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WATCH:
▶ Why Nietzsche Hated Socrates: https://youtu.be/DM78nStythg

OUR ANALYSES:
▶ Beyond Good and Evil: https://youtu.be/WIHXZUltfqk
▶ The Antichrist: https://youtu.be/qej1Z8Qzq_c
▶ Genealogy of Morals: https://youtu.be/6PUx4cOfFcI
▶ Twilight of the Idols: https://youtu.be/YpVr_NEvWYA
▶ The Will to Power: https://youtu.be/He6ZC7ZFBt8
▶ Daybreak: https://youtu.be/cOL2z7nuXdA
▶ The Joyful Science: https://youtu.be/U0fTBOJ-C_I

TIMESTAMPS:
00:00 Introduction
03:14 A bookshop in France
06:22 Know thyself - or don't
11:16 Ressentiment
16:54 Conclusion

Nietzsche first discovered the works of Fyodor Dostoevsky in 1887. This is relatively late in his intellectual career, yet the Russian writer still had a profound influence on him.

He called Dostoevsky “the only psychologist from whom I had anything to learn” and read a few of his novels in French translation. The very first novel he read was Notes from the Underground, although in a botched, low-quality French translation.
Still, it’s highly likely that Nietzsche got the idea (maybe even the word) of ressentiment from Dostoevsky. This French term appears 4 times in the book that Nietzsche read, and while inklings of the idea were present in earlier works, it was not until the Genealogy of Morals (written in 1887, so the same year as his discovery of Dostoevsky) that the word would take centre stage in his philosophy.

Dostoevsky describes the inner psychology of the Underground Man, touching upon themes of isolation, cognitive dissonance, struggles with nihilism, and most importantly (for Nietzsche) resentment. He describes the man of “heightened consciousness” who does not immediately strike back upon being hit, but plots and thinks and analyses his revenge instead. Out of weakness, perhaps, or simply because he thinks too much about the question of justice.

In any case, this lingering has nasty psychological side effects. Dostoevsky describes this man as a mouse, who hides in his mouse-hole and feasts on his own eternal spite. Over time he might even start to enjoy this wallowing in self-pity.

This describes almost to a T, Nietzsche’s idea of ressentiment. The condition of the slave, who cannot win from his masters (the strong) in the real world and therefore takes recourse in an imaginary revenge. This slave morality would ultimately give birth to Christianity and other so-called Hinterwelt philosophies.

But what Nietzsche admired most was Dostoevsky’s psychological insight into what makes us human. The portrait of the Underground Man is dark and deep, the type of psychology that Nietzsche first envisions in Beyond Good and Evil, the new “crown of the sciences”, a psychology that dares to leave morality behind and venture beyond good and evil.

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