Dostoyevsky Notes from the Underground and Nietsche Essay

Nietzsche raised in his philosophy a number of basic concepts that contribute to deeper understanding of the spiritual essence of the person, and the changes taking place in society and in history. One of these concepts is resentment. For the first time this concept was introduced in the paper â€Å"The Genealogy of Morals. â€Å"Study of resentment as a specific manifestation of the ethical-philosophical thought can clarify the causes of conflicts of interest on a personal and social level. Different ways of assessing the validity leads to misunderstanding and conflict of interests between social groups. Resentment (Fr. â€Å"ressentiment†) – a concept that has special meaning for the genealogical method of Nietzsche. In Nietzsche’s phylosophy ressentiment is presented as a driving force in the formation and structuring of moral values. He describes it as a vague atmosphere of hostility, followed by the appearance of hatred and anger, that is ressentiment – a psychological self-poisoning, which manifests itself in rancour and revenge, hatred, rage, envy. However, taken separately, all these factors have not yet formed itself ressentiment, for its existance is required the feeling of powerlessness Accoring to Nietzsche everyone has a type of morality that is most consistent with their nature. From this position, Nietzsche displays the history of morality – first of all Masters morality(powerful people), and then the winning morality,the morality of slaves (won not by force, but by the number). If any morality begins: say â€Å"yes† to life, the morality of slaves says â€Å"No† to everything external. This appeal outside, instead of turning to oneself, is precisely, according to Nietzsche, the expression of ressentiment: for its occurrence slave morality always needs confront and external world, that is, to operate it needs external stimulus, â€Å"its actions are fundamentally reactions† Nietzsche notes that the man of aristocratic morality is full of trust and openness with himself, his happiness is in operation. The man, characterized by ressentiment, is incapable of openness, innocence, honesty with himself. The†man of ressentiment† invents for himself an â€Å"evil enemy† and, on this basis, considers himself â€Å"good. The initial focus of hatred is gradually blurred by the uncertainty of the process of objectification. Ressentiment is more shown in the vengeance that is less focused on any particular object. Thus, ressentiment forms the pure idea of vengeance, it best â€Å"grows† where there is dissatisfaction with the persons position in the hierarchy of values. From here there are two forms of ressentiment: revenge directed at the other, that it is the others fault i that ‘I am not him’,and self-directed, self-poisoning revenge. The first form refers to – the slave revolt in morality Slave morality is presented in a person in kind of a second person, who is constantly unhappy with the first, gives him the consciousness of guilt, and dooms him to constant doubts, indecision, sufferings. Morality cuts the man into two parts so that he identifies himself with one part, loves her more than the other. The slave is doomed to constant digging in himself, to calm, appease, to deceive the beast and then trick himself into attaining peace, â€Å"peace of soul†. All of its basic properties and, most importantly, its total, expressed in impotent rage of ressentiment are express in the spirit and served in the living conditions of the slaves. It is a product of the slave revolt in the sole form on which all slaves are capable of. Only the moralising slave will push forward the qualities that can easy his painful existence – compassion, patience, meekness, etc. Only he will come up with the idea of putting into the category of evil everything powerful, dangerous, threatening, strong and rich. Only a slave will equate the terms â€Å"good† and â€Å"bad,† â€Å"stupid†. Only he will praise the freedom and thirst for pleasure, happiness, combined with a sense of freedom. Only a slave would guess to combine morality with the utility. And only he, of course, can and needs to change everything in such a way that when he is thrown away from the society,and is in the lowest point of his existence, he still finds meanness to perceived that as a source of dignity and hope. In Dostoevsky’s †Notes from underground† we can see the main character as the role of the slave. He feels resentment towards the world, towards himself. He dedicates years of his life planning the perfect revenge. His feeling of resentment is so strong that it is leading,controlling his life,his decisions and actions. Technically he has no actions,only reactions to exterior actions. In the scene with the officer, we see how after the officer doesn’t notice him, he does everything possible to be noticed, and not only noticed but also to be on the same level as the officer. The underground man feels inferior, he feels that nobody acknowledges his intelligence,he feels like nobody,like a slave. He starts feeling resentment after he had not been noticed by the officer,and since that moment revenge becomes his main goal. Rather than challenging the officer,the underground man becomes obsessed with the idea of revenge. But he never gets to have revenge, he only imagines it. One day, he finally succeeds in walking straight into the officer, but the officer does not even seem to notice. The underground man still counts it as revenge, but a revenge only in his imagination,in his own world. Everything that happened to him were in his own imagination, he had an imaginary enemy,and an imaginary revenge,nothing in his life was real and everything was led my resentment. For example the officer was never his enemy,he didn’t even know that the underground man existed,because the underground man had such a strong power of resentment,he thought that everybody around him,especially his oppressors were his enemies.