Carl Schmitt (1888–1985) German jurist, political theorist and professor of law
"The Tyranny of Values" (1959)
Source: Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912), L. Coser, trans. (1973), p. 67
Carl Schmitt (1888–1985) German jurist, political theorist and professor of law
"The Tyranny of Values" (1959)
“Negating negatives with positives is a form of toxic positivity.”
Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. (1841–1935) United States Supreme Court justice
Address at the dedication of the Northwestern University Law School Building, Chicago, Illinois (20 October 1902); republished in Holmes' Collected Legal Papers (1937), p. 272.
1900s
Lee Edelman (1953) American academic
Source: No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive (2004), p. 5
Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher
This proposition is infinitely important; only, negation as such is formless abstraction. However, speculative philosophy must not be charged with making negation or nothing an ultimate: negation is as little an ultimate for philosophy as reality is for it truth. Of this proposition that determinateness is negation, the unity of Spinoza's substance — or that there is only one substance — is the necessary consequence. Thought and being or extension, the two attributes, namely, which Spinoza had before him, he had of necessity to posit as one in this unity; for as determinate realities they are negations whose infinity is their unity. According to Spinoza's definition, of which more subsequently, the infinity of anything is its affirmation. He grasped them therefore as attributes, that is, as not having a separate existence, a self-subsistent being of their own, but only as sublated, as moments; or rather, since substance in its own self lacks any determination whatever, they are for him not even moments, and the attributes like the modes are distinctions made by an external intellect.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, The Science of Logic, 1812
G - L, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Max Scheler (1874–1928) German philosopher
Variant: The man of ressentiment cannot justify or even understand his own existence and sense of life in terms of positive values such as power, health, beauty, freedom, and independence. Weakness, fear, anxiety, and a slavish disposition prevent him from obtaining them. Therefore he comes to feel that “all this is vain anyway” and that salvation lies in the opposite phenomena: poverty, suffering, illness, and death. This “sublime revenge” of ressentiment (in Nietzsche’s words) has indeed played a creative role in the history of value systems. It is “sublime,” for the impulses of revenge against those who are strong, healthy, rich, or handsome now disappear entirely. Ressentiment has brought deliverance from the inner torment of these affects. Once the sense of values has shifted and the new judgments have spread, such people cease to been viable, hateful, and worthy of revenge. They are unfortunate and to be pitied, for they are beset with “evils.” Their sight now awakens feelings of gentleness, pity, and commiseration. When the reversal of values comes to dominate accepted morality and is invested with the power of the ruling ethos, it is transmitted by tradition, suggestion, and education to those who are endowed with the seemingly devaluated qualities. They are struck with a “bad conscience” and secretly condemn themselves. The “slaves,” as Nietzsche says, infect the “masters.” Ressentiment man, on the other hand, now feels “good,” “pure,” and “human”—at least in the conscious layers of his mind. He is delivered from hatred, from the tormenting desire of an impossible revenge, though deep down his poisoned sense of life and the true values may still shine through the illusory ones. There is no more calumny, no more defamation of particular persons or things. The systematic perversion and reinterpretation of the values themselves is much more effective than the “slandering” of persons or the falsification of the world view could ever be.
Source: Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912), L. Coser, trans. (1973), pp. 76-77
Ludwig Feuerbach (1804–1872) German philosopher and anthropologist
Part I, Section 14 <br class="br"> Principles of Philosophy of the Future http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/feuerbach/works/future/index.htm (1843)
William F. Sharpe (1934) American economist
William Sharpe’s February 1992 lecture at Trinity University: in: William Breit, Barry T. Hirsch (2009). Lives of the Laureates: Twenty-three Nobel Economists. p. 172
Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity
"Science and Religion" (1939-1941), p. 23 http://books.google.com/books?id=Q1UxYzuI2oQC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA23#v=onepage&q&f=false <br class="br">1950s, Out of My Later Years (1950)