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Abstract

Conceptualizations of ressentiment imply different assessments regarding the question whether the subject of ressentiment’s (SR) initial conflict is about constitutively socionormative concerns or whether moralizing anti-sentiments and self-glorifications ground in self-centred feelings of impotence and inferiority. Although the self-deceptive affective and cognitive dynamics of ressentiment development ultimately result in a distorted evaluative outlook, the SR’s repetitive obsession with socionormative matters should not be dismissed as an a posteriori coping mechanism. Rather, the SR’s inability to realize feelings of value points to a constitutively socionormative problematic involving a fundamental disruption of implicit value orientations (moral breakdown) as well as a structurally (re-)produced inability to engage in processes of communicative repair. It is concluded that ressentiment is a psychosocial phenomenon that can only be understood by looking simultaneously at its psycho-affective as well as sociodiscursive underpinnings.

Keywords

affective/discursive practice moral breakdown moral emotion ressentiment socionormative concern

In recent years, scholars have been revitalizing the concept of ressentiment in order to address psychosocial conflicts fuelled by heterogeneous anti-stances in different social, political, and economic contexts (Aeschbach, 2017; Capelos & Demertzis, 2022; Capelos, Salmela, et al., 2024; Capelos et al., 2023; Demertzis, 2020; Fleury, 2023; Rodax et al., 2021; Salmela & Capelos, 2021; Ten Houten, 2018; Vogl, 2022; Weißgerber, 2019). Ressentiment is discussed in terms of a psycho-affective coping mechanism targeting self-centred feelings of shame, impotence, and inferiority. It is also put in relation to political, social, and economic conflicts, which suggests that there is a socionormative dimension to consider as well. In this paper, we offer a conceptual discussion of the role that appeals to socionormative concerns play in the processual formation of ressentiment. We start from the idea that what Scheler (2007) referred to as a processual “self-poisoning of the mind” (p. 25) is inscribed in a broader socionormative problematic which we characterize as a moral breakdown (Zigon, 2007). Ressentiment development unfolds through failed communicative attempts to resolve this problematic. We make three central claims: First, that ressentiment grounds in psychosocial conflicts apprehended by the subject of ressentiment (SR) in terms of a sense of (in)justice. Second, that the SR’s concern is with an inability to realize experiences of value in light of (implicit) normative expectations that typically remain inarticulate in the routine-based conduct of everyday life. Third, that while the specific processual mode of resolution leads to a distorted and faulty evaluative outlook, the SR’s insistence on a sense of (in)justice (Shklar, 1990) should not be disregarded as a posteriori moralizing. Rather, we suggest looking at the ressentiment process in terms of a precarious affective/discursive practice (Wetherell, 2013), that is, as failing attempts to articulate normative concerns within available discursive frameworks.

We develop our argument in three steps: In the first section, we revisit conceptual discussions of ressentiment focussing on the initial conflict constellation as well as the psycho-affective process that leads to overt manifestations of ressentiment. In the second section, we show how approaches that prioritize self-centred experiences of impotence/inferiority as drivers of ressentiment development tend to dismiss the SR’s insistent appeal to socionormative concerns as inherently self-deceptive. In the third section, we offer a conceptual account of the ressentiment process, focussing on a double crisis of comportment-based value orientations as well as communicative repair.

Ressentiment as a complex, psychosocial phenomenon

Since previous accounts describe ressentiment by various and sometimes heterogeneous characteristics, we start by clarifying what we consider to be distinctive features setting the phenomenon apart from other variants of hostile affectivity (Breyer, 2024).

The most recognizable trait of a SR is a generalized negative sentiment (Aeschbach, 2017), fuelling anti-stances towards various and often inter-changeable individuals, social groups, abstract ideas (e.g., the notion of “gender” as a social construct), lifestyles (e.g., “veganism”), and/or ideologies (e.g., “socialism”). Typically, the repetitive accusations of the SR lack a stable intentional structure, shifting erratically between targets. In that regard, ressentiment is different from other forms of hostile affectivity, such as anger, hatred (Szanto, 2020), or resentment (Demertzis, 2020; Ure, 2015), which “stick” to particular objects of appraisal. Ressentiment-typical anti-preferences do not “respond” to specific properties of the target but involve a forward-directed production of “causes” that are then attended to selectively. Despite this seemingly proactive orientation, the predominant feelings of the SR are reactive: inefficacious anger, indignation, vengefulness, spite, and malice blend into what Scheler (2007) described as a venomous mass of negative affectivity.

Expressions of ressentiment revolve around apprehensions of some kind of socionormative wrong, even though a SR may not always be able to articulate the nature of their concern in coherent conceptual terms. Thus, the SR is often described as being caught in a repetitive loop of accusal, (incoherent) self-legitimization, resignation/retreat, and renewed efforts to make their point stick. This is often accompanied by expressions of self-directed shame, anger, and frustration, suggesting an underlying affective dilemma that the SR cannot resolve but cannot let go of either (Sullivan, 2021; Wetherell et al., 2020).

The general antisentiment of ressentiment is typically linked to feelings of (self-)righteous indignation and a sense of moral superiority. (Self-)righteousness is often associated with glorified victimhood (Salmela & Capelos, 2021). However, it is not clear whether self-victimization is actually a necessary precondition. In some of our empirical cases (Hametner, Rodax, & Binder, 2024; Hametner, Rodax, Paloni, et al., 2024), ressentiment revolves around issues merely affecting the SR indirectly—for instance when a group of retired individuals discusses how the presence of foreign workers endangers the job prospects of a “domestic” workforce they are no longer active part of. What seems ubiquitous is that the SR identifies as morally superior by way of their sensibility to matters of (in)justice. The insistent ruminations of the SR typically involve a sense of obligation to uphold remembrance of injustice even in light of others’ ignorance. The tension between a heightened sense of (in)justice and the inability to “make the point stick” will play a central role in our conceptual discussion.

