The Question of Resentment in Nietzsche and Confucian Ethics

Title

The Question of Resentment in Nietzsche and Confucian Ethics

Author

Eric S. NELSON

Page

17-51

DOI

10.6163/tjeas.2013.10(1)17

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.

Keyword

Emotions, Ethics, Resentment, Self-Cultivation, Confucius, Nietzsche

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