Maleficent Obsession
The Long Dark Tunnel of Resentment
I have been reading Max Scheler's Ressentiment, an analysis of the inversion of moral values that occurs when someone who is in an inferior position, unable to strike out openly in vengeance and wrath, and unable to eliminate the condition that makes him feel inferior, turns the virtues of the superior into vices, and sees his own hatred, weakness, envy, and vindictiveness as virtues. Nietzsche said that Christianity was a religion of ressentiment, but Scheler corrects him on that crucial point, affirming the generous rejoicing in excellence that characterizes the saint. If saints strive with one another, it is in the happiness of giving. They are indifferent to that bourgeois competition, says Scheler, which takes the place of the saintly and the courtly, and which perceives inequality as at best a necessary evil, and at worst an evil to be obliterated, even at the cost of liberty or of many a masterwork that never will be wrought.
The premise of political ressentiment in our time is that if laws were just and if people were not racist or sexist or whatever else is considered opprobrious, equality would result. But what if the premise is not true? What if the condition that galls, the condition of inferiority in some respect that the man or woman of ressentiment cannot forget, is irremediable, because it is a fact of nature generally, or of the nature of the individual in question? What if it is remediable, but only by a cultural renewal that, with all the good will and determination in the world, must require two or three generations to accomplish?
What the Irish Did
When the poorest of the Irish emigrated from their English-dominated country to the United States, they met many a sign that read, "Irish Need Not Apply." Why the hostility? Part of it came from ignorance. Catholics and their "priestcraft" were suspect. Consider the outrageously popular Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk (1836), a slanderous and absurd tale of prostitution and infanticide in a convent in Montreal: the Catholic predecessor to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. We can dispense with that nasty foolishness. Part of it came from the notion that Irish men were drunken roughnecks. That was a prejudice properly speaking, a judgment before the fact or before a fair examination of the evidence. The stolid English and Dutch of the northeast expected no better from the Irish. "A moral bog-hoe" is what the broad-minded Thoreau called the Irishman.
Yet we must not beg the question. Believing that Irish men often got drunk and fought brawls was not like believing a phantasmagoria of evil in some cloister a thousand miles away. The latter strains credulity, and in any case can only be confirmed by special investigation; you must go to that cloister. The former does not strain credulity, and it can be confirmed by ordinary experience. Irish men did like their whisky and did swing their fists. I am sure that any given Irishman was more likely to see the inside of a jail than was any given Dutchman. Animus against the Irish, no doubt. But also a plain fact: Paddy was more likely to disturb the peace.
Irish Catholics had groaned under the British boot since the days of Queen Elizabeth I and her aggressive pacificator, Lord Grey de Wilton. When they came to America, though, they had healthy outlets for their anger and vengeance. "Dagger John" Hughes, archbishop of New York, told the mayor in 1844, after arsonists had burned two Catholic churches in Philadelphia, that if that should happen in New York, Protestant churches would burn likewise. It did not happen. Nor were the sons and daughters of the Mayflower the only citizens in the United States, which in any case was underpopulated, with vast expanses of land to develop. So the Irish had plenty of opportunities for alliances, for maneuvering against their enemies, and for building up their own towns, such as the coal-mining borough of Archbald, Pennsylvania, where I grew up.
All of that would have been in vain, though, if the Irish had lived down to the prejudices of the already-settled; if they had not put into action the virtues of civilization. Anger and frustration might drive the Irishman in County Donegal to drink, and we can understand the cause and judge him leniently. But unless he throws the whisky away, we can do nothing with him. His bucket is punched full of holes. Not all the good will and clean water in the world will help, until he gets rid of the old bucket and gets a new one, a bucket that will hold water.
That is what the American Irish did, by the millions. They showed themselves to be good American citizens, good enough to try to hold down the Italians when they came to America in turn. The Irish had some considerable advantages. They were willing to work very hard at filthy jobs. They had a Church as strong as steel to keep the men in line, and to raise the children well. They had the family. They proved themselves against the English by their deeds.
Ressentiment Among Women
But suppose it is not possible to do what the Irish did? If you do not expect equality, you are not prone to ressentiment. The medieval peasant working the turf on the lord's manor did not believe that there should be no lords, though he might have wanted his lord to be less grasping. He took his station in life as a matter of course. The women of Rome could gaze at the frescoes of Michelangelo and not consider that it was a man who had painted them. What else could you expect? But in our time, we demand equality. That breeds ressentiment.
Anthony Esolen is Distinguished Professor of Humanities at Thales College and the author of over 30 books, including Real Music: A Guide to the Timeless Hymns of the Church (Tan, with a CD), Out of the Ashes: Rebuilding American Culture (Regnery), and The Hundredfold: Songs for the Lord (Ignatius). He has also translated Dante’s Divine Comedy (Random House) and, with his wife Debra, publishes the web magazine Word and Song (anthonyesolen.substack.com). He is a senior editor of Touchstone.
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