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Taiwan Journal of East Asian Studies, Vol. 10, No. 1 (Issue 19), June 2013, pp. 17-51
Feature Article【專題論文】 DOI: 10.6163/tjeas.2013.10(1)17
The Question of Resentment in Nietzsche and
Confucian Ethics
尼采與儒家倫理中「憤」的問題
Eric S. NELSON*
Keywords: emotions, ethics, resentment, self-cultivation, Confucius, Nietzsche
關鍵詞：情感、倫理、憤、修身、孔子、尼采
* Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy, University of Massachusetts, Lowell, MA.
美國麻薩諸塞大學洛厄爾分校哲學系副教授。
18 Taiwan Journal of East Asian Studies, Vol. 10, No. 1 (Issue 19), June 2013
ii
Abstract
I examine in this paper the experience of "resentment" in Chinese and
European ethical thinking, particularly in early Confucian ethics and in
Nietzsche's genealogy of ressentiment. Self-cultivation is articulated in the
Analects in light of issues of recognition and resentment. In contrast to European
discourses of recognition and resentment, the compilers of the Analects
recognized the pervasiveness of resentment under certain social conditions and
the ethical demand to counter it both within oneself and in relation to others. In
early Confucian ethics, resentment is understood in a variety of senses.
Overcoming resentment in oneself and in others is a primary element of
becoming a genuinely exemplary or noble person in the ethical sense; the ignoble
person by contrast is fixated on his or her own limited and self-interested
concerns. Whereas contemporary Western ethical theory typically assumes that
symmetry and equality are the primary means of overcoming resentment, I
examine how the asymmetrical recognition of the priority of the other appears
necessary for overcoming resentment in the Analects. Early Confucian ethics
integrates a nuanced and realistic moral psychology of resentment and the ethical
self-cultivation necessary for dismantling it in promoting a condition of humane
benevolence. Benevolence is oriented toward others even as it is achieved in the
care of the self and self-cultivation.
The Question of Resentment in Nietzsche and Confucian Ethics 19
iii
摘要
本文檢視中國與歐洲倫理思想對「憤」的體驗，尤其是早期儒家倫理
中的「憤」與尼采對「憤」的系列討論。《論語》在闡釋認知與「憤」的
議題時談到修身。相對於歐洲對認知與「憤」的討論，《論語》的編輯者
已經意識到「憤」在特定社會條件下的普遍性，以及自我在內心之中及在
與他者互動時與「憤」對抗的倫理需求。早期儒家倫理對「憤」有種種不
同層面的理解。就倫理層面而言，克服在自我內心中以及對他者的「憤」
是成為真正的模範或聖人的首要條件；相對而言，小人將自己侷限在利己
的思維中。當代西方倫理理論通常假設克服「憤」的主要方法是對稱和平
等。本文探討在《論語》中，以他者為優先的不對稱認知在克服「憤」時
何以有其必要。為提升人性的仁，早期儒家倫理將具細微差別和現實的，
「憤」的道德心理學，和將「憤」去除時所需要的，合乎道德的修身加以
整合。仁的對象是他者，即便仁是因關心自我和修身而達到的。
20 Taiwan Journal of East Asian Studies, Vol. 10, No. 1 (Issue 19), June 2013
iv
1. Introduction:
Three Western Interpretations of Resentment1
Moral phenomena such as resentment and shame have not been of primary
concern in Western moral thinking, which tends to focus on issues of guilt and
responsibility. Notable exceptions to this tendency are three modern thinkers who
interrogated resentment as a key dimension of ethical life: Sir Peter Frederick
Strawson (1919-2006), Max Ferdinand Scheler (1874-1928), and Friedrich
Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900). Because of their concern with the negative
reactive affects and social dynamics constitutive of resentment, they provide a
useful introduction to discussions of resentment in Confucian ethics. I proceed in
this paper from the temporally later Western thinkers to Confucian philosophers
in order to illustrate how Confucian ethics offers a unique alternative
understanding of resentment and its role in self-cultivation and the relationship
between self and other.
In his classic essay "Freedom and Resentment," first published in 1962, P. F.
Strawson maintained that resentment and other reactive affects are natural and
original elements of the interpersonally constituted fabric of moral life: "the
reactive feelings and attitudes […] belong to involvement or participation with
others in inter-personal human relationships."2 Without affective reciprocal
relations that matter to both parties, in which they are both invested and thus can
1 References to the German edition of Nietzsche are to: (KSA) Friedrich Nietzsche, Sämtliche
Werke: Kritische Studienausgabe, in 15 Bänden, Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari (eds.)
(Berlin/München/New York: De Gruyter, 1980). I have relied on and modified the following
translations of the Analects: The Analects of Confucius: A Philosophical Translation, trans. by
Roger Ames and Henry Rosemont, Jr. (New York: Random House, 1998); The Analects, trans.
by Raymond Dawson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000); The Analects of Confucius,
trans. by Charles Muller, http://www.acmuller.net/con-dao/analects.html; Confucius Analects,
trans. by Edward Slingerland (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2003). Chinese
quotations are from the Chinese Text Project: http://ctext.org/.
2 P. F. Strawson, "Freedom and Resentment," in Freedom and Resentment and Other Essays
(London: Methuen & Co., 1974), p. 10.
The Question of Resentment in Nietzsche and Confucian Ethics 21
v
potentially evoke negative reactive feelings in the self against the other, we
would not be in the realm of the normal attribution of agency and responsibility.
We usually do not resent what is considered to be outside of the other's efficacy.
Strawson describes resentment as a normal reaction to the other's injury or
indifference. Resentment is experienced as a demand that the self places on the
other, demanding her or his regard or good-will, while shame is experienced as
the demand of the other placed on the self. 3 Resentment is an example
establishing that the participant standpoint of ordinary moral life relies on
internal justifications. The complex psycho-social phenomenon of resentment
proves the necessitarian account of moral agency to be insufficient and the
"obscure and panicky metaphysics of libertarianism" to be inane.4
An objective third-person perspective would bracket the participant
perspective that encompasses resentment and gratitude, condemnation and
forgiveness. This neutral impersonal attitude, associated with the overly
theoretical viewpoint of determinism, would not include the negative and
positive emotions that help make up the ordinary framework of moral life. It
would also not encompass the space of reasons that includes the consideration of
what is rational and reasonable to do through arguing, quarreling, and reasoning
with others. In the objective attitude, which for Strawson is a useful resource to
contextually adopt as a temporary stance depending on the situation, one does not
reason with others as others. Others are not participants at all from this
intellectualized viewpoint; they are the depersonalized objects of social policy,
management, training, assessment, and treatment.5
Strawson, in his 1962 essay, did not examine questions of whether
resentment is actually an elemental truth of human life, whether it is indeed
normal or pathological, and whether and how resentment should be confronted
3 Ibid., pp. 14-15.
4 Ibid., pp. 24-25.
5 Ibid., p. 9.
22 Taiwan Journal of East Asian Studies, Vol. 10, No. 1 (Issue 19), June 2013
vi
within the interpersonal first and second-person perspective of agents. These
issues concerning the psycho-social bio-politics of resentment troubled earlier
philosophical discourses. To take one more step back in time, the German
phenomenologist Max Scheler contended in the early twentieth-century that
resentment is a basic problem of factical ethical life even as it should not be
considered a fundamental dimension of genuine ethical life.