While expressions of ressentiment revolve around moralizing and (self-)righteous accusations, the typical forms of ressentiment-based critique have been described as weak, that is, as lacking robust motivational import. The SR may be expected to point out moral corruption at every turn but rarely to take concrete action. Scheler referred to this in terms of a specific form of ressentiment critique, which appears to not actually want what it presumes to (Scheler, 2007). Most discussions of ressentiment emphasize that, despite the overt expression of (self-)righteousness and moral superiority, ressentiment’s phenomenology involves intense feelings of powerlessness, impotence, and/or inferiority (Aeschbach, 2017; Demertzis, 2020; Salmela & Capelos, 2021). Thus, the relation between felt (moral) superiority and powerlessness seems to be one of the key issues that conceptual discussions of the phenomenon need to take into account.

Finally, the SR may be characterized as constantly looking at others to provide acknowledgement, legitimization, and positive enhancement. This has sparked interest in the phenomenon from political psychologists, sociologists, and others who are studying the psycho-affective underpinnings of reactive politics and the collectives forming behind anti-sentiments and the devaluation of scapegoats (Capelos, Salmela, et al., 2024; Kazlauskaite & Salmela, 2022; Salmela & Capelos, 2021; Salmela & Von Scheve, 2017). In such contexts, ressentiment is discussed as an affective driver of right-wing populism and as a main pillar of contemporary grievance politics (Capelos & Demertzis, 2022, Capelos, Salmela, et al., 2024, 2025; Capelos et al., 2022). Due to the inherent fragility of the SR’s devaluative stance, collectives based on shared ressentiment have been described as hollow (Salmela & Capelos, 2021, pp. 199–200).

The preliminary characterization shows the complexity of the phenomenon. This complexity mirrors in the variety of theoretical explanations that can be found in the literature. Ressentiment has been conceptualized as a complex (tertiary) emotion (Ten Houten, 2018), a complex sentiment (Aeschbach, 2017; Demertzis, 2020), a psychological defence mechanism (Salmela & Capelos, 2021), and as a (morally) disclosive posture (Rodax et al., 2021). A common starting point is the idea that ressentiment cannot be reduced to situational responses to acute stimuli in the here and now (Aeschbach, 2017). Rather, it is argued that its overt manifestations emerge from an extended process of embitterment. A processual approach is prefigured in Scheler (2007), who referred to the experience of an initial wrong that the SR cannot retaliate against (typically, because they find themselves in an inferior social position). Inefficacious anger pairs with deep-rooted feelings of powerlessness due to which the hostile affect is repressed. Repression sets in motion an unconscious dynamic, warping the initial reactive tendencies into a diffuse and overgeneralized sentiment decoupled from its initial context and target(s). Ultimately, hostility resurfaces in ressentiment’s specific detractive and bitter grudge against the world. Scheler (2007) referred to this transformation of initial emotions into a pervasive sentiment-like affective-evaluative outlook as a gradual “self-poisoning of the mind” (p. 25). More recently, Salmela and Capelos (2021, pp. 197–199) distinguish between four phases (triggering, initiating, advancing, and consolidating) of ressentiment development, further emphasizing the temporal dimension of the phenomenon.

While most scholars endorse a process theoretical explanation, the specific psycho-affective dynamics of ressentiment’s processual formation and the kind of initiating experiences that may push an individual in this direction still need further conceptual as well as empirical consideration. In this paper, we focus on the role that socionormative concern—that is, what Shklar (1990) broadly refers to as a sense of (in)justice—plays in the process.

Between feelings of impotence/inferiority and socionormative concern: Is there a place for a felt sense of (in)justice in ressentiment?

Recent theoretical discussions (Aeschbach, 2017; Salmela & Capelos, 2021) start from the idea that the SR fosters a false sense of morality (Aeschbach, 2017) resulting from a self-deceptive defence mechanism (Capelos, Salmela, et al., 2025; Salmela & Capelos, 2021; Vendrell Ferran, 2023). Despite the SR’s insistent appeal to morality, the psychological conflict would not ground in a genuine sense of (in)justice but evolve from unresolved feelings of impotence and inferiority (Aeschbach, 2017; Salmela & Capelos, 2021; Scheler, 2007). Based on this starting point, self-enhancement—in Salmela and Capelos’ (2021) case elevating the self from low to high—is seen as the principal goal of ressentiment.

An alternative take on ressentiment’s relation to socionormative concerns can be linked to the work of Jean Amèry (Amèry, 1998; van Tuinen, 2021). Against the backdrop of his own experience of torture by the Nazi regime, Amèry claimed a moral right to ressentiment in the context of German and Austrian post-war societies which failed to recognize his trauma and expected him, the victim, to condone and forgive for the sake of a shallow reconciliation of the past. In this context, the remembering of a moral wrong and the invocation of an ethical dimension of ressentiment point to a hidden potential as a last resort available to the victimized under sociopolitical conditions that bar the articulation of a moral wrong. Instead of a deficit-focus on self-deception, an inarticulate sense of injustice (Shklar, 1990) takes centre stage. Expanding from this point of view, ressentiment would not be about feelings of impotence or inferiority as such but about remembrance that aims to keep alive the memory of a wrong that cannot be remedied (for a recent empirical application of this perspective, see Schwarz Wentzer, 2024).

