ABSTRACT
Discussing Nietzsche’s remarks on the slave revolt in morality as well as his insistence on ressentiment as a physiological state that articulates in psychological paralogisms, this chapter defines ressentiment as a clogging of the will that occurs when reactive affects become ensconced in feeling instead of finding expression in action and when a secret pleasure is derived from moral indignation and axiological reversals. In addition, it investigates the place of ressentiment in Nietzsche’s naturalist accounts of the internalization of the soul due to the species-activity of culture and of spiritual self-overcoming. This chapter also relies on Dostoevsky’s image of the underground man. Fundamental to this type is not an excessive but straightforward desire for equality; it is the insatiable need for humiliation and humility that is intertwined with a perversion, and ostentatious hatred, of modern egalitarian ideals. Consequently, ressentiment is not actually a revolt but precisely that which reproduces the unequal state of affairs. This raises the question of how the slaves are able to revolt and establish their own values in the first place. The chapter concludes that the true conceptual innovation of Nietzsche’s genealogical project is not ressentiment but its ultimate ideological development and expression: bad conscience.