Scheler rejected Kantian ethical formalism for the sake of a material and
content centered value-ethics, grounded in an anti-naturalistic philosophical
anthropology and notion of a material a priori. Yet Scheler modified a typical
Neo-Kantian argumentative strategy in opposition to the hermeneutical life-
philosophical emphasis on the immanent self-articulation and interpretation of
life unfolded in the writings of Wilhelm Dilthey (1833-1911) and Friedrich
Nietzsche. Scheler concludes that facticity threatens and overthrows (Umsturz)
the ideal values with which it should be contrasted and contested.
In Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (Ressentiment in the
Formation of Morals), first published in 1912, Scheler defined ressentiment as a
pathological state of resentment, the potentiality for which varies according to the
level of social-political equality and the stability of classes in society. In
genuinely egalitarian societies or in stable class societies, i.e., in any society
where persons accept their roles and places, there are fewer opportunities for
pathologically resenting others in heightened states of envy, jealousy,
vengefulness, and spitefulness. Ressentiment should not be associated with
Christianity, Scheler argued against Nietzsche, but with its negation and the
negation of the spiritual in modern bourgeois societies. Such societies are
characterized by both a relative—yet still deficient—equality and the relentless
competition to be better than others and feel superiority over one's neighbors.
Despite the limited and conditional origins of ressentiment, Scheler stressed
the potential for wider outbreaks: "Through its very origin, ressentiment is
The Question of Resentment in Nietzsche and Confucian Ethics 23
vii
therefore chiefly confined to those who serve and are dominated at the moment,
who fruitlessly resent the sting of authority. When it occurs elsewhere, it is either
due to psychological contagion—and the spiritual venom of ressentiment is
extremely contagious—or to the violent suppression of an impulse which
subsequently revolts by 'embittering' and 'poisoning' the personality."6
Such a pathological psycho-social condition, which involves the fateful self-
poisoning of the wounded mind, defies the basic moral character of humanity.
Scheler remarked: "Ressentiment helps to subvert this eternal order in man's
consciousness, to falsify its recognition, and to deflect its actualization."7 In
Scheler's account, accordingly, the facticity of ressentiment is the exception, and
the ideal exhibited in solidarity, love, and mutual sympathy is normative. Scheler
reverses Nietzsche's conclusion in the Genealogy of Morals. Approximating
Kierkegaard's diagnosis of ordinary life as a spiritual sickness that calls for a
transformative awakening to its absolute source in Sickness unto Death, Scheler
concludes that it is the lack of the ultimate motive and object of action (that is,
the divine) that generates the potential for radical ressentiment.
Scheler's conceptualization of ressentiment was formulated in response to
Nietzsche's earlier diagnosis of resentment as a social-historically constituted yet
basic element of ethical life. In Nietzsche's genealogy of the formation of morals
and moral systems, the overcoming of resentment, revenge, and the ostensibly
negative emotional states taught in religion and morality is not identified with the
realization of a superior spiritual condition in relation to the eternal. The idea that
one has overcome resentment, as Nietzsche repeatedly asserts of universal
Christian love and socialist solidarity, is depicted as the further fulfillment and
primary form of destructive ressentiment. Christian ressentiment runs so deep
that it shapes the anti-Christian resentment of European modernity; as in
6 Max Scheler, Ressentiment, trans. by Lewis B. Coser and William W. Holdheim (Milwaukee:
Marquette University Press, 1994), p. 48.
7 Ibid., pp. 72-73.
24 Taiwan Journal of East Asian Studies, Vol. 10, No. 1 (Issue 19), June 2013
viii
Nietzsche's portrayal of the English psychologists who remain all too Christian in
their enmity and rancor against Christianity.8
Nietzsche's conception of ressentiment encompasses much more than a
deficiency of sympathy for the other and the psychologically morbid departure
from the eternal depicted by Scheler. Ressentiment is, on the contrary, realized in
the non-recognition of resentment; in not recognizing oneself as resentful and in
perceiving others as motivated by a resentment that does not of course inform
one's own attitudes and actions. Whereas resentment always has a particular
resented object and a specific content and reference, ressentiment is a condition
that has been detached from particular experiences of resentment and definite
resented persons, groups, or objects. Paradoxically at first glance, Nietzsche
claims that ressentiment is most characteristic of individuals and groups who
believe they have overcome ordinary resentments.
The seething reactive psychophysical condition of ressentiment, according
to Nietzsche, belongs to natures that lack the capacity to react and respond with
ordinary active and reactive affects. Ressentiment is accordingly not the same as
ordinary resentment. Nietzsche scholars can obscure the relation between the two
when they overemphasize their distinction, since ressentiment is related to
resentment; it is a transformation of ordinary feelings of resentment into a
complex emotional-cognitive state. Nor is ressentiment the same as revenge,
which for both Nietzsche and the early twentieth-century Nietzsche-influenced
Chinese author Lǔ Xùn 魯迅 (1881-1936) can be an expression of nobility.9
Ressentiment is a general state of vengefulness against this world and life itself in
Nietzsche's portrayal. Nietzsche accordingly describes in the Genealogy how the
"slave revolt in morality" reverses the high and low and aims at the negation of
8 Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, trans. by Walter Kaufmann and R. J.
Hollingdale (New York: Vintage Books, 1967), I.10; KSA 5, p. 257.
9 Compare Chiu-yee Cheung, Lu Xun: The Chinese "Gentle" Nietzsche (Frankfurt: Peter Lang,
2001), p. 45.
The Question of Resentment in Nietzsche and Confucian Ethics 25
ix
the other rather than the affirmation of the self. This revolt against nobility of
character originates in the incapacity of real revenge:
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.10
The cultivation of an imaginary otherworldly revenge eventually culminates in
real violence against others and the destruction and annihilation of alterity in
Nietzsche's analysis.
To develop Nietzsche's argumentation in response to Scheler's objection,
ressentiment remains operative in the consciousness of the eternal that does not
recognize that it thinks and acts out of ordinary all too human motivations. These
motives, as Nietzsche shows in the Genealogy of Morals, are temporal and
transient. Human motives are generated and determined by biological, historical,
and social forces and only secondarily formed by individual decision, rational
agency, and ideal value.