A number of scholars have been considering a distinction between resentment as a sociopolitical stance motivated by a sense of injustice (Aeschbach, 2017; Demertzis, 2020; Fassin, 2013) and ressentiment as a self-deceptive psycho-affective mechanism of self-enhancement (Reichold, 2021; Salmela & Capelos, 2021; Ure, 2015; van Tuinen, 2020). One candidate criterion for such a differentiation is the fittingness of an agent’s normative claim. On this view, resentment directed at someone responsible for injustice may be justified from a normative as well as an emotional point of view (Schwarze, 2020; Stockdale, 2021), while ressentiment would never be justifiable precisely because it would misrepresent an amoral concern as moral wrong (Aeschbach, 2017). Importantly, while this distinction makes use of the psychological notion of self-deception, its main emphasis is not on the actor’s first-person experience as such but on an external evaluation of the validity of socionormative claims. In what follows, we are concerned mainly with the psychological dimension of ressentiment and with how socionormative concerns figure as relevant frameworks in the SR’s first-person experience.

Self-Centred feelings of impotence/inferiority

Most scholars agree that ressentiment grounds in specific, affective experiences from which it emerges through an extended psycho-affective process. This process has been conceptualized as the result of a complex transvaluation (Aeschbach, 2017; Demertzis, 2020; Salmela & Capelos, 2021) driven by deep-rooted feelings of powerlessness, inferiority, or impotence (Aeschbach, 2017). In his comprehensive anatomy of ressentiment, Aeschbach (2017) argues that ressentiment starts from “the enduring and unpleasant experience of one’s impotence in bringing about a valued state of affairs or in preventing a negatively valued state of affairs from obtaining” (p. 52). Value here refers to a wide range of desired outcomes of an agent’s pursuits. While such pursuits obviously take place in contexts shaped by socionormative frameworks and moral discourse, Aeschbach challenges the idea that such concerns figure prominently in the experience of the agent. Thus, with regard to the point of view of the SR, Aeschbach emphasizes feelings linked to the realization of one’s own inability (e.g., not winning a tennis match) and not the perceived violation of a norm (e.g., losing the match because the opponent cheated). Importantly, such feelings of impotence and inferiority need not be fully conscious, reflective, and conceptual appraisals. In line with phenomenological (Bortolan, 2017; De Monticelli, 2016; Helm, 2002) and enactivist (Colombetti & Torrance, 2009; Fuchs, 2020) perspectives on the lived experience of values, Aeschbach (2017) regards feelings as implicit, prereflective apprehensions of value properties. Hence, experiences that initiate ressentiment may take hold prior to an agent becoming fully aware of their situation. In line with Aeschbach’s view, Capelos, Salmela, et al. (2025) claim that ressentiment “constitutes a response to an individual’s inability to attain and retain something deemed important” (p. 532). In their conceptualization of ressentiment as “a chronic compensatory emotional mechanism” (Capelos, Salmela, et al., 2025, p. 532), self-centred negative feelings threaten the integrity of the self (Salmela & Capelos, 2021) and it is this attack on the SR’s self-worth that drives ressentiment formation. Similar to Aeschbach, Capelos, Salmela, et al. (2025) argue that the coping mechanism of ressentiment is “activated” prereflectively as a means to “shield an individual from painful emotions, distorting the person’s self-observation” (p. 532). In both accounts, ressentiment’s main effect on the SR is to insulate them from potentially painful feelings that are self-centred in nature and that—at least in this early stage—need not involve a sense of moral injury, or (in)justice. As we have seen, the (self-)righteous insistence on some kind of moral wrong is one of the most striking features of overt ressentiment expressions and it is typically paired with the SR posturing as particularly sensitive to socionormative matters, or even identifying as the victim of moral injury. This begs the question of how a sense of moral superiority is imbued on an initial psycho-affective conflict that does not itself involve such claims.

Transvaluation as precarious psycho-affective self-defence

Upon the views discussed in the previous subsection, a socionormative (i.e., moralizing) framing is imprinted on the initial conflict constellation by a secondary transvaluation that functions as a psycho-affective defence against unwanted feelings of inferiority and impotence. This is achieved by two parallel processes (Salmela & Capelos, 2021). First, the weakened self is reappraised as a morally superior victim of some kind of wrong (e.g., shifting from “I lost this tennis match so I must be a bad player” to “I gave my best but fell victim to cheating”). Second, values are inverted to the effect that what the SR initially aspired to is deemed worthless (e.g., “Winning under such conditions isn’t worth it”). The resulting stance of (self-)righteous indignation in light of a corruption of values is then stabilized through seeking potential culprits to blame for one’s misfortune.

The literature provides different explanations for the concrete process of transvaluation. As mentioned earlier, Salmela and Capelos (2021) developed an emotional mechanism model building on Salice and Salmela’s (2022) work on emotional mechanisms as well as psychoanalytical theories of ego-defence (Capelos, Salmela, et al., 2025). Importantly, their explanation emphasizes the “(mostly) unconscious” (Salmela & Capelos, 2021, p. 194) nature of psychic defence mechanisms. Consequently, the SR remains largely unaware of how the reworking of their evaluative outlook produces a-posteriori moralizing stances and judgements. As Salmela and Capelos (2021) point out, the “new self” (p. 199) emerging from the transvaluation mechanism remains fragile. Maintaining the phantasmatic self-concept requires individual but also collective acknowledgement and support, leaving the SR particularly susceptible to political and ideological manipulation by movements harvesting narratives of victimization and other-blaming (Salmela & Capelos, 2021). However, the emotional mechanism of ressentiment itself is discussed mostly as an intrapsychic process. Relational, collective practices of discursive acknowledgement, mutual support, and affective sharing come into play once the unconscious transvaluation mechanism has done its damage.

