May Simon Nietzsche's On The Genealogy Of Morality. A Critical Guide

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.But this interpretation of hisexperience is false.The hatred is in fact directed at quite different propertiesof the Other, such as his power or prestige.But the subject neither knowsnor believes this, for the evidence available to her as to the precise target, andthus the precise identity, of her affective state is insufficient.The target, asSartre says in a similar context, is not [intuitively] given or is givenindistinctly. 12 It would presumably be given distinctly if the subjectwere confronted with a situation, either imaginatively or in actuality,where the different possible targets of her affect diverged; for examplewhere the Other possessed power but not the disvirtues of characterostensibly objected to, or where she possessed the latter but not the former.The subject s affective response in these counterfactual situations wouldtend to make his actual state of mind cognitively transparent to him.In theabsence of such disambiguating evidence, it is perfectly possible for a subjectto believe that he disapproves of A (injustice) while in fact not doing so, butinstead hating B (another s power), without this creating any cognitiveconflict for him.To say that the subject may not be in a position to knowwhat the object of his mental state is prior to such an imaginative or actualexercise in disambiguation does not compel us to say, as some intentionalexpressivists do, that as long as the cognitive disambiguation does nothappen, the mental state of the self-deceived subject is no different fromthat of a non-self-deceived one with the same avowed commitments.Onthe contrary, even the non-dispositional phenomenal properties of theirmental states, as given to them first-personally, will differ.The world of theself-deceived person is different from that of one who is not.Specifically, inthe ressentiment case, the subject s consciousness will in part be character-ized by an intentional resistance to the kind of open imaginative or actualconfrontation with decisive disambiguating evidence which would renderthe actual content of his affective state distinct to himself.What makes12Sartre 2003: 91.134 peter poellnerpossible the subject s false construal of the intentional object of his negativeaffect is his expectation, which itself may or may not be explicit, of being ableto intuitively fulfill his avowed commitment to the ressentiment values incircumstances that would present its target distinctly and unambiguously.And what makes it legitimate to speak of ressentiment as a project is thesubject s effective intention to avoid such evidence.But does the construaljust given of ressentiment as an intentionally pursued project not still fallvictim to the dynamic paradox? Is it coherent to say that someone con-sciously pursues a project of avoidance without conceptualizing it in this way,and without knowing that he is engaged in such a project and, finally,without this knowledge undermining his preferred self-interpretation?To circumvent the alleged paradox, we have to be able to say that an aimcan be consciously pursued by the ressentiment subjects without theirpursuing it being conceptually represented by them.And of course weoften pursue aims in this way.When I aim to return the ball during a tennismatch, it is plausible to say that I intentionally aim at a certain state ofaffairs, and that my experience is different from what it would be if I merelyimagined that state of affairs or wished for it; I am conscious of pursuing anend rather than just envisaging it.Yet I do not, at that time, conceptuallyrepresent my actively aiming at or pursuing the respective end, even if Iconceptually represent the state of affairs which is my end.If my conscious-ness of seeking to bring something about can be non-conceptual in this way,then what this consciousness presents to me is unavailable to me forinferences, and the dynamic paradox does not arise.Conceptualizationrequires attention,13 and reflective attention to our own mental states is and arguably must be generally absent when we are engaged in theworld.14 The difference between ordinary unreflectiveness in immersedaction and self-deception is that in the latter case this characteristic absenceof reflective attention is topic-specific and motivated.I conclude, then, thatthere is no incoherence in supposing that what distinguishes the ressenti-ment subject s consciousness from a corresponding non-self-deceived con-sciousness is, in part, a systematic, topic-specific, motivated consciousavoidance of actual or imaginary confrontations with situations whichwould disambiguate the intentional content of his negative affect.13The idea of constitutive connections between conceptual representation and conscious attention iscurrently being widely revived.Its classical statement can be found in Husserl (1973: �� 13, 17, 18).14For an argument attempting to show quite generally that reflective attention to oneself is incompat-ible with immersed activity requiring attention to the object of one s action, see O Shaughnessy 1980,vol.II, 22 38.Ressentiment and morality 135While the considerations just sketched suffice to legitimize talk of ressenti-ment as involving a project of avoiding relevant self-knowledge (though ofcourse not a reflective strategy), Nietzsche s analysis suggests that it includesa further element of conscious aim-directedness [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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