In the Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche diagnosed the ressentiment
constitutive of conventional religion, morality, and the politics of equality. The
logic of reciprocal recognition, equal exchange, and sacrifice of the one for the
many requires and cultivates a reactive fear and envy of the other who must be
tamed, disciplined, and brought under control or rejected, excluded, and
eliminated as a hostile foreign power. The ressentiment of vengeful priests, their
secularized heirs, and the manipulated masses provides the motivational basis for
domination. Nietzsche contrasted this reactive yet cunning and skillful
10 Friedrich Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals, I.10; KSA 5, p. 270.
26 Taiwan Journal of East Asian Studies, Vol. 10, No. 1 (Issue 19), June 2013
x
resentment with the lordly affirmation of the self in the immanence of its own
desires and vitality of life. Nietzsche's ethics of self-affirmation is asymmetrical
in prioritizing the self of the other even as it undermines the reactive and
calculative treatment of others. Noble self-affirmation does not live from
negating the other. It affirms the other in an asymmetrical and non-calculative
generosity and bounty born of its own excess and overflowing sense of self that
Nietzsche compares in Thus Spoke Zarathustra to the bounteousness of natural
phenomena such as the sun and water.
Nietzsche is criticized as a radically anti-egalitarian and hierarchical thinker
by proponents of standard conceptions of socio-political equality, for instance,
Jürgen Habermas and Axel Honneth, and praised as a postmodern thinker of an
alterity and difference resisting the relentless logic of identity and enmity.11 In
this context, it is sensible to question whether Nietzsche's historical analysis
presupposes an objectivizing stance that misses the internal or immanent
character of interpersonal relations, as described by Strawson, and whether it
overthrows the reciprocity and mutuality of self and other required by Scheler's
ethical vision.
2. Nietzsche and the Resentment of "Confucian China"
Nietzsche's claim that moralism and religiosity are the higher achievements
of resentment informed his understanding of Confucius 孔子 (551-479 BCE)—
who is rarely mentioned in comparison to Indian figures—and Chinese culture
more generally. In the passage on the "improvers of humanity" in the Twilight of
the Idols, Nietzsche interprets Confucius as a law-giver like other law-givers
11 I consider alterity and asymmetry in Confucian ethics from a different perspective in Eric S.
Nelson, "Levinas and Early Confucian Ethics: Religion, Rituality, and the Sources of Morality,"
in Jeffrey Bloechl (ed.), Levinas Studies, Vol. 4 (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 2009),
pp. 177-207.
The Question of Resentment in Nietzsche and Confucian Ethics 27
xi
such as Manu, Plato (C.427-C.347 BCE), and the founders of the three
monotheistic faiths. Confucius is presented in this context as yet another immoral
moralist. He becomes a symbol of priestly power who never doubted his right to
lie in order to regulate the masses and bring them to conformity through breeding
and taming techniques:
Neither Manu nor Plato nor Confucius nor the Jewish and Christian
teachers have ever doubted their right to lie. They have not doubted that
they had very different rights too. Expressed in a formula, one might say:
all the means by which one has so far attempted to make mankind moral
were through and through immoral.12
Confucius is also compared to the founders of political empires in an
unpublished note from 1885. Nietzsche insists that "great artists of government"
(Regierungskünstler) and power from Confucius to Napoleon use noble lies and
moralistic deception to pacify the masses through physiological-spiritual
programs of "spiritual enlightenment":
Spiritual enlightenment is an infallible means for making humans unsure,
weaker in will, so they are more in need of company and support—in
short, for developing the herd animal in humans. Therefore all great
artists of government so far (Confucius in China, the imperium
Romanum, Napoleon, the papacy at the time when it took an interest in
power and not merely in the world), in the places where the dominant
instincts have culminated so far, also employed spiritual enlightenment—
at least let it have its way (like the popes of the Renaissance). The self-
deception of the masses concerning this point, e.g., in every democracy,
12 Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1990), p. vii & 5; KSA 6,
p. 102.
28 Taiwan Journal of East Asian Studies, Vol. 10, No. 1 (Issue 19), June 2013
xii
is extremely valuable: making humans smaller and more governable is
desired as "progress"!13
Nietzsche interpreted China, which he described as "a country where large-scale
discontentment and the capacity for change became extinct centuries ago,"
through the prism of a construction of enlightened power that destroys all that is
individual and unique in reducing life to a banal equality and happiness.14
Akin then to Strawson's less dramatic argument about the role of resentment
in normal interpersonal life, Nietzsche concluded that the apparent absence of
resentment is in fact more problematic than its active or reactive presence.
However, Nietzsche goes further than Strawson to the extent that the objective
stance is not a justifiable if temporary departure from the participant perspective.
It is a self-deceptive illusion of not having a perspective and not being a
participant. Such a state is the result of discipline and training and the bundling
and redoubling of ordinary resentments.
Further, altruistic attitudes are genealogically interpreted as dispositions that
are more deeply motivated by ressentiment. In this setting, Nietzsche constructs
and construes "Confucius" and "China" as warnings to Europe about the last
fruits of resentment, i.e., of a condition where resentment and the reactive affects
appear to have been tamed and trained. But the spiritual and enlightened
conquest of these affects has not led to their overcoming. They are intensified
and poisoned in becoming the invisible—and hence all the more powerful—
motives operating behind the face of tranquility, equanimity, and altruism.
Playing with the Chinese expression xiǎoxīn (小心 "be careful"; taken too
literally, "small heart"), Nietzsche depicted "late civilizations"—such as that of
13 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power (New York: Vintage Books, 1968), p. 129; KSA 11, p.
570.
14 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science: With a Prelude in German Rhymes and an Appendix of
Songs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), I.24, p. 49; KSA 3, p. 399.
The Question of Resentment in Nietzsche and Confucian Ethics 29
xiii
the modern European who could only be perceived as distasteful and dwarfish by
an ancient Greek—affecting a "smallness of heart."15 Nietzsche maintained that
the altruistic goodness and spiritual awakening promoted by Confucius and the
Buddha had reduced the Chinese to passivity and an abject equality under an all-
powerful despot, arguing that Europe faced a similar fate from its forces of
political and spiritual enlightenment that "might easily establish Chinese
conditions and a Chinese 'happiness.'"16 In Ecce Homo, the self-denial and self-
sacrifice distinctive of altruistic ethics is said to "deprive existence of its great
character and would castrate men and reduce them to the level of desiccated
Chinese stagnation."17
China and the Chinese are typically peripheral to Nietzsche's concerns. He
more frequently employs Indian and Buddhist examples in his works. They move
closer to the center of Nietzsche's geopolitics, which is centered in the Christian-
Jewish world, when he linked the Chinese with the German and Jewish peoples
as "priestly peoples" in the Genealogy of Morals.18 In the context of his polemic
against "decadence" characterized by ressentiment, and despite their difference in
ability and rank, Nietzsche described them as "peoples with similar talents." Here
Nietzsche is again describing a generalized priestly character or type. They are
three different exemplars of "priestly nations" dominated by ressentiment. In
most of his discussions of China, however, Nietzsche continues to use the
language of ahistorical stasis and "Oriental" despotism developed by earlier
German thinkers such as Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) and Georg Wilhelm
Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831).
15 Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future, trans. by
Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Books, 1966), p. 267; KSA 5, pp. 220-221.