In our own research (Hametner, Rodax, & Binder, 2024; Hametner, Rodax, Paloni, et al., 2024; Ruck et al., 2021), we found preliminary evidence suggesting that the SR may retain at least basic reflective abilities even in late stages of ressentiment development. This suggests that drifting towards generalized embitterment and hostility does not go unnoticed by the SR. Rather, noticing instances of “moral slipping”—going too far in accusing a particular group or missing the point in an argument—seem to be part of the inter-psychic processes of ressentiment development. In his classic account, Scheler (2007) referred to the psycho-affective dynamics of ressentiment as a gradual self-poisoning, suggesting that throughout this process the self-deception of the SR would not erase memories of one’s misfortune but would render them in a state of “obscure awareness” (p. 36; see also Demertzis, 2020). To keep nagging background feelings at bay, continuous emotion- and memory-work on individual as well as collective levels is necessary (Aeschbach, 2017). Aeschbach suggests that the half-conscious presence of neglected background feelings is responsible for the peculiar obsession of the SR with the past. The backwards-directed dimension of ressentiment is consistent with recent empirical studies (Capelos & Demertzis, 2022; Capelos & Katsanidou, 2018; Capelos, Salmela, et al., 2025; Capelos et al., 2021, 2022). For instance, Hoggett et al. (2013) analysed how workers apprehend their current economic misfortune in light of an idealized all-good past. Sullivan (2021) shows how Brexit-supporters’ anti-EU stances ground in the idealization of traditional (past) British national identity.

To account for the ambiguous interplay of awareness, misrepresenting, and forgetting in ressentiment, Aeschbach distinguishes between the cognitive ability to comprehend and apply a value property to situations and a prethematic situated sensibility for value properties (Aeschbach, 2017; compare De Monticelli, 2016).

Our understanding of ressentiment uses the distinction between the role of cognitive, conceptual states and emotions based on these, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, non-conceptual impressions of value and preferences. Reevaluation, it claims, is a process which alters beliefs, judgements and emotions based on these. But non-conceptual value-feelings may and typically do remain unaltered throughout the process. (Aeschbach, 2017, p. 189)

Based on this distinction, Demertzis’ (2020) and Scheler’s (2007) notion of an obscure awareness could be linked to a prethematic, nonconceptual awareness of the initial value-feelings, while transvaluation would be limited to confabulating illusionary beliefs and conceptual emotions, that is, an a posteriori resymbolization. Aeschbach (2017) refers to this distinction in order to explain the fundamental instability and irrationality of ressentiment: the persistent presence of value-feelings here would constantly undermine propped up emotion concepts and their discursive rationalization (Bergmann & Wagner, 2020; Haidt, 2001). In this context, self-deception emerges in the sense that the SR—under the influence of their confabulated new beliefs—misrepresents their intuitive feelings of value, either categorizing them in line with the newly crafted value system or simply ignoring/overlooking them as unintelligible irritations (Aeschbach, 2017). The retroactive renegotiation of felt evaluative intuitions may thus be seen as part of an ongoing affective/discursive practice (Wetherell, 2012, 2013; see also Sullivan, 2021).

Ressentiment as disclosive posture

The self-centred nature of the SR’s initial feelings has been a key element in discussions of the phenomenon; however, it is also a common theme to refer to specific kinds of socionormative conflicts and crises as breeding ground for ressentiment in today’s societies. Again, this line of thought traces back to Scheler (2007), who argued that ressentiment would spread among marginalized populations, who are lured by promises of equality only to find themselves stuck in inferior social positions (Neckel, 2023). Contemporary scholars follow him in regarding the relation between the SR’s personal experiences of failure and the social context key to understanding ressentiment dynamics. Salmela and Capelos (2021) mention “that ressentiment is witnessed among the powerless, disprivileged, and weak” (p. 192) and Capelos and Demertzis (2022) claim that ressentiment “is stimulated by sociopolitical realities experienced as crises or traumatic occurrences” (p. 108). It is in light of this sociopolitical contextualization that ressentiment became a principal focus in interdisciplinary, empirical research on the affective drivers behind contemporary social and political conflicts (Capelos, DaVisio, & Salmela, 2024, 2025; Capelos & Demertzis, 2018, 2022; Capelos & Katsanidou, 2018; Capelos, Salmela, et al., 2024, 2025; Capelos et al., 2021, 2023; de Zavala et al., 2009; Hoggett, 2018; Hoggett et al., 2013; Kiss, 2021; Papaioannou, 2025; Posłuszna & Kucharek, 2023; Rösch, 2022; Salmela & Von Scheve, 2017; Sullivan & Day, 2019).

Against the backdrop of this growing body of literature, Rodax et al. (2024) and Wrbouschek et al. (2020) suggest that there might be an intrinsic connection between the psycho-affective formation of ressentiment and socionormative matters. Their argument is based on the idea that the SR’s concern is not merely one of personal frustration (which may or may not be facilitated by socionormative crises) but is tied to constellations in which personal misfortune is perceived as intrinsically unjust. Thus, it would be contingent on the specific make-up of the socionormative context. Their initial discussion of socionormativity refers to Haidt’s (2003) concept of moral emotions as extending “beyond the direct interests of the self” (p. 853). However, the main argument departs from Scheler’s (2007) idea that ressentiment grounds in a relative discrepancy between implicit expectations of what ought to be and the factual inability to realize “a valued state of affairs” (Aeschbach, 2017, p. 52). Here, the issue is not with the SR’s impotence as such but with a relative experience of failure in light of normative expectations. Rodax et al. (2024) and Wrbouschek et al. (2020) conceptualize the ressentiment process as the gradual formation of a generalized disclosive posture (i.e., an embodied, typically prereflective affective-evaluative stance towards the world; compare Slaby, 2018; Withy, 2015). While they do not suggest that one ought to accept the SR’s erratic, self-righteous accusals at face value, they acknowledge that even in such displays of general embitterment there is a sense of injustice that is—from the SR’s point of view—genuine. Self-deception then refers to a gradual (and potentially reversible) affective-dynamic shift within the realm of socionormative concerns.

