Ressentiment (review)

132 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Ressentiment. By Max Scheler. Translated by William Holdheim. Edited with an Introduction by Lewis A. Coser. (New York: Schocken Books, 1972. Pp. 201. $2.95) Max Scheler, who contributed insights of lasting significance to the analysis of human emotions and values, is perhaps best known to American philosophers as the author of Der Formalismus in der Ethik und die Materiale Wertethik; but various essays included in his two-volume Vom Umsturz der Werte also deserve close study. Among these are "Zur Ph~iaomenologie und Theorie der Sympathiegefiihle" (published in a translation by Peter Heath as The Nature o/Sympathy) and the particularly important analysis of ressentiment, now made available for the first time in English translation. The essay was first published in 1912 under the title "CIber Ressentiment und moralisches Werturteil." It was republished in greatly revised form in 1915 as "Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen." Under this title it was included in Vom Umsturz der Werte and has now been translated into English. The translation, although rather "free," is readable, clear, and faithful to Scheler's intention and meanings. William Holdheim is to be congratulated on a difficult job well done. A literalist may, of course, find fault here and there with the rendering of some particularly difficult passage; but this is to be expected considering Scheler's often involved style. And, after all, every translation is of necessity an interpretation. As an over-all achievement, Holdheimer 's translation is excellent. The orientation of Scheler's conception of ressentiment is perhaps best seen in contrast to Nietzsche's interpretation of it. The editor, Lewis A. Coser, calls attention to this fact in his succinct but informative Introduction to the book. Whereas lqietzsche argued that the Christian morality of love and charity is but a rationalization of repressed hatred and fear, a transformation of weakness into positive merit, it is Scheler's contention that this interpretation of Christian values is mistaken, that "the core of the Christian ethics has not grown on soil of ressentiment." Still, so Scheler believes, ressentiment entails a tendency to degrade or reduce genuine values and their bearers. His phenomenologlcal description of ressentiment-Iaden persons and attitudes is perhaps Scheler's greatest contribution to our understanding of social situations and valuations. W. H. WERKMEISTER Florida State University Wittgenstein's Doctrine el the Tyranny of Language: An Historical and Critical Examination of the Blue Book. By Morris Engel. (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1972) Somewhere Peirce said of his own position in philosophy that "the rivulets at the head of the river of pragmatism are easily traced back to almost any desired antiquity ." This applies with even greater force for Wittgenstein, whose intellectual biography is difficult, partly because he is said to have read relatively few historical texts in philosophy, and also because his style is aphoristic and his approach to philosophy elusive. Wittgenstein's dealings with Frege, Russell, Ramsey and Moore help in getting at details, but are not so useful when we try to find something of the vision and over-all thematic concern, especially of the later Wittgenstein. Some suggestions toward Kant (and less toward Schopenhauer) have been made regarding Wittgenstein's philosophical kinship, but these have only been tentative and never really pressed. ...