16 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science: With a Prelude in German Rhymes and an Appendix of
Songs, I.24, p. 49; KSA 3, p. 399.
17 Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, trans. by Walter Kaufmann (New York: Random House,
1967), IV.4; KSA 6, p 369.
18 "By contrast [with the Romans], the Jews were a priestly nation of ressentiment par excellence,
possessing an unparalleled genius for popular morality: compare peoples with similar talents,
such as the Chinese or the Germans, with the Jews, and you will realize who are first rate and
who are fifth." Friedrich Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals, I.16; KSA 5, p. 286.
30 Taiwan Journal of East Asian Studies, Vol. 10, No. 1 (Issue 19), June 2013
xiv
Granting that the validity of Nietzsche's assessment of Confucius is
questionable, we should begin to appreciate the ambivalence at work in
Nietzsche's dialectic of power and resentment. Nietzsche is commonly thought to
be a thinker of power and even at times—although this is noticeably incorrect—
an apologetic defender of established powers. In these passages, Nietzsche
reveals existing power to be constituted and its constitution to rest in deception,
illusion, and—in many cases—revenge and resentment. The masses, whose
bodies have been shaped by discipline and whose minds have been manipulated
by their own fears and feelings of resentment, become passive instruments of this
formation and projection of power.
Resentment appears as a complex point of mediation in ethical life as it
constitutes both power and weakness. Resentment grows from impotence and
inability and remains operational through ressentiment even when it has assumed
power. It is a misreading to conclude that power is necessarily noble in
Nietzsche. On the contrary, power can be structured by and an expression of
ressentiment. Such power poisons the self unable to freely and generously use it
as it takes on pathological forms oppressive to the self as well as to others.
Nietzsche repeatedly confronts this type of power that he stylizes as priestly
power.19 It is born of real suffering and trauma and poisons the wound in order to
survive. Nevertheless, despite being evident in only a few rare historical
moments, Nietzsche held on to the hope that freedom and nobility are
accomplished in the genuine exercise of power. The genuine feeling of power in
the self is contrasted with the myths and idols of the negation of power that
signify its hidden and pathological exercise.
19 See Eric S. Nelson, "Priestly Power and Damaged Life in Nietzsche and Adorno," in Andreas
Urs Sommer (ed.), Nietzsche: Philosoph der Kultur(en)? / Philosopher of Culture? (Berlin:
Walter de Gruyter, 2008), pp. 349-356.
The Question of Resentment in Nietzsche and Confucian Ethics 31
xv
3. Resentment, Recognition, and Ethical Life in the Analects
One of the most basic issues of ethical life appears to be the complex feeling
of resentment. It has two dimensions: (1) the lack of acknowledgment and
recognition from others and (2) how to cope with feelings of resentment in
oneself and others. Scheler appeals to transcending these feelings of resentment
through positive feelings of empathy and sympathy, even though Nietzsche
identifies this kind of emotional transformation as a more deeply entrenched and
poisonous form of resentment that he designates with the French word
ressentiment. The emotional complex designated by ressentiment is a kind of
character and thus differs from ordinary feelings of resentment. Nietzsche's
critique of ressentiment could be potentially applied to the Analects (Lúnyǔ 論
語), a diverse fragmentary compilation that is attributed to Confucius, as the
Analects suggested in the spirit of Nietzsche. The Analects compared the
everyday practice of Confucian values to cannibalism in A Madman's Diary
(Kuángrén Rìjì 狂人日記), one of his most influential short stories and—like
The True Story of Ah Q (Ā Q Zhèngzhuàn 阿Q正傳)—a story of a culture
dominated by ressentiment.20
Nietzsche and the Analects are certainly correct that a particular
understanding and institutionalization of Confucian morality can lead to
weakened and pathological conditions of resentful passivity in which the self is
burdened by all the cares and obligations of paternal, familial, and communal
expectations. However, the story of "Confucian ressentiment" told by Nietzsche
and the Analects becomes more complicated if we turn to the Analects and the
Confucian classics. Several significant passages propose the necessity of
20 There is a rich and varied literature concerning the Analects, Nietzsche, and ressentiment; for
example, see Chiu-yee Cheung, Lu Xun: The Chinese "Gentle" Nietzsche, p. 59; Kirk A.
Denton, The Problematic of Self in Modern Chinese Literature: Hu Feng and Lu Ling
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 58; Peter Button, Configurations of the
Real in Chinese Literary and Aesthetic Modernity (Leiden: Brill Press, 2009), pp. 98-99.
32 Taiwan Journal of East Asian Studies, Vol. 10, No. 1 (Issue 19), June 2013
xvi
countering various reactive feelings of resentment. In the very first lines of the
Analects, Confucius is recorded as asserting:
學而時習之，不亦說乎？有朋自遠方來，不亦樂乎？人不知而不
慍，不亦君子乎？
To learn something and practice it; is this not a pleasure? To have friends
come from afar; is this not a delight? Not to be resentful (yùn 慍) at
other's failure to recognize (bùzhī 不知) one, is this not to be a
gentleman (jūnzǐ 君子)?21
In Analects 1.1, being noble, or ethically exemplary, is explicitly linked with not
being yùn, which has been translated as indignant, feeling hurt, to be bothered,
and resentful. This feeling of resentment is linked to bùzhī, which means that the
other does not "know" one, the other's lack or denial of recognition and
appreciation. The conception that ethical exemplarity requires responding to the
absence or privation of something significant for oneself from the other without
resentment is likewise found in 1.16:
不患人之不己知，患不知人也。
I do not worry (huàn 患) about not being recognized. I worry (huàn 患)
about not recognizing (bùzhī 不知) others.22
In this passage, recognition is again the occasion for another type of worry that is
not typically directly translatable as resentment. Huàn can mean to suffer from
21 Analects, 1.1.
22 Analects, 1.16.
The Question of Resentment in Nietzsche and Confucian Ethics 33
xvii
(illness, misfortune, disease), to be troubled by, or—as possible in its first
occurrence—something very much like resentment. In this passage, huàn
indicates an inappropriate resentment in its first use and an appropriate being
worried in its second use.
In Mencius 4B28.7, huàn operates as a type of anxiousness contrasted with
yōu 憂, which has an overlapping yet divergent range of meanings: anxiety,
worry, being bereft, and sorrow. Mencius 孟子 (C.371-C.289 BCE) distinguishes
having anxieties and perturbed emotional states from the exemplary person's
moral concern for benevolence and propriety that is a task of a lifetime.23
Benevolence (rén 仁), as Master Zēng 曾子 stated in the Analects, is a heavy
burden that ends only with death.24 The path of virtue is a difficult undertaking
that is pursued without anxieties or resentment against heaven and humans.