Moral breakdowns and their (failed) repair

In the following sections, we expand on Rodax et al.’s (2024) and Wrbouschek et al.’s (2020) ideas and present a process model of ressentiment. Our aim is to provide answers to two interrelated questions that we feel have not been addressed sufficiently in previous conceptual accounts. First, what is the relation between ressentiment’s initial problematic and socionormative concerns (i.e., a sense of injustice)? Second, what happens to the SR’s sense of injustice in the process of transforming an initial (moral) injury into the kind of self-deceptive devaluative stance described in the literature? Before offering our account, we have to clarify our basic understanding of socionormativity.

Feelings of value and the embodied normativity of everyday life

In our discussion of Aeschbach’s (2017) account, we pointed out how agents apprehend evaluative properties of their environment through prethematic feelings of value. In phenomenological terms, such feelings “provide us with a distinct access to evaluative contents” (Bortolan, 2017, p. 474), that is, they constitute “the mode of presence of the value-qualities of things” (De Monticelli, 2016, p. 386). By referring to feelings as a principal way of disclosing values, phenomenologists emphasize the role of bodily orientations and preconceptual apprehensions of relevancies, that is, a nonconceptual sensibility for what matters to one. Such sensibility precedes declarative evaluative judgements (Bergmann & Wagner, 2020); it emerges from practical interactions in everyday contexts and actualizes in implicit orientations towards relevant features of the environment (Di Paolo et al., 2018). Thus, value feelings emerge as embodied and enacted ways of sensing as well as ways of relating. They ground in ongoing, situated practices that allow agents to acquire the skills to apprehend and attend to value properties of the world in ongoing interactions with the sociomaterial environment. Consequently, in most everyday contexts, value intuitions manifest as prereflective orientations that tie in with the flow of practice and cannot easily be separated from situated episodes of engagement.

In the context of embodied phenomenological accounts, the notion of value usually refers to a broad range of socionormative concerns involving moral feelings but also applying to customs and manner, aesthetic preferences, and more (De Monticelli, 2016). It has been argued that an embodied account of implicit value orientations may imply an over-inclusive notion of morality. A detailed discussion of what constitutes moral judgements and how moral concerns differ from conventional or aesthetic ones is beyond the scope of this paper (Heath, 2017; Killen, 2018; Machery & Stich, 2022; Smetana & Yoo, 2022; Turiel, 2004). For our purpose, we rely on this rather broad and inclusive concept of normativity, since our main focus here is on the agent’s relation to a realm of socially shared and mutually binding background orientations that impose normative constraints on what one (and others) ought to and ought not to do. We share Fuchs’ (2020) starting point that the felt perception of value properties grounds in interpersonal relationships, conceiving of values as:

intersubjectively shared orientations, which evaluate and relativize subjective preferences in light of more general or external perspectives. Corresponding to this are feelings, which are increasingly differentiated and only developed in social settings. (p. 35)

Agents acquire the skills to sense and appropriately react to normative affordances through situated interactions with others. They develop a kind of prereflective sensibility to normative constraints imposed by sociomaterial environments. This kind of situated normativity (Rietveld, 2008) requires a form of “social attunement” (van den Herik & Rietveld, 2021, p. 3375) through which the agent becomes “a competent participant of a practice” (p. 3375) within broader socionormative arrangements. The ability to apprehend and adequately respond to socionormative demands grounds in an “implicit attunement to regular ways of doing things” (van den Herik & Rietveld, 2021, p. 3375). It is therefore as much a realization of socionormative stances as it is a guiding principle of everyday practice. As long as normative expectations are met by and large, there is no need for agents to explicate or communicatively validate normative frameworks to which social interactions implicitly refer. Rather, such framings are part of the unquestioned fabric of social comportment. Zigon (2007) points out that on a praxeological view of the normativity of human conduct, socionormative stances assume a dispositional structure, that is, a preconceptual, affective background orientation that is enacted in bodily orientations towards normatively salient situations. Zigon’s approach is similar to Withy’s (2015) notion of a disclosive posture, since both emphasize the prereflexive, affectively grounded, and embodied nature of value intuitions. In what follows, we adhere to Withy’s terminology, since conceiving of embodied, socionormatively grounded stances as postures implies a relational practice of posturing which is at the same time expressive (disclosing the normative stance of an actor) as well as responsive to others’ resonant validation of one’s stance as intersubjectively shared. Attunement thus involves an emotive (outward-directed) component as well as an affective-perceptive component (an openness to potential responses). This relational and inherently social aspect of socionormative orientations mirrors in Zigon’s (2007) statement that:

morality can best be analytically thought of as those bodily dispositions enacted in the world non-intentionally and unreflectively. To be moral is to inhabit a bodily disposition . . . that is familiar to oneself and most others with whom one comes into contact. It is in this familiar sharedness of morality that one can speak of the good, or more appropriately, being good. (p. 135)

Inhabiting a disposition (i.e., posture) is not about taking an individual, de-contextualized moral stance. Rather, embodied attunement to socionormative matters implies the presence and mutual recognition of multiple agents who share similar values. Importantly, sharing here means that such value orientations manifest implicitly in practical engagements with the world. It is against the backdrop of this comportment-based view of shared, embodied normativity that we develop our process model of ressentiment in the following subsections.

Moral breakdowns and inarticulate socionormative concerns

In line with Scheler and following our previous line of argumentation, we depart from the idea that the specific psycho-affective problematic in ressentiment concerns a relative discrepancy between implicit expectations of what ought to be and the factual inability to realize “a valued state of affairs” (Aeschbach, 2017, p. 52). This ties ressentiment to constitutively socionormative concerns, namely a genuine sense of injustice (Shklar, 1990).

