Max Scheler’s Phenomenology Of Resentment

The word Resentment is derived from the French word Ressentiment, which was independently introduced as a philosophical term in German language by Friedrich Nietzsche.Max Scheler(1874-1928) was greatly influenced by Nietzsche’s concept of Resentment and his research was also based on the arguments of the capitalist spirit between Sombart Werner and Max Weber. Focusing on the spiritual feature of man in the age of Capitalism, Scheler discussed the resentment phenomenon in the moral construction contemporaneously through the emotional phenomenology method, thus leading the research of resentment as a kind of emotion into a broader academic dimension. Scheler’s phenomenology of resentment is unique in his theory of phenomenology of feeling. In essence, Resentment is that of an individual feeling activity which is intentional and rooted in value comparison. Scheler defined the Resentment as ‘A self-poisoning of the Mind’. As a value-feeling conscious act,Resentment always relates to its intentional object, the value. Hence, the text tries to start from the relations between Resentment and self and the others, to clarify the role Resentment plays in the value-reverse and even value-breakdown based on Scheler’s phenomenological analysis on Resentment by using his phenomenological approach. This works contributes to understand Scheler’s establishment of the non-formal ethics of Value and his philosophical anthropology.