MAN'S UN-NATURAL LIFE TOWARDS AN ONTOLOGY OF RESSENTIMENT

To grasp the true importance of ressentiment in Nietzsche's The Genealogy of Morals, animals and beasts of pray, of which Nietzsche speaks throughout the book, should not fall out of the focus of our interpretation. It is what generally happens in the reception history: when ressetiment is discussed, there is not much room left for animals. Once we bring back animals into consideration and take much more seriously Nietzsche's speculative naturalism, which has rarely been the case, the genealogy will appear in the light of a metaphysical quest for origins. In this radical, apparently metaphysical form of genealogy, ressentiment becomes a fundamental category. To reflect on the animality of human-animal is the task of genealogical thinking. If it turns out to be a business of metaphysics, it is because the difference between healthy and sick beast is the most fundamental difference that opens up the genealogical interrogation. This animal difference, animal detour from the animal, underlies all basic metaphysical differences. It is precisely there that ressentiment should be thought of, as it is neither fully personal nor it exclusively belongs to the horizon of human morality. It is neither fully included nor excluded from the morality. It is neither quite inside nor quite outside. It is swinging back and forth. Defined as a "repeated reliving" (Scheler), it refers to something neither fully alive nor dead. It seems to belong to what Derrida labels "undecidable" Ressentiment marks that crucial point in the evolution of species when instincts and feelings enter into a twisting course, trace a bending curve (Verinnerlichung) that we recognize in the prefix "re-" - of ressentiment. It is that same process, "a flexion of physis, relation to itself of the Nature," Derrida found in the genealogical explanation of arts in Kant.