Against the backdrop of a comportment-based view of shared, embodied normativity, we conceptualize the initial problematic of ressentiment as a disruption of the SR’s prereflexive, embodied attunement to the socionormative fabric of everyday life. On this view, ressentiment is grounded in the prethematic apprehension that something about the way things turn out is not or is no longer “right,” with the vague term “right” referring to a general background sensibility for normative properties (oughts) implicit in the habitual conduct of everyday life. We suggest that a persistent sense of inappropriateness (felt injustice) should be considered a key driver of ressentiment. As we emphasized in the introduction, expressions of anger, grief, and loss consistently revolve around the core feeling that the unquestioned normative grounding of everyday life has become precarious or even lost.

The immediate effect of this disruption is that the SR’s reliance on an embodied, habitualized disclosive posture is shattered. Zigon (2007) calls disruptions of this kind moral breakdowns. Drawing from Heidegger’s (1927/1993) analysis of the usage of tools in Being and Time, he states that:

ethical dilemmas, difficult times, and troubles . . . can best be described as a breakdown. Just as the hammer is usually and for the most part ready-to-hand, so too are moral expectations and dispositions. They are normally unquestioned, unreflected upon and simply done. This is one’s normal, everyday mode of being-in-the-world. But on occasion, something breaks down. (Zigon, 2007, p. 137)

The term disruption as well as Zigon’s description above suggest that crises of socionormative attunement emerge spontaneously. However, empirical evidence suggests that feelings of anger, frustration, and resentment typically build up over time as agents realize slowly that taken-for-granted ways of living one’s life are being contested or devalued. Such seems to be the case in narrative accounts of grief and loss due to economic pressure in the context of neoliberal economies (Cramer, 2016; Hoggett et al., 2013; Hochschild, 2016). What Aeschbach would describe as an inability to realize experiences of value in these cases builds up over time as gradually deepening frustration. In light of this, we theorize that moral breakdowns typically result from accumulating disruptions and setbacks that undermine a general sense of attunement to the socionormative fabric of the everyday.

The principal aim of an SR is to restore a sense of shared attunement, that is, to resume the unquestioned conduct of—normatively grounded—everyday life. This has important implications as it suggests that communicative expressions of ressentiment (such as overt hostility, moralizing, etc.) are not self-serving but intermediary steps in a process of conflict resolution, where resolution would mean being able to go back to living one’s life in familiar ways. Aeschbach’s distinction between prethematic feelings of value and emotion concepts maps to the grounding relation between background attunement and verbal expressions. In that sense, an implicit sensibility to oughtness-related features of a situation—a basic sense of (in)justice (Shklar, 1990)—precedes explicit verbalization of such normatively salient feelings. Expanding on this idea, moral breakdowns may not (immediately) elicit explicit, targeted value judgements of the kind that, for instance, Aeschbach focusses on in his examples (e.g., envying the neighbour for his wealth, Aeschbach, 2017, p. 72). In their previous adoption of the concept of disclosive posture, Rodax et al. (2024) and Wrbouschek et al. (2020) focussed on how a disclosive posture constitutes affective attunement to what matters for one. While this implies that agents acquire specific sensibilities for norm transgressions that should translate into the ability to take a stand when vital values are threatened, there may also exist a corresponding numbing effect since a core sense of attunement to shared normative frameworks of (inter-)action is crucial to the functioning of everyday routines (Lerner & Miller, 1978). In concert with the implicit nature of embodied background orientations, this may cause minor infractions to remain inarticulate as long as the overall structure of the everyday is intact. Hence, a comportment-based view on shared, embodied normativity implies some degree of performative posturing. The emotion-work necessary to contain negative feelings that threaten the integrity of shared practice may later drive some of the ressentiment-specific rationalizations (e.g., “I’ve been holding it together, why can’t they!”).

Once actors do become aware that something is troubling them, they start looking for explanations a posteriori, engaging in attempts to communicatively resolve the matter. Again, they do so to the extent necessary to be able to practically move on. It follows that being able to reestablish the familiar grounding relation of a shared disclosive posture is the central aim but also a limiting condition to communicative deliberation. Against this backdrop, the moral breakdown in ressentiment constitutes a crisis that can neither be ignored nor resolved within the constraints of shared practical orientations. At this point, communicative processes of repair become important. Here we need to look more closely at the role of language and communication within a comportment-based account of normativity.