Resentment is an anxiety provoking affliction bound up with processes of
misrecognition or the perception of a lack of recognition. Early Confucian texts
indicate an asymmetrical strategy of dismantling compounds of resentment by
minimizing what is expected from others while intensifying what one expects of
oneself. Instead of focusing on what others ostensibly owe one, and the slights
one might have received from this due and regard not being given, we are asked
to turn our attention to whether and how we are recognizing the other.
In Analects 1.16, the asymmetrical priority of the other over the self is
upheld. This asymmetry is not a pure self-sacrifice or self-negation; nor is it the
asymmetry of the self and God that concerns Kierkegaard and Levinas.
Asymmetry is conceived as the extension and broadening of the self in the
context of its ethical self-concern and self-cultivation. The give and take, the
rituals and spontaneous moments, of everyday ethical life is not motivated by
pure selflessness and otherness. The vitality and motivation of moral life arises
23 Mencius 4B28.7; Mengzi: with Selections from Traditional Commentaries, trans. by Bryan W.
Van Norden (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2008), p. 112.
24 Analects, 8.7.
34 Taiwan Journal of East Asian Studies, Vol. 10, No. 1 (Issue 19), June 2013
xviii
from the self being concerned for itself and its ethical character in its relations
with and concern for others. It is not by the "slave-morality" of negating ordinary
desires and reactive affects that the ethical is achieved.
As Strawson and the early Confucians each realize in their own way, it is in
effect these ordinary non-heroic and mundane motives that shape and encourage
becoming an ethical self conceived of as a responsible participant in the everyday
life of the family and community. But where Strawson emphasized the role of
reactive feelings in the first-person participant perspective that he argues are
necessary to moral life, Confucians prioritize transforming reactive affects within
the participant perspective without appealing to notions of a third-person
neutrality, a God's eye transcendent perspective, or a contextless objective point
of view from nowhere.
Anglo-American moral philosophers, such as Strawson and Bernard
Williams (1929-2003), have rejected the intellectualism of Kantian deontological
and consequentialist moral theory. They argue that intellectualist moral theories
require inappropriately distancing the agent from her or his emotional life. Owen
Flanagan notes in "Destructive Emotions" how self-transformation through
structuring one's cognitions and affects, including transfiguring the emotions, is
not only a basic characteristic of Eastern ethics but of traditions of moral
wisdom.25 Both for the Tibetan Buddhism Flanagan considers in his essay and
for Confucianism, working through and eliminating negative emotions in
cognitive-affective restructuring is not alienation from unchangeable "natural"
states. Receptively working with one's emotions belongs to the dynamic of moral
wisdom itself.
A third word associated with sentiments of resentment is evident in passages
concerning one's attitude toward one's parents and the virtuous brothers Bóyí 伯
25 Owen Flanagan, "Destructive Emotions," Consciousness and Emotions, l, 2 (2000), p. 277.
DOI: 10.1075/ce.1.2.05fla
The Question of Resentment in Nietzsche and Confucian Ethics 35
xix
夷 and Shūqí 叔齊.26 Yuàn 怨 means to blame, complain, and resent and
Confucius is portrayed as associating the absence of the feeling of resentment
with benevolence or humaneness (rén) itself. In Analects 7.15, it is said that the
two brothers did not feel resentment (yuàn) but: "They sought and obtained
humaneness, what would they resent?" In 5:23, it is said that they "did not recall
old grievances, and so there was little resentment (yuàn) against them." A fourth
less commonly used term in the classical literature is fèn 憤. It also shares this
sense of not angering others or of not becoming the cause of resentment and
enmity in others.
This general concern is interpreted ethically in the distinction between
gratitude and resentment in the dàoshù 道術 chapter of the New Writings
(Xīnshū 新書), a political treatise by the early Han dynasty scholar Jiǎ Yì 賈誼
(200-168 BCE) advocating the regulation of classes in society through the
principle of benevolence: "If there is an immanent order to practicing virtue it is
deserving gratitude; to reverse deserving gratitude is to cause resentment
(yuàn)."27
Confucius depicts how lower forms of conduct that cause resentment in
others can be avoided by expecting much of oneself and little of others.28 The
ethical concern with not producing and furthering resentment in the other is not
adequately elucidated in Nietzsche's genealogy of how reactive emotions have
structured and deformed ethical life. Passages such as Analects 5.23 illustrate
how action for the other, done out of what Scheler would have described as
sympathy, is a basic strategy of reducing resentfulness against others and within
oneself.
26 Respectively, Analects, 4.18, 5.23 and 7.15.
27 "施行得理，謂之德。反德為怨。"; Wang Xingguo 王興國, Jia Yi ping zhuan 賈誼評傳
(Nanjing: Nanjing University Press, 1992), p. 228.
28 Analects, 15.15.
36 Taiwan Journal of East Asian Studies, Vol. 10, No. 1 (Issue 19), June 2013
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The strategy of a self-interestedness oriented towards the other, conceived as
conjoined and complementary rather than as irreconcilable contraries in early
Confucian ethics, introduces a modification to how resentment should be
conceptualized in contrast to the Western either-or between selfishness and
selflessness. According to this interpretation, Confucian ethics suggests that
reducing resentment in others reduces its being turned against oneself by others.
In the image of "selling resentment" as "buying disaster," the ethical is conjoined
with pragmatic considerations. Distinguishing these two dimensions, the idea is
that engaging in this social interactive process of undermining the causes of
resentment would accomplish more than pragmatically decreasing resentment
against oneself. It would, furthermore, undo the feverish state of resentment in
oneself. Undoing resentment is therefore a shared social project instead of the
romantic task of the heroic, isolated, noble individual.
4. Confucius contra Nietzsche?
One could well provide reasons for the positive role of resentment in social
life or for an equality of strength that is articulated through the affirmation of the
nobility and generosity of the self are two strategies for modifying Nietzsche's
genealogical critique of morality. A different strategy is suggested by the analysis
of resentment unfolded in the Analects.
Nietzsche distinguishes two different ideals of character: the reactive
resentful character and the affirmative lordly one. The early rú 儒 or
"Confucian" authors of the Analects attributed to Confucius likewise interpreted
the distinction between the noble person (jūnzǐ) and the petty person (xiǎorén 小
人), the "small person" who is unable to exhibit "smallness of heart," in light of
the question of resentment. The petty or ignoble person is portrayed as resenting
being kept at a distance. The petty act out of a small-minded self-interest and
The Question of Resentment in Nietzsche and Confucian Ethics 37
xxi
mean-spirited feelings of resentment towards others in an anxious and insecure
self-centered and partisan search for profits, favors, comforts, and accolades. As
the Great Learning (Dàxué 大學) reconfirms, contrasting the path of resentment
with that of kindness and tolerance, animosity and resentment undermine the
capacity to achieve a straightness of mind and wholeness of character.29
The authors of the Analects recognized the pervasiveness of resentment
under certain conditions and the ethical requirement to challenge it both within
oneself (e.g., not being resentful) and in relation to others (e.g., not engendering
resentment in others in personal life and in government). Nietzsche did not
recognize the latter as being part of the noble character, yet this is emphasized in
the Confucian understanding of resentment and related affects, some of which are
worthy of praise such as indignation against injustice and viciousness, which is
understood through a variety of terms: yùn (to be indignant, to feel hurt or
discontented by), yuàn (to blame, to complain of), fèn (to be indignant or
angered), and huàn and yōu (to suffer, be worried or troubled by).
