Max Scheler was a German philosopher who was just about an exact contemporary with G.K.Chesterton. As Chesterton was a prophet of the modern world, so Scheler’s observations in his book Ressentiment are prophetic.
His basic theme is that ressentiment undermines and kills everything good. What is ressentiment? It’s more than feeling bad because Johnny got a bigger pile of pie or Janet got a nicer birthday present than you. Instead it is a foundational and constantly re-lived emotion of envy until the person’s whole personality and world view are determined by it.
Ressentiment is the driver for every ideological movement of revolt. Whether it its socialism, feminism, homosexualism, ecology, Protestantism, Marxism…whatever activist movement you pick you’ll find beneath it is ressentiment.
This is pretty easy to see in obvious political and social activism, but Scheler goes further and identifies modern utilitarianism as also being driven by ressentiment. How so?
Because the resentful one is envious of pleasure and leisure. He replaces these clear and simple pleasures with the a secondary virtue: usefulness and work…thus the famed “Protestant work ethic” and the well known reverse snobbery of the working class.
“We’re not like those well off people. We earn our living by the sweat of our brow.”
Yes, and work is noble and good and earning our own way is noble and good, but hunkering down in a form of pride as the result of resentment pulls the heart out of the integral goodness.
This over valuing of what is useful also brings about a degradation of beauty. “What do you want to spend your hard earned money on all that fancy crap?” says the resentful utilitarian person.
This same utilitarian mentality has crept in everywhere. Therefore we do not build beautiful churches anymore. We build utilitarian preaching halls. No one asks if the church is beautiful. They ask whether the toilets work and the sound system is effective.
Should you try to build a beautiful church be sure you will get people sniping at you with the Judas argument…”Why spend all that money on a building? The money should be given to the poor.”
It is all rooted in resentment and the end result is not only the obliteration of beauty, but also the glorification of greed because what they really mean when they say, “You should not spend such money on the church but give to the poor” is “You’re not getting any of my money for that useless project!”
What’s the alternative? The alternative to ressentiment is gratitude. The grateful heart is a generous heart and the generous heart knows that there are higher values than usefulness. The grateful heart knows that all the very best things in life –like beauty, truth and goodness–are priceless because they’re free and they’re free because they’re costly.
Value and usefulness are concepts I’ve been pondering a lot the last few months and hopefully I’m getting closer to answers.
It seems if something is useful then it is less valuable because it is essentially a “middle-man” we use to get to something else. We don’t put a hammer in a glass case to preserve for admiration; but we do put works of art in a glass case for admiration and protection. The hammer is useful and therefore less valuable because it helps us to get something of greater value. It’s a tool; it’s useful; once the use is no longer needed we put it aside until it’s needed again.
The same seems true of work. Work is a means to an end; it is useful; it is working towards something else; and therefore it is not the highest value. Whatever we’re working towards has a higher value than the work itself (feeding a family, building a cathedral, etc). Work does not have value in and of itself; it’s a tool.
If this is true up to this point, could we then say the most valuable things are the most “useless”? Those things that cannot (or should not) be used for the sake of using are the things we ought to value the most? Like works of art; “wasting” time in contemplation, meaningful talk with friends, enjoying a symphony. Human beings ought not to be used for the sake of using; hence the evils of pornography, exploitation of the poor, etc.
It sounds weird to say the most valuable things are the most “useless” so maybe I’m getting off track. But I feel there may be some truth there somewhere.
What do you think?
You are correct in your analysis and Scheler has an extended passage in which he makes precisely this point: that there is a scale of values with life and pleasure at the top. (By ‘pleasure’ he means the pure pleasures that you have rightly assessed.
The lower values always serve the higher, but when the order is reversed the lower will always kill the higher. Therefore, work must always serve life and pleasure. The accumulation of money must always serve the higher values. When work and money become the higher value they kill life and pure pleasure.
Very interesting. Sounds like I need to read some Max Scheler. I’ve practically been binge reading Josef Pieper who also talks a lot about this kind of stuff. Fascinating topic!