Moral breakdowns and their communicative repair

Our conceptual framework suggests that a felt sense for socionormative matters does not necessarily involve the ability to articulate such concerns in categorical terms. Still, language is a pivotal part of everyday life and suggesting that social interaction would be restricted to prereflective, embodied attunement would obviously constitute a reductionism. Language is embedded in routine interaction. Verbalizing value-related concerns during sequentially organized interactions functions similarly to how words like “slab” are used in Wittgenstein’s theory of language games (Wittgenstein, 1958/1986), Statements of value are indexical, referring to an inarticulate background awareness of relevant contexts of application. Such context references are typically taken for granted as common sense by members of a language community. Utterances serve performative as well as expressive functions (van den Herik & Rietveld, 2021, pp. 3377–3382), which listeners decode based on shared familiarity with the experiential background to which they refer. Thus, when agents refer to moral concepts and norms in attempts to voice concerns, they do so based on taken-for-granted assumptions and shared memories of similar situations. This is why lay normative concepts appear to external observers as anecdotal and fuzzy in terms of terminological distinctions and conditions of applicability. However, as long as actors’ shared disclosive posture remains intact, referring indexically to shared knowledge and episodic examples of successful conflict resolution is sufficient. However, when facing a moment of breakdown, agents are forced to engage in more elaborate communicative exchange. To this end, they refer to the normative concepts provided by public discourse, moral education, and other sources (Zigon, 2007). This a posteriori repair function of communicative deliberation is highlighted by various authors (Bergmann & Wagner, 2020; Segovia-Cuéllar, 2022; Throop, 2012; Zigon, 2007) as a central resource in dealing with moral breakdowns. As Segovia-Cuéllar (2022) points out, “deliberation and analysis are important processes for the acquisition and revision of moral intuitions in moments of breakdown” (p. 320). In the context of the everyday, moral “intuition and reasoning are just two sides of a unique process of formation and education of moral concerns and judgments” (Segovia-Cuéllar, 2022, p. 321). While “[m]oral reasoning and deliberation depend on a background of moral evaluations and concerns that have an irreducible affective origin” (Segovia-Cuéllar, 2022, p. 321), the communicative resolution of conflicts provides an important resource to agents in normatively salient disputes. Both dimensions are part of the relational “formation of . . . moral concerns” (Segovia-Cuéllar, 2022, p. 321). Consequently, socionormative discourse itself cannot be separated from everyday practice and situated communication. As Stenner (2016) points out, even abstract and generalized value standards ground in primordial experiences of value from which they emerge through abstraction and standardization, ultimately becoming “crystallized, objectified, or incarnated into publicly available resources and tools” (Stenner, 2016, p. 146). Thus, normative standards do not exist as self-standing entities but belong to the same realm of social life, understood as ongoing “dynamic processes of interaction” (Segovia-Cuéllar, 2022, p. 321). Within that context, they function as a repertoire of communicative tools that agents turn to when facing practical normative dilemmas (Stenner, 2016) that cannot be resolved immediately. At the same time, standards actualize in corresponding “experiences of value” (Stenner, 2016, p. 146). When this reciprocal grounding relation breaks down, normative standards turn into what Stenner (2016) calls “parodic standards” (p. 147). Such standards become a “ritualistic imitation of the standard, a hollowed-out parody of value that, under certain circumstances, can become an obstacle to the realization of actual value” (Stenner, 2016, p. 148). Thus, in critical cases, resolving socionormative conflicts depends on the availability of value standards that agents perceive as sufficiently defined, acceptable, and grounded in their shared, practical experience.

Moral breakdowns, parodic standards, and ressentiment as failed repair

We theorize that an initial moral breakdown is a necessary though not exhaustive condition for ressentiment development. Our main argument is that ressentiment development is rooted in a double crisis involving a fundamentally disrupted attunement as well as a crisis of articulation. Feelings of powerlessness and a growing sense of embitterment and frustration that characterizes the affective core state of the SR are produced through a combination of these two dimensions. Against the backdrop of Stenner’s (2016) work, we theorize that powerlessness refers to an inability to articulate felt concerns against the backdrop of normative standards that the SR perceives have turned parodic (p. 147). Thus, the initial socionormative concern (a moral breakdown occurring on the level of implicitly shared disclosive postures) is reinforced by a structural disparity between value intuitions and expressive-communicative framings that fail to lend intelligibility to felt demands. With regard to the repair-function of communicative appeals to norms and moral principles (Segovia-Cuéllar, 2022), the SR is in a precarious position precisely because their repetitive attempts to restore a grounding relation between language and practice are undermined by perceptions of value standards as hollow and parodic. Consider as an example how in Hoggett et al.’s (2013) as well as Sullivan’s (2021) qualitative data one of the key themes is that “political elites” would not listen and that talk of fairness would be hollow. According to our reconstruction of structural determinants of ressentiment, such accusations point to a crisis of articulation which is produced and reproduced systematically within the contradictory normative framework of neoliberal performance discourse. In this context, agents fail to gain footing within a shallow rhetorical insistence that “anyone willing can make it.” From there, ressentiment development starts as a frantic search for justification and acknowledgement driven by an insistent sense of injustice. However, due to the parodic nature of value standards, communicative conflict resolution fails.

