Gilles Deleuze, in Nietzsche & Philosophy, expertly unpacked Nietzsche’s understanding of ressentiment — the self-poisoning sense of anger and frustration that becomes a permanent condition of the soul. From his reading, we cannot and should not understand ressentiment as a univocal force or state of being. It is a movement and confrontation of forces that has specific stages. In its full flowering, ressentiment takes the form of “bad conscience” and a permanent state of guilt in the “man of ressentiment.” This is its Christian form, but ressentiment has earlier stages that come well before this.

Ressentiment starts out as anger and frustration (even hatred) projected at the external world. It takes the form of an accusation and projection that seeks to make the accused the “subject” of his/her actions and to make them take blame for those actions. We see this in Nietzsche’s fable of the lamb and the eagle where the lamb imagines that the eagle is capable of cutting off its desire to eat the lamb. From the eagle’s original perspective, it is just doing what eagles do — they prey on weaker animals for food because that’s what it takes to survive. But in the fable, the lamb accuses the eagle of perpetrating a crime on the lamb. To even begin to make this accusation, the lamb has to project its own image of the eagle as something other than it is. This projection separates the doer from the deed and sees the doer as responsible for its deeds as if the eagle could have freely chosen not to eat the lamb. In Nietzsche’s terms, the doer becomes “the subject” that can be conceptually separated from its actions and thus held responsible for them.

This is the first movement of ressentiment, but it is not yet “bad conscience” nor is it yet “guilt.” Much more needs to happen before we get to that deeper sense of ressentiment. What the lamb is trying to do is to transform the eagle’s understanding of itself as a “subject” that is responsible for its actions. It does this by projecting its own hatred and desire for revenge against the eagle: “no wonder if the submerged, darkly glowering emotions of vengefulness and hatred exploit this belief for their own ends that the strong man is free to be weak and the bird of prey to be a lamb — for thus they gain the right to make the bird of prey accountable for being a bird of prey” (GM 1.13, p. 45).

The trick here is subtle but essential to understanding the first movement of ressentiment. The lamb is powerless against the eagle. In order to defend itself, the lamb must get the eagle to cut off its desire to eat the lamb. To do so, the lamb first imagines the eagle as a subject, and then the lamb must get the eagle to see itself the same way — as a responsible doer of its deeds. This is the movement of “accusation and projection” that arises from “the submerged hatred, the vengefulness of the impotent” (GM 1.10, p. 37). This is what Nietzsche means when he writes, “in order to exist, slave morality always first needs a hostile external world.”

Ressentiment thus starts as an “imaginary revenge” of the impotent against the powerful. As such, ressentiment exists as a reactive force that first needs to see the powerful as separated from and in control of their power. It then must get the powerful to see themselves that way. If the second part doesn’t happen, ressentiment doesn’t really work very well as a strategy of cutting off the power of the powerful. The eagle will continue to eat the lamb. It works when the eagle accepts the accusation and turns back on itself to see itself as the doer who is responsible for its deeds and becomes remorseful of those deeds: “But ressentiment would be nothing if it did not lead the accused himself to admit his wrongs, to ‘turn back to himself’”. Thus in the first movement of successful ressentiment, “the master becomes slave” (Nietzsche & Philosophy 128).

To be clear, this is not the Christian form of ressentiment according to Deleuze’s reading. It remains too focused on the other as an (accused and projected) hostile other and is trying primarily to transform the other. Christian ressentiment happens in later movements where ressentiment turns back on the accuser and not just the accused. The hatred of the hostile other becomes hatred of oneself. Deleuze is clear that this is not just the completion of ressentiment, it is a change of direction of the flow of anger, frustration, and vengeance. This becomes the birth of “bad conscience” when ressentiment becomes the creation of an interiority of the accuser who turns his/her accusations back on him/herself as a permanent state of self observation: “Ressentiment said, ‘it is your fault’, bad conscience says, ‘it is my fault’” (132). This bad conscience is intensified as these self-accusations become grounded in the Christian concept of “sin” as your personal responsibility and your cross to bear for the human condition.

The American form of ressentiment has not become Christianized. It remains outwardly focused toward the other — immigrants, terrorists, liberals (if you’re conservative), conservatives (if you’re liberal), et cetera. It accuses and projects hatred onto them as somehow responsible for “our” problems. The reactive force rarely, if ever, becomes self-accusatory and continues to project its energy outward at the other. Bad conscience never really forms within the accusers. Families separated at the border never becomes feelings of guilt — personal or national. Liberals don’t feel guilty: they blame conservative actors. Conservatives don’t feel guilty: they blame and demonize the immigrants. [October 15, 2022 reflection: Am I doing the same thing? Am I projecting and accusing? Can it be helped in such a meditation?]

What happens when ressentiment never fully develops as bad conscience? What happens to nihilism when ressentiment stops short of interiority? There are a few consequences that I would like to investigate. To be clear, I will formulate these consequences as provocations rather than as standalone statements of truth. These are not backed up by exhaustive research. I am not a journalist nor a sociologist nor a historian of Christianity in America. So you can do with these what you like, but as provocations I present them as attempts to look differently at the way in which Christianity functions and can function in American life. [October 15, 2022 reflection: How much these provocations are motivated by my own ressentiment toward American Christianity requires self-reflection. I let them stand rather than revise them because I think they are useful, but they are not at all innocent or neutral Nietzsche too certainly realized this in the power of his own writing.]

