Ressentiment versus Assertion-Desire

I don’t want to leave matters as I have just left them, and therefore am going to take the risk of making some hasty remarks regarding the relationship of reason to desire.

I’m making use of Nietzsche – I think that’s unavoidable. However, I’m not attempting an exegesis of Nietzsche – to be honest, I doubt I am up to that…That I can cut it there. It’s just that a lot of this Nietzsche stuff sticks in my craw… I want to get it out of there… I want to cough it up and spit it out, or swallow it and then digest it. One way or the other.

Here is a brief recap of our trajectory: 1) we want a “repetition with difference” of, ( or to put it another way, a philosophical re-activation of,) the Enlightenment;2) we suspect in some way not terribly clear, that a key to this philosophical re-activation of the Enlightenment is to be found in understanding “ desiring of one’s own repression"; 3) we note that Kant’s comment that “ Enlightenment is man’s release from his self-incurred tutelage,” relates to “desiring one’s own repression; 4) I insist that “ desiring one’s own repression” emerges against the background of Nietzsche’s idea of ressentiment, which is a remarkably fertile and subtly influential concept ( even if this isn’t very widely recognized); 5) a philosophical re-activation of the Enlightenment may be facilitated by re-activating an examination of the concept of ressentiment.

I want to note that I think that in terms of addressing the kinds of problems we want to address, which seem to involve what has been called here the “epistemology of desiring one’s own repression,” we do better by completely eliminating all references to the unconscious, and to unconscious processes, and try to think through these matters using the concept of ressentiment instead. As far as I am concerned, (please recognize that I am humble although overreaching in such statements,) the later Freudian concepts are interpretations of the Nietzschean ones, and in their medicalization and reification of the Nietzschean ones, there is an event of power/knowledge I would for my own purposes prefer to skirt…Because the power moment in that event recoups (or appears to recoup) exactly the moment of liberation I am pursuing.

I am very interested in this quote,

“The slave revolt in morality begins when ressentiment itself becomes creative and gives birth to values: the ressentiment of natures that are denied the true reaction, that of deeds, and compensate themselves with an imaginary revenge. While every noble morality develops from a triumphant affirmation of itself, slave morality from the outset says No to what is "outside," what is "different," what is "not itself"; and this No is its creative deed. This inversion of the value-positing eye—this need to direct one's view outward instead of back to oneself—is of the essence of ressentiment; in order to exist, slave morality always first needs a hostile external world; it needs, physiologically speaking, external stimuli in order to act at all—its action is fundamentally reaction.” – Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, section 10.

I said I am interested in it, not that I like it. I don’t like it.

It’s really nothing more than a series of assertions. I recognize that these assertions are backed by various beautiful and stirring descriptions of history and culture and a real impressive grab bag of erudition drawing up all sorts of “illustrations” and “examples.” But I don’t necessarily buy into any of it. I’m not even sure that I am going to buy into the existence of a “slave revolt in morality.” However, this isn’t my point today. I want to remark on the significance of its use of assertion… Of what an assertion is.

An assertion is an intrusion of authority into a text.

I suppose that such an assertion of authority is impossible to avoid. However, an Enlightenment thinker such as Immanuel Kant would attempt to support any insertion of authority into his texts in such a way that he could show that the authority intruding into the text was the authority of “reason.” This would be done by using a variety of practices, such as giving reasons for the assertion, by showing that there was no “partial” interest being served by the intrusion of the authority, etc.

An assertion is an expression of desire in a text.

An Enlightenment thinker such as Immanuel Kant attempts to efface any such expression of desire in his texts. Arguments in texts are literal effacements of desire. An Enlightenment thinker such as Kant utilizes argument and reason to efface desire, not to “uncover” or discover the truth.

In the last four paragraphs, I am trying to make explicit what I think Nietzsche is saying in his manner of saying it rather than give my own views on assertion, desire, and reason. I think that when Nietzsche says, “While every noble morality develops from a triumphant affirmation of itself, slave morality from the outset says No,” his target isn’t the thinking of some impoverished and maltreated human chattel, but someone like Immanuel Kant. I think that Nietzsche would say that in disguising or effacing what is in reality desire, (someone’s desire,) Kant says a loud NO to himself and to life -- Kant refuses triumphant affirmation of himself…. And thus contributes to “ triumphant calamity” instead.