During a second phase of retreat, agents withdraw from open engagement with others. This withdrawal is accompanied by a deepening sense of futility, frustration, and bitterness. Here, we deviate from Salmela and Capelos’ (2021) reconstruction of ressentiment as emotional mechanism for two reasons. The first one refers to the presence of a felt sense of injustice throughout the ressentiment process which we conceptualize in terms of a moral breakdown. While a transvaluation-reading of ressentiment is fundamentally sceptical about the SR’s appeal to socionormative concerns, we regard such appeals as constitutive, signalling the existence of a moral breakdown. The second one refers to the way in which the process of reevaluation works. While Salmela and Capelos (2021) look at transvaluation in terms of mostly unconscious psycho-affective processes, we assume that it emerges from fragmented affective/discursive practices (Sullivan, 2021; Wetherell, 2012) under conditions of structurally (re-)produced socionormative alienation. Aiming to articulate felt concerns within intelligible socionormative frameworks, agents engage in repetitive reformulations of an initial concern that keeps eluding them. In light of this, we suggest that the SR’s often referenced obsession with the past (or an idealized version of it) points to the dilemma of ruptured attunement. Communicative appeals to shared values should thus be conceived of as attempts to reconstruct lost certainties of implicit socionormative orientations. However, since discursive repertoires prove parodic as well, such attempts remain fragmented. From this perspective, the increasingly incoherent, logically faulty, and overgeneralizing rationalizations found in ressentiment expressions are not so much self-deceptive but rather point to an inescapable articulatory dilemma. We draw attention to an aspect that often goes unnoticed in discussions of ressentiment. Beyond overt displays of self-righteousness and hostility, the SR appears to be in constant distress. Contrary to the idea that ressentiment would shield the SR from realizing their true feelings, keeping them tucked away at the edge of consciousness, we find that these feelings often figure quite prominently in empirical cases. Qualitative accounts such as those reported by Sullivan (2021), as well as our own (Hametner, Rodax, Paloni, et al., 2024), show that other-directed displays of devaluation and hostility alternate with interjections of self-doubt, reflective acts of self-distancing, and a general sense of “missing the point.” Thus, there seems to be a certain awareness of the inappropriateness of expressive rationalizations in these cases which we interpret as grounding in the disrupted relation between agents’ felt sense of (in)justice and attempts to inscribe one’s feelings within available socionormative frameworks. Furthermore, evidence of intentional instability as well as the typical pattern of attack and retreat—what Scheler (2007) described as the specific mode of ressentiment-critique—may be seen as indicating that SRs are in fact aware of the inherent inappropriateness of their rationalizations. We find further evidence in reconsidering the role of shame, which has been discussed as a key affective driver of ressentiment. Typically, shame has been associated with feelings of impotence and inferiority in early stages of ressentiment (Aeschbach, 2017). We hypothesize that experiencing communicative neglect in the context of parodic standards may be an equally important source of feelings of shame. Research by Sullivan (2021) seems to support this. In his interviews with UKIP supporters and non-voters in pre-Brexit England, he found that shame was not felt in response to the experience of economic marginalization as such but was linked to the threat of being labelled as racist for speaking up about it. Thus, while shame played a central role in participants’ affective/discursive practices (Wetherell, 2012, 2013), it was primarily linked to how the participants perceived their concerns to be inappropriately framed in the discourse (Sullivan, 2021).

Ultimately, we argue that engaging with the world through ressentiment involves heterogeneous affective-discursive practices that take place across different levels of felt concern, communicative appeals to fractured socionormative orientations, and discursive repertoires and standards, and that involve varying and shifting degrees of (self-)awareness.

Conclusion

Our reconstruction of ressentiment development leads us to answering the questions posed above, as follows. Regarding ressentiment’s relation to socionormative concerns, we argue that feelings of injustice play a constitutive role in ressentiment development and that ressentiment initially arises from a moral breakdown taking place on the level of an agent’s implicit, affective attunement to the world. Since this paper is mainly about the principal role of socionormative concerns in ressentiment, we did not provide detailed examples of moral breakdowns. Our empirical research suggests that such experiences involve fundamental transformations of habitual modes of living that agents perceive as happening without their wilful consent or participation (e.g., in the case of restructurings of housing areas and urban neighbourhoods in Hametner, Rodax, & Binder, 2024). More research is needed to understand how socionormative conflicts turn into fundamental breakdowns. Regarding the second question, we theorize that ressentiment formation takes place under conditions where habitual forms of communicative conflict resolution fail. This is the case when both indexical verbalizations of concern grounding in shared socionormative background orientations (disclosive posture) as well as discursive appeals to normative standards (parodic standards) prove futile. Both of these constitutive conditions refer to fundamental disruptions in the fabric of the SR’s relation to socionormative environments. Thus, ressentiment formation is driven by a dilemmatic dynamic entanglement of ruptured nexuses of practice and parodic socionormative frameworks. Thus, the SR’s felt obligation to resolve what they apprehend as a moral breakdown is repetitively devalued within non-resonant sociodiscursive frameworks. An important consequence of our conceptual approach is that it challenges scholars to look at the sociopolitical context in which ressentiment develops more closely. Conceptualizing ressentiment in terms of moral breakdowns and their failed repair means that the SR’s progressive withdrawal into generalized hostility goes beyond individual-level coping strategies and self-deceptive processing of experiences of frustration. Ressentiment processes inextricably involve psycho-affective as well as social and political dimensions that need to be studied together. We suggest that empirical research is needed to understand better how affective-discursive practices of articulating socionormative concern are (re-)produced and shaped in different sociopolitical contexts. Importantly, we argue that qualitative research over longer periods of time is needed to provide deeper insight into the dynamic process of ressentiment-ful articulations of concern.

Footnotes

ORCID iDs

Markus Wrbouschek

Katharina Hametner

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Author biographies

Markus Wrbouschek is a post-doc fellow at the Sigmund Freud Private University Vienna (SFU). He teaches qualitative methods and social psychology and is a member of the institute for qualitative social research at the SFU. His research has mostly dealt with affectivity and normativity in social relations. Currently, he is applying these insights to understanding participation in as well as resistance against socioecological transformation processes.

Katharina Hametner is assistant professor at the Sigmund Freud Private University and head of the institute for qualitative social research. She teaches social psychology, qualitative methods, and theory of science. Her research focuses on the social psychology of inequality, specifically in the context of socioecological transformation processes and the development of ressentiment. She is copublisher of the journal Psychologie und Gesellschaftskritik (Psychology and Social Criticism).

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Moral breakdowns and their (failed) repair: The role of socionormative concerns in ressentiment formation

Abstract

Keywords

Ressentiment as a complex, psychosocial phenomenon

Between feelings of impotence/inferiority and socionormative concern: Is there a place for a felt sense of (in)justice in ressentiment?

Self-Centred feelings of impotence/inferiority

Transvaluation as precarious psycho-affective self-defence

Ressentiment as disclosive posture

Moral breakdowns and their (failed) repair

Feelings of value and the embodied normativity of everyday life

Moral breakdowns and inarticulate socionormative concerns

Moral breakdowns and their communicative repair

Moral breakdowns, parodic standards, and ressentiment as failed repair

Conclusion

Footnotes

ORCID iDs

Funding

Declaration of conflicting interests

Author biographies

References