Kierkegaard and Nietzsche on Resentment Daniel Conway Texas A&M University

Konturen VII (2015) 132 “The Happiness of ‘Slight Superiority’”: Kierkegaard and Nietzsche on Resentment Daniel Conway Texas A&M University My aim in this essay is to pair Kierkegaard with the German-born philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900). I am particularly concerned to juxtapose their complementary investigations into the etiology and operation of resentment, which both thinkers identified as exerting a powerfully retardant force within the bourgeois societies of late modern European culture. Indeed, both were concerned to demonstrate the extent to which the corrosive power of resentment had transformed the religious injunction to “love thy neighbor” into a culturally sponsored program to “beggar thy neighbor.” The result of this pairing, or so I hope to demonstrate, is a productive division of philosophical labor: From Nietzsche, on the one hand, Kierkegaard’s readers may gain a clear sense of how a community founded on ressentiment may accommodate “healthy” expressions of comparative advantage and relative superiority. Even when exaggerated and amplified, however, these expressions pose no threat to the conservative, contractionary structure of the ethical life of the community in question. In particular, as we shall see, Nietzsche’s account of ressentiment may explain that, and why, the seemingly daring meditation conducted by Johannes de silentio in Fear and Trembling yields such a muddled and unsatisfying conclusion. Daniel Conway received his BA in Philosophy and Economics from Tulane University and his PhD in Philosophy from the University of California, San Diego. He has held faculty appointments at Stanford University, Harvard University, Penn State University, and, since 2006, Texas A&M University, where he is Professor of Philosophy and Humanities and Affiliate Professor of Religious Studies and Film Studies. He has lectured and published widely on topics pertaining to European Philosophy, Political Philosophy, Philosophy of Religion, Philosophy of Film, and Philosophy of Literature. His research has been supported by grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung (declined), the Oregon Humanities Center, the Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst, the National Humanities Center, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Centre for Research in Philosophy and Literature at the University of Warwick, the Institute for the Arts and Humanities at Penn State University, and the Melbern G. Glasscock Center for Humanities Research at Texas A&M University. He is an Honorary Life Member of the Friedrich Nietzsche Society, a member of the Executive Committee of the Friedrich Nietzsche Society, a member of the Advisory Boards of Nietzsche Online and the Journal of Nietzsche Studies, and a former Executive Editor of the Journal of Nietzsche Studies. He has held visiting appointments at Harvard University, University of Oregon, University of Warwick, the National Humanities Center, UMass Amherst, and Amherst College. Konturen VII (2015) 133 My aim in this essay is to pair Kierkegaard with the German-born philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900). I am particularly concerned to juxtapose their complementary investigations into the etiology and operation of resentment, which both thinkers identified as exerting a powerfully retardant force within the bourgeois societies of late modern European culture. Indeed, both were concerned to demonstrate the extent to which the corrosive power of resentment had transformed the religious injunction to “love thy neighbor” into a culturally sponsored program to “beggar thy neighbor.” The result of this pairing, or so I hope to demonstrate, is a productive division of philosophical labor: From Nietzsche, on the one hand, Kierkegaard’s readers may gain a clear sense of how a community founded on ressentiment may accommodate “healthy” expressions of comparative advantage and relative superiority. Even when exaggerated and amplified, however, these expressions pose no threat to the conservative, contractionary structure of the ethical life of the community in question. In particular, as we shall see, Nietzsche’s account of ressentiment may explain that, and why, the seemingly daring meditation conducted by Johannes de silentio in Fear and Trembling yields such a muddled and unsatisfying conclusion. From Kierkegaard, on the other hand, Nietzsche’s readers may gain a usefully illustrative sketch of an individual divided irreparably against himself, laboring in the thrall of a social role and station that he can neither fully embrace nor finally renounce. The individual in question is none other than Johannes de silentio, the pseudonymous author and presumed narrator of Fear and Trembling. Kierkegaard’s sketch