for example, will at last earn him the power he
craves but feels unable to secure. Suppose he does succeed in improving the
well-being of others, but does not enhance his political status. This should

24 As I use the terms here, a desire is 'satisfied' when the state of affairs it intends comes to
obtain. This satisfaction is, in turn, 'enjoyed' when the agent experiences pleasure at the
state of affairs that has come into existence.
25 The phrase is Nietzsche's: see, e.g., WP, 135.

NIETZSCHEON RESSENTIMENTAND VALUATION 303

hardly satisfy him, since improving the lives of others is not what he really
wants.26
Suppose now that his altruisticgood deeds do bring him power: for exam-
ple, others feel grateful or indebted, and willingly submit to his governance.
He cannot wholeheartedlyenjoy it, however, not just because he believes it is
worthless or contemptible, but, at a deeper level, because he 'believes' it is
precisely renouncinghis desire for power that broughtabout its satisfaction.
To enjoy it, he would have to embrace his desire for it, but embracing that
desire,would in effect remove the very condition of its satisfaction-power
would again deserthim.
The normativeforce of integrityis internal since it wholly depends on de-
sires which the agent actually has and seeks to satisfy. Presumably,whoever
seeks to satisfy a desire wants ipso facto to enjoy that satisfaction. It makes
no sense for an individualto pursuethe satisfactionof his desire in a way that
makes him unable to enjoy it. Hence, by his own lights, the "manof ressen-
timent" ought to abandon his peculiar revaluation since it compels him to
pursuedesires whose satisfactionhe cannot enjoy, as they are desires he does
not really have or can no longer embrace.
Unfortunately, this interpretationpresents two significant philosophical
problems. First, it is at least questionable whether an agent in the situation
of the "manof ressentiment"cannot wholeheartedlyenjoy the satisfaction of
his 'real' desire for power: he only has to be deceived aboutthe source of this
enjoyment.27 Nietzsche himself, in describing ressentimentrevaluationas a
kind of "sublimation" (e.g., GM, I, 8), invites a comparison with the
Freudian doctrine of vicarious satisfaction. On Freud's view, agents who
sublimate their sexual impulses into artisticor intellectualpursuitscan enjoy
the satisfaction of those impulses vicariously, or, more precisely, under a

26 The psychological phenomenon I have in mind is, I believe, undeniable: it consists in

finding ourselves unable to enjoy the satisfaction of what we believe to be our desire.
Admittedly, this phenomenon can receive a variety of explanations: it might be, for ex-
ample, that the costs of the satisfactionwere so high as to undermineour enjoyment of it.
But it might also be that this inability is evidence that the object of the desire we do satisfy
is not, in fact, what we really want. Specifically, we might be, in such cases, animatedby
"ulterior motives" (see GS, 359)-other desires whose satisfaction we pursue, for a
number of possible reasons, under the guise or disguise of the desire we ostensibly seek
to, and do, satisfy. The explanation for our inability to enjoy wholeheartedlythe satisfac-
tion of the latterdesire is that it fails to bring about, or be accompaniedby, the fulfillment
of the ulteriormotives as well. A complete treatmentof this issue would have to addressa
number of other questions. For example, is the relation between the 'real' and the
'apparent' desires purely 'instrumental'or 'conditional'? The relation is instrumentalif
the satisfaction of the apparentdesire is only a means to satisfy the real one, so that the
latter satisfaction is the source of the enjoyment of the former.The relation is conditional
if the satisfaction of the apparentdesire affords its own sui generis enjoyment, but where
this enjoyment is nevertheless conditioned by the satisfaction of the real desire. Such
questions are not addresseddirectly by Nietzsche, and I will not pursue them here.
27 I am indebtedto Jason Kawall for this observation.

304 BERNARD REGINSTER

differentdescription. Likewise, the man of ressentimentcould wholeheartedly
enjoy the satisfaction of desires he condemns, only under a different
description.
Second, my proposal also rested on the assumption that to seek the
satisfactionof a desire is ipsofacto to seek the enjoymentof that satisfaction.
Although this assumption is true in many cases, it is not necessarily so.
Think, for example, of people who sacrificetheirlife out of a desire to ensure
the safety of a loved one.
The shortcomings of this last line of interpretationleave us with some
problems and prospects. These shortcomingsdo not seem to affect two main
points of the interpretation:that ressentimentis to be deplored for creating a
peculiar kind of self-deception; and that this self-deception itself is to be
deploredfor underminingthe integrityof the self. But they do affect the view
I have advanced of the value of such integrity. An alternative avenue of
interpretationmight be opened by drawing a connection between the notion
of integrity of self and Nietzsche's ideal of self-creation.28 But then, we
must show what relation self-creation bears to integrity, what is valuable
about creating oneself, and how the appeal to this value in a critique of
morality is compatible with Nietzsche's perspectivism about values. These
are large issues, however, whose examination must be deferred to another
occasion.29

28 Alexander Nehamas, in op. cit., ch. 6, draws that very sort of connection, and offers a
detailed examinationof it..
29 In writing this paper, I benefited from the comments and suggestions Alexander
Nehamas, GarrettDeckel, Jay Wallace and Louke Van Wensveen Siker made on earlier
drafts. I also wish to thank Lanier Anderson and Wolfgang Mann, as well as audiences at
Columbia University's BarnardCollege and Brown University, for helpful discussions on
various aspects of the paper.

NIETZSCHEON RESSENTIMENTAND VALUATION 305