Overcoming resentment in oneself as well as in others is a primary element
of becoming a gentleman, who as Mencius notes does not resent heaven or
humans, and genuinely noble in the ethical sense for Confucius, in contrast with
the petty person fixated on his or her own concerns. It accordingly should be part
of a well-rounded account of resisting and overcoming resentment. The
recognition of asymmetry necessary for overcoming resentment can be seen in
Analects 1.1 and 1.16. To this extent, early Confucian literati have a more
nuanced and realistic moral psychology of resentment as well as the ethical self-
cultivation and self-rectification requisite for dismantling resentment in achieving
a condition of humaneness (rén).
29 See particularly sections 7 and 10; Ta Hsüeh and Chung Yung: The Highest Order of Cultivation
and On the Practice of the Mean, trans. by Andrew Plaks (London: Penguin, 2003), pp. 11, 17-
18.
38 Taiwan Journal of East Asian Studies, Vol. 10, No. 1 (Issue 19), June 2013
xxii
The early Confucian model of self-affirmation through cognitive-affective
self-rectification suggests an alternative to Scheler's appeal to the eternal and
Nietzsche's underestimation of the ethics of the other. Self-affirmation does not
demand the negation of the other. It leads to a cultivation of the self that involves
confronting one's own resentment, which is tied up with a narrow self-concern
and egoism that expresses a limited or small conception of the self as well as an
exaggerated sense of one's merits, such that one can act for others without
necessitating the same in the calculative expectation of exchange.
The Confucian ethical point of view relies on the reciprocity (shù 恕) of
seeing the other as being analogous to oneself. This is not, however, the
symmetry of a conditional exchange. An ethical claim is perceived as being
asymmetrically made upon oneself independent of one's own claim upon the
other and thus does not entail the symmetry that reduces the other to oneself and
occasions the resentment of not being treated equally by the other. Analogy is in
this setting not identity, given the importance of making distinctions in moral
judgment and the asymmetries operative in interpersonal human relations.
The asymmetrical and proportional character of the ethical signifies the
impossibility of expecting of others the same as what one expects of oneself and
to experience this ethical demand without resentment; that is, to expect and
demand more of oneself than of others, such that the other's lack of recognition
and appreciation is not perceived as a justification of one's own lack. Indeed,
more than this, it brings forth the asymmetrical demand that one recognize the
other regardless of whether the other recognizes oneself. Even if the logic of
reciprocal and equal exchange naturally flows into resentment against others, the
asymmetry in the early Confucian articulation of mutuality (shù)—a notion in
which sympathy and kindness toward the other come to be accentuated rather
than a pragmatic instrumental exchange—turns questions of resentment and
responsibility back upon oneself:
The Question of Resentment in Nietzsche and Confucian Ethics 39
xxiii
不患無位，患所以立；不患莫己知，求為可知也。
I do not resent being unrecognized; I seek to be fit to be recognized.30
The project of self-cultivation in the Analects encompasses resisting reactive
feelings in the self even as it calls for asymmetrically recognizing the difficulty
of not having such reactive feelings under challenging life-conditions. We are
thus told that: "To be poor without resentment (yuàn) is difficult. To be rich
without arrogance is easy."31 Nonetheless, despite the relative ease and difficulty
involved, the wealthy are more likely to be arrogant than the poor resentful in the
Confucian understanding. The powerful fail to recognize and show reverence for
the weak and destitute, which reveals a pettiness and lack of appropriate ethical
self-cultivation.
The "petty person" is small by faulting and blaming others whereas the
exemplary person reflectively turns blame into an opportunity for self-
examination. "Pettiness" reveals itself to be a moral rather than a class
designation in the Analects to the extent that it signifies the person who should
know and do better and yet does not. In a claim further developed in the Mencius,
the asymmetry of benevolence entails that the ordinary person's resentment
should not be judged and criticized in the same way as the person who acts out of
resentment and pettiness despite enjoying more of the advantages of life.
Contrary to existing conservative discourses of resentment, early Confucian
ethics is more concerned with the resentment of the rich and the powerful than
the poor and the weak who deserve benevolence and equity rather than blame,
condemnation, and the suffering too often inflicted upon them.
30 Analects, 4.14.
31 Analects, 14.10.
40 Taiwan Journal of East Asian Studies, Vol. 10, No. 1 (Issue 19), June 2013
xxiv
5. Is the Ethical the Ultimate Form of Ressentiment?
According to Nietzsche, in the Genealogy of Morals, what is conventionally
conceived to be moral and the highest good is in fact lowly and only the ultimate
realization of ressentiment. Indeed, impartial and universalized love is the highest
fulfillment of ressentiment. This objection, despite Nietzsche's own understanding
of Confucius, misses the point of early Confucian discourses insofar as they
reject Mohist doctrines of an impartial universal love as insufficient for caring for
others and for oneself. The universal ethical point of view or a completely
altruistic moral perspective is an impossible ideal that is detrimental to ethical
life that begins with family, friends, and neighbors rather than universally equal
persons. We see in the Mencius examples of how it is a moral ideal that cannot be
performatively put into practice without falling into either contradictions or
moralistic fanaticism. Early Confucian ethics offers a robust rationale for the
cultivation of an asymmetrical and graded humaneness rather than an
undifferentiating objective stance or an equalizing global feeling of love or
sympathy. Impartiality does not entail neutrality; it requires being partial for
those for whom one has greater responsibility.
Ethical agency presupposes affectively grounded yet reflective processes of
discernment and judgment. The ethical agent cultivates her or his abilities to
make distinctions about merit, character, and the significance of relative bonds of
friendship, filiality, family, and familiarity. Confucian texts such as the Classic of
Familial Reverence (Xiàojīng 孝經) stress the asymmetrical responsibilities of
parents to children, the old to the young, the powerful to the weak, and the
wealthy to the poor. In its opening chapter, familial reverence is described as the
root of education and remembrance of others as orientating self-cultivation
(xiūshēn 修身). 32 Familial reverence, the medium of moral life and its
32 Xiaojing, ch. 4; The Chinese Classic of Family Reverence: A Philosophical Translation of the
Xiaojing, trans. by Henry Rosemont, and Roger T. Ames (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i
Press, 2009), p. 107.
The Question of Resentment in Nietzsche and Confucian Ethics 41
xxv
cultivation, accordingly does not aim at mere control and subordination. Its
purpose is to prepare children to become autonomous and socially responsible
moral agents who have a sense of their own individual moral life.33
Scheler rejected Nietzsche's thesis of the ascetic nature of altruism,
distinguishing genuine sacrifice for the other from the domination of the other
that occurs in the name of a higher good that is in reality born of ressentiment.