of Johannes invites us to assign a distinctly human face—or, at any rate, a distinctly human psyche—to the enigmatic figure of the ascetic priest. And although it may be tempting to equate the ascetic priest, as presented by Nietzsche, with the knight of morality, as presented by Kierkegaard, especially with respect to the complex role each plays in the community he is obliged to tend, it is sufficient for my purposes to note the family resemblance that obtains between these two pathological types. Konturen VII (2015) 134 Part One: Introducing the Knight of Morality I am particularly concerned in this essay to draw attention to Kierkegaard’s use of the literary device of pseudonymous authorship for a specific diagnostic purpose—namely, to construct a psychological profile of a particular kind (or type) of modern subject. In general, or so I wish to claim, Kierkegaard’s pseudonyms represent second-order reflections of the spiritual crisis he detects, wherein the accurate diagnosis of this crisis is seen—though not by the pseudonyms themselves—to manifest and feed this crisis rather than to address or alleviate it. We often find, moreover, that Kierkegaard’s pseudonyms deceive themselves about their relationship to the crisis they claim to diagnose. Rather than establish their distance from (or immunity to) the crisis in question, their common penchant for hyper-rational analysis and abstract diagnosis confirms their immersion in this crisis. That they are able to reflect on the spiritual failings of others is evidence not of their success in leading spiritually enriched lives, but of their failure to avoid the pandemic spiritual poverty they both expose and decry. What Kierkegaard both realizes and dramatizes, in short, is that diagnosing the spiritual illness of others, as his pseudonyms are inclined to do, can be a powerful symptom of this illness in oneself.1 We often find, moreover, that the pseudonyms unwittingly bespeak, or manifest, a structural element of the spiritual crisis they seek to document. For example, Kierkegaard employs the figure of Johannes de silentio, the pseudonymous author of Fear and Trembling, to dramatize the enduring purchase of morality, broadly construed, on the lives of educated, progressive, urbane, high-functioning, and seemingly self-possessed modern agents. Even as he belittles those who cling to the banal clichés of conventional morality, Johannes unknowingly demonstrates the extent of his own involuntary investments in the ethical sphere of existence. Despite his avowed intention to weigh the merits of a “teleological suspension of the ethical” (FT 54),2 for example, he is able, in the end, to do no such thing. As he reaches the limits of Konturen VII (2015) 135 this thought-experiment, he recoils from the faith of Abraham and relaxes into the comprehensive totality of the ethical universal. As we shall see, the universal validity of the ethical law not only ensures the comfort, stability, and efficiency of the bourgeois society to which Johannes belongs, but also allows him to express his resentment of Abraham and anyone else who genuinely (as opposed to half- heartedly) attempts to “go further.”3 In particular, as we shall see, Johannes exemplifies a psychological type that Kierkegaard associates with a (bourgeois) culture in which one is encouraged to limit one’s sense of spiritual flourishing to the attainment and celebration of petty advantages over others. In such a culture, we learn, the emphasis is laid not on an absolute standard of excellence or flourishing, but on a comparative or relative standard. One judges one’s condition and progress, that is, by comparing oneself to others. The problem with a comparative standard of flourishing, however, is that it provides an incentive not only to build oneself up, but also to tear others down. We thus notice, for example, that Johannes regularly makes snide, offhand observations about his contemporaries, to whom he clearly believes himself superior. In addition to his potentially admirable labors of spiritual enrichment, that is, he is actively engaged in a campaign to ridicule and belittle his contemporaries. This latter point is complicated by the likely accuracy of his observations. In other words, Johannes is clearly onto something when he rebukes his contemporaries for their materialism, their philistinism, and their breezy sense of entitlement to the faith they thoughtlessly claim for themselves. Indeed, we know from those writings to which Kierkegaard affixed his own signature—e.g., A Literary Review—that he shares many of the dissatisfactions voiced by Johannes. Still, one may wonder why Johannes is so preoccupied, even obsessed, with the spiritual failings of his contemporaries. While it is no doubt true, as he alleges, that baldly asserting

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