Ressentiment
| Author | Max Scheler; translated by Lewis A. Coser |
|---|---|
| Published | 1912 |
| Format | Book |
TL;DR — Scheler’s answer to Nietzsche: ressentiment did not create Christian ethics, he argues, but it does lie at the root of modern bourgeois and humanitarian morality.
Max Scheler’s essay Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen, first published in 1912 and revised in 1915; this is the English translation by Lewis A. Coser from the 1915 text (the copy prints the name as “Louis”).
Scheler takes up Nietzsche’s charge that Christian morality was born of the resentment of the weak. Five chapters treat the phenomenology and sociology of ressentiment — a lasting attitude built from repressed envy and impotent revenge that distorts how values are seen — then ressentiment and moral value judgement, Christian morality, modern humanitarian love, and other value shifts in modern morality. His conclusion is that the core of Christian love does not grow from ressentiment, but that the bourgeois morality that replaced it from the 13th century onward, culminating in the French Revolution, does.
What it is: a classic of 20th-century phenomenology and moral philosophy, and a standard reference in later work on envy and resentment, including Girard’s. This copy is a scan of an in-copyright translation.
Where this came from
- A copy saved in October 2026.
125 pages. A PDF copy is held in Kyle’s private archive; it is not linked or shared here.