First consequence/provocation: We’re always seeking an enemy. When we have a clear enemy embodied in another nation or external entity (as happened in the Cold War and 9/11), internal collaboration seems to work. When those clear enemies aren’t there, the will to ressentiment desperately seeks for other victims — at our borders or within. American Christianity fuels this rather than cutting it off. To use the lamb/eagle analogy: The American lamb never admits to its powerlessness. It uses its hatred of the eagle not only to try to make the eagle responsible, but to turn that hatred back into a stronger sense of identity and will to power for the lamb. Weakness never becomes a virtue in the American psyche’s will to power. The hatred of the other funnels huge amounts of money into military build ups and surveillance apparatuses as ressentiment remains outwardly focused.

Second consequence/provocation: Christianity never fully takes hold in America as the driver of conscience, good or bad. It remains nominal and doesn’t really land at the level of conscience. This is because Christianity in America is not spiritual in its institutionalized practices. If there is a role for Christianity, it is not a spiritual one but an institutional one — at least the form of Christianity that is aligned with the conservative right. Precious few attendees of the mega-churches across the country will have ever read Augustine or Merton or Weil or any other deeply spiritual Christian thinker, let alone even heard of them. Deeply coming to terms with death and loss and suffering is not on Sunday’s agenda. When my mother in law passed away suddenly a few months ago, it took several calls to get the pastor of their church to even reach out to my father in law. Yet, they attended the church for years, enjoying its multi-media productions every Sunday. WTF. This is a deeply impoverished Christianity in dire need of a new Reformation. [October 15, 2022 addition: Am I being too harsh? Is this how it really happened? Perhaps my own ressentiment is fueling this memory that will not recede? Is the memory accurate?]

On the right, Christianity functions more as a state religion with purpose of keeping ressentiment alive as an outwardly directed anger at national enemies. How else could we see alliances between patriotism, Christianity, gun rights, and vitriolic hostility against anything that doesn’t fit into a heterosexual worldview? How else could American Christians line up in support of Trump who is so obviously not a Christian and be vehemently against Biden who so obviously is? Part of the reason must be because ressentiment never fully turns back on the American Christian to become an introspective conscience, either good or bad. The only conscience that Americans have is whether or not we tried hard enough when we lose.

Third consequence/provocation: There is little place for traditional Christian ascetic renunciation in American Christianity. Our desires and feelings are not to be overcome but are indicators of our deep understanding of truths — “truthiness” as Stephen Colbert famously called it. This must be unpacked because what happens to feelings is crucial in understanding ressentiment. Here is how Deleuze puts it: “The man of ressentiment experiences every being and every object as an offense in exact proportion to its effect on him” (116; emphasis added). He goes on to quote Ecce Homo:

One cannot get rid of anything, one cannot get over anything, one cannot repel anything — everything hurts. Men and things obtrude too closely; experiences strike one too deeply; memory becomes a festering wound. (EH I 6)

The initial movement of ressentiment is to make one’s feelings into the register of injustices against oneself and one’s community. Momentary anger is held onto as deep hatred toward the other who is responsible for my pain. My pain is a register of the injustices done to me, and someone or something has to be to blame — and it isn’t me. The “man of ressentiment” owns his pain, but not because it originates within him. He believes that it is foisted upon him by external forces beyond his control. It is holding him back from his greatness in the open market.

Instead of helping the man of ressentiment escape by focusing on himself and forming a conscience, our right-leaning Christian institutions cut off the means of absorbing the first movements of ressentiment into a conscience. The “turning back” never happens. In fact, they do quite the opposite. As I said, there is no ascetic renunciation in these institutions. If there is, it is the renunciation of one’s laziness and the invigoration of a will to power. Jesus is here to help. He is the way to success! All you need to do is accept his divine grace, and go out there and make yourself a success. He’ll back you up. The American version of Jesus has always been more of a Zig Zeigler or Tony Robbins than an ascetic monk. We don’t have monasteries here; we have stadiums as our spiritual homes. How many more times do I need to listen to a football player thank God for his teams’ victory? Mega-churches are starting to resemble stadiums with all the electronics of a high end halftime show. Their job is to invigorate and motivate, not contemplate.

Fourth consequence/provocation: We have no time for contemplation, openness and receptivity as important aspects of the American soul. “Ressentiment is the triumph of the weak as weak, the revolt of the slaves as slaves,” writes Deleuze (117). This part of ressentiment never happened in white American Christianity. Why did it never happen? I suspect because passivity and weakness were never values in the American soul. These smack of the abdication of effort, which is the American ideal. We must always be working. We genuinely despise passivity as lack of effort as a people. It is why we tend to voluntarily work far longer hours than our European counterparts. It is why we tend to define ourselves more by our careers than any other thing. It is what keeps us from having any realistic shot at a universal basic income even though the widespread social benefits are clear. We hate handouts not because they are unfair but because they short-circuit others’ will to work hard and make their own way in the world. Laziness is the cardinal American sin. So, American ressentiment does not and cannot result in passivity. It never becomes the slave morality. It never turns back into the interiority that Nietzsche found in Christianity’s ressentiment. Quite the opposite: it results in more effort. But if that effort doesn’t pay back proportionately, there’s hell to pay.

To end with another provocation: The history of the black Christian churches in America quite likely offer another model altogether. Does MLK offer an alternative to ressentiment?

October 15, 2022 Postscript: I’ve come to realize in ruminating on this meditation how much it is fueled by my own ressentiment. I have not chosen to revise it, but to let it stand as a testimony to this ressentiment of mine. Yet it may be necessary to hold onto it in order to pass through it — as long as I do pass through it. I must find a way to own it as my own. How to come to terms with it and to overcome it by holding onto it in a meditation like this may be my challenge.