Concept of ressentiment by Max Scheler and its contemporary relevance

HISTORY OF WORLD PHILOSOPHY

Abstract

The article deals with Max Scheler's philosophical concept of ressentiment. In “Ressentiment in the Structure of Morals”, he uses Friedrich Nietzsche's concept of "ressentiment" to describe an important negative phenomenon in modern moral and culture in general.

The article shows that Max Scheler's descriptive method organically grows out of the phenomenological philosophy of Edmund Husserl and at the same time imitates some specific features of Wilhelm Diltai's descriptive and analytical psychology. On the basis of this methodological approach, Max Scheler does not explain ressentiment and does not give a clear definition of this concept, but instead reproduces its formation in the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche and describes the phenomenon of ressentiment.

Using the descriptive method, Scheler concludes that ressentiment is related to the desire for revenge and feelings of powerlessness. He also describes the different dimensions of ressentiment, which can be formulated as follows:

1. Kinship and sexual dimension.
2. Age dimension.
3. Professional dimension.
4. Class dimension.

There is also noted in the article that Scheler demonstrates national ressentiment rather than critically analyzes it. This circumstance to some extent brings to light the Zeitgeist, i.e. the spirit of time, when authoritarian and totalitarian ideologies and regimes such as Russian Bolshevism and German Nazism were formed, being undoubtedly feed by the destructive energy of resentment. The author of the article also discovers a connection between Scheler's concept of ressentiment and Freud's concept of suppression.

The study shows how, on the theoretical basis of Max Scheler's concept of ressentment, it is possible to critically deconstruct not only such historical manifestations of ressentiment as Bolshevism and Nazism, but also some dangerous and destructive trends in the modern world, namely the ideology of the "Russian world" (“Russkii mir”).