Scheler accordingly claims that in his work on ressentiment: "I pointed out that it
is precisely this aspect of true sacrifice which distinguishes true asceticism from
the illusory asceticism of ressentiment."34 The distinction between appropriate
and inappropriate self-sacrifice reflects Scheler's strategy of differentiating a
genuine form of ideal values that would evade Nietzsche's critical suspicions.
This escape, however, presupposes that which Nietzsche has placed in doubt: a
transcendent realm of ideal spiritual values and the eternal.
A different strategy to those of Scheler and Nietzsche is indicated in the
early Confucian discourse of resentment. This involves cultivating the self in the
context of the real psychological motives of action such that the lack of
magnanimity associated with resentment is not overcome in being negated and
transcended in realizing a superior state of being. It is rather recognized and
confronted within the very workings of the self. In early Confucian philosophy,
ethical reflection and judgment have need of a realistic yet ethically oriented
sense of human psychology and anthropology in order for the ethical to be
enacted and practiced. Observing, listening, and learning from others becomes
central to ethically interacting with others and cultivating one's own disposition.
The late Eastern Han dynasty philosopher Xú Gàn 徐幹 (171-218) articulated
his Balanced Discourses (Zhònglùn 中論) how sociability—listening to others
33 Compare Paul R. Goldin, Confucianism (Durham: Acumen, 2011), p. 35.
34 Max Scheler, Formalism in Ethics and Non-formal Ethics of Values (Evanston: Northwestern
University Press, 1985), p. 231.
42 Taiwan Journal of East Asian Studies, Vol. 10, No. 1 (Issue 19), June 2013
xxvi
and attuning one's feelings in relation to others—furthers and constitutes
wisdom.35
It is better to cause resentment in others than to do wrong, such as—in an
example in the biǎojì 表記 chapter of the Book of Rites (Lǐjì 禮記)—causing
resentment by refusing to make a promise that cannot be fulfilled. Wisdom
includes not being an unnecessary cause of the other's resentment. This wisdom
extends to the art of government that needs action while minimizing "animosity
and resentment."36 It encompasses even the king's ability to govern. Mencius, as
we have seen, and Xúnzǐ 荀子 (313-238 BCE) portray how the king's rule is
destabilized by permitting the resentments of the people and other kings to
flourish. The festering of resentment eats away at and dissolves ethical life. The
destruction of the ethical brings disaster upon families, communities, and society.
The Confucian concern with counteracting and lessening provoking reactive
feelings in others in order to maintain the fabric of everyday life and stable
government is utilized in Confucian arguments for the necessity of ritual, music,
and poetry for moral life. These practices are not secondary ornamental
considerations, as they instruct and orient agents, helping them to appropriately
regulate their emotions. The rituals of everyday interactions and ritual propriety
(lǐ 禮) accomplish much more than a regulation of the emotions. It emancipates
the self from its narrowness and places it into the fullness of life in all of its
dimensions.
The repeatedly stated esteem of Confucius for the Book of Odes (Shī Jīng
詩經) is centered in an appeal to their function in promoting ethical self-
cultivation and balancing nature and nurture. The classic songs of Zhōu 周 do
not serve to conservatively reinforce the conformity of traditional tastes. Poetry
35 Xu Gan, Balanced Discourses: A Bilingual Edition, trans. by John Makeham (Beijing and New
Haven: Foreign Language Press and Yale University Press, 2002), p. 7.
36 Xiaojing, ch. 1; The Chinese Classic of Family Reverence: A Philosophical Translation of the
Xiaojing, p. 105.
The Question of Resentment in Nietzsche and Confucian Ethics 43
xxvii
and music join one with others and with the self, allowing for the creative
appropriation of contextual relationships. The odes teach sociality and the art of
sociability; they promote self-contemplation and reveal how to regulate feelings
of resentment (yuàn).37
Confucian ethics requires confronting self-deception and false consciousness
with honesty and straightforwardness of mind. It calls for honesty with oneself
and others; a recognition of one's own resentment rather than its concealment,
which also concerned Nietzsche, and not feigning a moral condition one does not
understand. In Analects 5.25, Confucius is said to explain:
巧言、令色、足恭，左丘明恥之，丘亦恥之。匿怨而友其人，左丘
明恥之，丘亦恥之。
Clever words, a pretentious appearance, and excessive courtesy: Zuǒ
Qiūmíng found them shameful, and I also find them shameful.
Concealing resentment (yuàn) and befriending the person resented
(yuàn): Zuǒ Qiūmíng found them shameful, and I also find them
shameful.38
The Confucian critique of flattery and obsequiousness, as in Analects 1.15 and
2.24, and promotion of a genuineness of feeling, straightforwardness of mind,
and individual constancy in the face of social pressures point toward a resonance
between the ethics of nobleness in the texts of Nietzsche and early Confucianism.
James S. Hans has argued that both appreciate the reality and mechanisms of
resentment in ordinary moral life. Neither employs guilt—the resentment against
resentment—in a futile and toxic attempt to cure it and better humanity through
37 Analects, 17.8.
38 Analects, 5.25.
44 Taiwan Journal of East Asian Studies, Vol. 10, No. 1 (Issue 19), June 2013
xxviii
external discipline and internal self-negation.39 Both rely on their own variety of
a project of individual and personal self-cultivation that encompasses emotion
and reason. I would not go so far as Hans' assertion that each practice of
individuation occurs in an "aesthetic context without ground," since there is no
existential abyss in Confucian thought and self-cultivation is more than aesthetic.
Cultivation occurs in and responds to a web of aesthetic, ethical, and
psychological conditions and claims.40
Nietzsche and early Confucian thought both highlight the self-cultivation of
genuineness and generosity out of self-affirmation and reject motivations formed
by the negation of the other. They diverge insofar as Nietzsche performatively
and evocatively focuses our concern on our own individuality in opposition to
social conventions and pragmatic accommodations, whereas Confucians demonstrate
how social rituals and conventions are a principal vehicle of ethical individuation
rather than being mere conformity or a prudential self-betrayal.
It might be argued in response to such a Confucian critique of Nietzsche that
Nietzsche highlights the non-calculative generosity of the cultivated noble self.
For example, Nietzsche's Zarathustra is an exemplar of the practice of self-
cultivation (Bildung) that develops the highest bestowing virtue, which naturally
and generously pours forth its gifts like the sun, without any expectation of return
or exchange. There are of course many passages in praise of self-overflowing
virtue in Nietzsche's works, and such virtue is a key element of Nietzschean self-
cultivation.41 Nonetheless, Nietzschean virtues always proceed from the self to
the other without the Confucian concern with or recognition of the asymmetrical
mutuality (shù) of self and other in which ethics also proceeds from the other to
the self.
39 James S. Hans, Contextual Authority and Aesthetic Truth (Albany: State University of New
York Press, 1992), p. 337.
40 Ibid..
41 See, for instance, Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits, trans. by R. J.
Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), sections 376 and 587.
