I Am Somebody Too! A Reflection on Identity and Ressentiment

I Am Somebody Too! A Reflection on Identity and Ressentiment

Omid Ghaem Panah

According to Fukuyama, “identity” holds particular significance in the contemporary world and is the key to understanding many movements, protests, and revolutions. To begin, it is necessary to return, by way of introduction, to about two thousand four hundred years ago, and specifically to Socrates; Socrates divided the human soul into three parts: reason, appetite (desire), and thymos, or the spirited and prideful part of the soul. In Socrates’ view, the human soul is not merely summed up in reason (which seeks truth and the good) and appetite (which seeks pleasures and bodily needs); rather, there is a third part called thymos, which is the seat of pride, honor, righteous anger, and the demand for respect and dignity. Thymos is that part of the human being which is the refuge of values, honor, and the sense of justice; when justice is violated or dignity is trampled, it becomes angry and rises to defend. The thymos of every human being seeks to be recognized and regarded as worthy of respect by others. In the pre-modern era, this demand was often limited to aristocratic classes or warriors, who sought their dignity in individual honor and prestige. But in the modern era, where ordinary people consider themselves to possess worth and dignity, this demand has become universal: human beings not only want to feel their own dignity, but they also intensely demand the recognition of that dignity from others (society, the state, and their fellow human beings). In other words, in the pre-modern era, the demand for recognition usually had one winner and, in Hegelian terms, one became the master and the other the slave. But in the modern era, this demand for recognition has become universal. As Hegel describes in the famous “Lordship and Bondage” section (in the book Phenomenology of Spirit), two self-consciousnesses (two human beings) confront one another, and each seeks to prove that: “I am not merely an object, I am a human being, I am self-conscious and valuable.” This confrontation leads to a life-and-death struggle, which ultimately brings one to the position of lordship (master) and the other to bondage. Nevertheless, Hegel’s dialectic shows that this unequal relationship is not stable and, in the course of history, progresses toward isothymia, that is, the demand for equal respect and recognition for all. In this situation, recognition is no longer the preserve of a single dominant and victorious individual, but becomes universal, and everyone is placed in an equal position (from the perspective of dignity and recognition).

The French Revolution set in motion the wheel of recognizing the equal dignity of all, and this spirit has persisted to the present day; most movements must be understood and comprehended in terms of the demand for recognition, such as gender equality, racial equality, ethnic equality, and so on. To answer this demand for recognition, liberalism emerged as a political system that recognizes the freedom of each individual citizen; it is for this reason that classical liberalism demands nothing of citizens except that they also recognize the freedom of others. Now, with the formation of liberal systems, conditions have arisen for human beings (with the same proviso of preserving the freedom of others) to express themselves as they are, meaning that human beings are autonomous and self-determining, living according to what they themselves consider to be value, morality, happiness, well-being, and so on, on the condition that they grant the same right to others.

The emergence of collective identities such as nationalism and political religion follows a similar logic; they too seek recognition for that collective identity. For example, Muslim immigrant groups (especially second generations) in European countries, after seeing that in their host countries their values and norms are merely one set of values among others and are not even considered particularly respectable, experience an identity crisis because they realize they no longer have the respect they once had in their own societies, and they are not easily accepted in the host societies, nor do they find suitable jobs and welfare. It is under these conditions that the revival of Islamic identity among these individuals is seen as a response to this problem, because it is through participation in these groups that they are regarded as having a respectable and valued identity. Similarly, when a person in a society feels that the dominant religious structures and norms do not accept them, or when the middle class feels its opportunities are being taken away by minorities, they turn to another collective identity such as nationalism, because they feel that it is through participation in such a discourse that they can recover their lost identity and respect (for example, consider the case of white American Trump supporters who felt their country had been seized by immigrants and foreigners). In many of these cases, economic pressure is not seen merely as a result of an economic crisis, but rather as a result of the loss or non-recognition of identity, and perhaps this is why, for nationalists, leftist slogans with themes of economic equality are not appealing, whereas rightist slogans emphasizing the revival of national identity are, because they see the cause of their declining livelihood in the decline of their collective status and identity, not merely an economic crisis; they feel that the country is no longer theirs and that they are not respected or visible in their own land. Thus, in summary, the proliferation of such groups (as instances of collective identity) are both responses to one issue: the demand for recognition and the recovery of lost dignity.

From here we can arrive at another important concept, namely ressentiment, which lies behind many of these very identity and protest movements. If individuals or groups in society feel they are regarded as nothing, are not respected, and are not recognized, it is natural for them to move toward restoring that lost dignity. If these efforts repeatedly fail and the demand for recognition continually goes unanswered, a particular kind of emotion gradually takes shape that philosophers call "ressentiment." The term ressentiment has a Nietzschean resonance; in his books "Beyond Good and Evil" and "On the Genealogy of Morality," Nietzsche explains that when the weak cannot act directly against the powerful or cannot change their situation, they cultivate a resentment toward the powerful within themselves and turn it into their ideology (or morality). In other words, to console themselves for this impotence, they invent an imaginary revenge against the powerful (through the transvaluation of values). When the inferior person cannot create and affirm their own life and values, they are forced to redirect their evaluative gaze outward, toward those they consider their enemies, and by inverting values, create a world in which they can somehow see themselves as victorious; Max Scheler also expanded on this concept, saying that ressentiment is not limited to the relationship between the socially strong and weak, but can form wherever there is a feeling of permanent powerlessness. In his view, ressentiment is a lasting mental state that arises from the systematic repression of certain natural human emotions (such as anger, the desire for revenge, envy, and hatred). In practice, this very ressentiment and pent-up hatred toward the powerful (due to the non-recognition of dignity) has been the engine of many protest movements, acts of violence, and processes of polarization. The anger and resentment that have been repressed for a long time suddenly erupt and manifest themselves in various forms.