Schoeck_2010_EnvyATheoryOfSocialBehaviour.pdf

RESENTMENT TYPES 221
the absence either of its moral sUbjugation (as, for example, genuine
forgiveness in the case of revenge), or of action . . . e. g., a shaken fist; and
where that absence is due to the fact that such behaviour is inhibited by a
pronounced awareness of impotence. 58
Resentment types
Scheler distinguished various resentment types-those, for instance,
which can be understood from the historical situation and others again
from socio-biological differences, such as the generation gap which, he
says, is usually fraught with the danger of resentment. Further, he cites
the mother-in-law, especially the husband's mother, who appears in the
folk literature of every nation, as· a wicked, malignant figure. Scheler
does not regard the active criminal as a true resentment type, only the
one who commits certain kinds of crime, here characterized as malicious,
coming within this category. One such is the murderer of motorists
mentioned earlier. Scheler detected less cause for resentment in the
industrial proletariat of his time, in so far as it was not infected by the
resentment of certain leader types, than among the progressively declining
craftsmen, the lower middle classes and the lower civil service.
Within the framework of this study, however, Scheler does not examine
more closely, from the viewpoint of class sociology, the causes of these
kinds of resentment.
He believes that the structuring of ethics is affected by resentment
only in so far as this brings about the collapse of an immemorial scale of
values. True, he does not think that genuine or true moral value-judgements
are ever based on resentment, but only false ones arising from
fallacious values. This, the ethical relativist and sceptic, Nietzsche,
failed to distinguish properly, although he had himself spoken of the
distortion of the scale of values by resentment. The resentful man's
whole perceptual mechanism is concentrated, Scheler believes, on abstracting
from, and perceiving in, reality only that which is able to feed
his malice and begrudging: 'Hence the resentful man is drawn as if under
a spell towards manifestations such as joie de vivre, glamour, power,
happiness, riches, strength. 59 Scheler stresses repeatedly the distorting
S8 Op. cit., p. 41.
59 Op. cit. , p. 65.