The Question of Resentment in Nietzsche and Confucian Ethics 45
xxix
Nietzschean virtues of friendship and generosity are arguably akin to
Confucian shù in sharing with others without calculation or an instrumental
expectation of receiving something in return. They diverge from a Confucian
perspective insofar as Nietzsche does not consider adequately articulate the
"push" or extension (tuī 推) that requires seeing and interpreting oneself from
the other's perspective and extending one's responsiveness to widening circles of
beings from the family to humanity and to the universe itself in the Neo-
Confucian interpretation of Mèngzǐ's heart-mind. The non-calculating and
incalculable reciprocity (shù) between self and other is a basic feature of
Confucian ethics that makes it a significant alternative to Western ethical models.
We can still find traces of the early Confucian discourse of recognition and
resentment in later Neo-Confucian texts that reconfirm the affinity and difference
between the asymmetrical sociality of Confucian ethics and the asymmetrical
individualism of Nietzschean ethics. Wáng Yángmíng 王陽明 (1472-1528), for
instance, elucidates the idea of reciprocal reproof without causing resentment in
oneself or others in his "Encouraging Goodness through Reproof." The "way of
friends" is the social realization of the good. It signifies both to accept reproof
from others without feeling resentment towards them, since they are our best
teachers, and to move others to improve themselves without fault-finding and
without making them feel shame and resentment.42
6. Confucian Ethics and the Politics of Resentment
In the early Confucian tradition of moral reflection, resentment is overcome
through recognition. To know the self undermines negative affects against others
42 Philip J. Ivanhoe, Readings from the Lu-Wang School of Neo-Confucianism (Indianapolis:
Hackett Publishing Company, 2009), p. 176.
46 Taiwan Journal of East Asian Studies, Vol. 10, No. 1 (Issue 19), June 2013
xxx
and the course of "heaven" (tiān 天, which should be understood as signifying
something closer to "nature" than to a spiritual realm). Xúnzǐ accordingly stated:
自知者不怨人，知命者不怨天；怨人者窮，怨天者無志。失之己，
反之人，豈不迂乎哉！
Those who recognize (zhī) themselves do not resent (yuàn) others; those
who recognize fate do not resent heaven. Those who resent others are
bound to fail; those who resent heaven do not learn from experience.43
In contrast to standard interpretations of Nietzsche's philosophy, early
Confucian thinking overcomes resentment through the ethical perspective of
acting for the sake of others while examining oneself in order to achieve self-
recognition. There are appeals to "heaven" (tiān) in early Confucian writings,
such as Xúnzǐ's quoted above. Such addresses do not appeal to an otherworldly
transcendence or eternity but rely on the immanent course and order of the world.
Scheler amended his philosophical anthropology with its emergent levels of
the organic with a transcendent appeal to metaphysics and religion to introduce
and justify his vision of personalism. Confucian ethics accomplishes in an earthy,
immanent, and more modest manner what Western religious thinkers, such as
Scheler's appeal to the eternal, require of the transcendent and eternal. 44
Confucian ethics offers a philosophical framework for an immanent ethics of the
other, for an altruism that is rooted in the moral feelings of the self, and in the
reformation rather than the rejection of the natural and social-historical forces
that condition and shape ethical reality.
43 Xunzi, 4.5; Xunzi, Xunzi: A Translation and Study of the Complete Works, Vol. 1, trans. by John
Knoblock (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988), p. 188.
44 I examine the affinities (more evident in Levinas's Jewish writings) and tensions (more visible
in his philosophical writings) between immanence and transcendence in Confucian and
Levinasian ethics in "Levinas and Early Confucian Ethics," pp. 177-207.
The Question of Resentment in Nietzsche and Confucian Ethics 47
xxxi
Historically, the rú tradition has been predominantly anti-egalitarian,
hierarchical, and traditionalist. Nonetheless, there are also morally-oriented
reformist tendencies that prioritize the well-being of others and the people. Such
tendencies are apparent in the Analects. For instance, prioritizing the ethical
while still connecting it with the pragmatic and instrumental, Confucius is said to
remark: "If there is equality, there will be no poverty; where there is peace, there
is no lack of population."45
They are in particular voiced in the book associated with Mencius.
Asymmetrical ethics appears there in the context of the self's natural
responsiveness and cultivated responsibility toward others. For Mencius, the
cognitive-affective economy of humans is predisposed toward ethics without the
appeal to the transcendent that Scheler wielded against Nietzsche's skepticism. It
is, to adopt a phrase from Owen Flanagan, "naturally structured for morality."46
The genuine ethically exemplary person, and the genuine king whose
legitimate power is based in the people and serves their well-being, not only acts
for the sake of the people's well-being but hears, listens, and responds to their
voices rather than resenting their desires, demands, and perceived imperfections.
In the opening passages of the book of Mencius, it is not the people but the
flawed King Huì of Liáng 梁惠王 who is filled with narrow desires, limited
self-interest, and resentment against his people and neighboring kings. King Huì
suffers from his incapacity to recognize that others are suffering and extend his
heart-mind toward others. However, despite his excuses, this king is not naturally
or constitutionally unable. As Mencius reveals to the king's discomfort in their
conversation, King Huì is affectively and reflectively unwilling to be responsive
to and take responsibility for those affected by his misuse of his position, power,
and wealth.
45 Analects 16.2.
46 Owen Flanagan, "Destructive Emotions," p. 269.
48 Taiwan Journal of East Asian Studies, Vol. 10, No. 1 (Issue 19), June 2013
xxxii
7. Conclusion
The line of argumentation from the Mencius discussed above continues to
have contemporary ethical and political significance. Ideological uses of the
"politics of resentment" and even Nietzsche's conception of the smoldering
condition of ressentiment fail to sufficiently analyze the dialectic of ressentiment.
The early Confucians maintain that when either coercion and force or power and
wealth are abused, the people will be naturally resentful. Confucian thinkers
concluded that the resentment of non-elites against elites is ethically less
blameworthy and politically less problematic than the arrogance, enmity, and
resentment of elites against non-elites. Such resentment is evident, I think, in
contemporary conservative discourses concerning the distribution of wealth and
power that tend to blame the poor, the weak, and the voiceless for their condition.
On the basis of these alternate "critical" and transformative tendencies
articulated in the classical rú tradition itself, particularly in the text associated
with Mencius, a contemporary Confucian interpretation of asymmetrical
responsibility can well be argued to provide a number of compelling reasons for
promoting social-political equality, challenging asymmetrical claims of privilege
that serve as an illegitimate justification or excuse for opposing greater fairness
and equity among the people. Early Confucian ethics can accomplish this task
and be a "critical ethics" by contesting and deconstructing instead of furthering
resentment and the condition of ressentiment that it promotes.♦
♦ Responsible editor: Yung-hsiang Yuan (袁永祥)
The Question of Resentment in Nietzsche and Confucian Ethics 49
xxxiii
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