The Era of Ressentiment and the Tragedy of the Outgoing Classes (Fishman L.G. Inequality of Equals: The Concept and Phenomenon of Ressentiment. Moscow: HSE Publishing House, 2024)

The article examines the ideas set out in Leonid Fishman’s monograph Inequality of Equals: The Concept and Phenomenon of Ressentiment. The main goal of the book is a kind of “deconstruction” of ressentiment as an ideological tool that is increasingly used today by those who want to disarm their political opponents. This practice goes back to Friedrich Nietzsche and Max Scheler, who accused the masses of ressentiment, but ignored the fact that resentful feelings are historically inherent in those who are at the top of the social hierarchy, since they possessed something to divide and envy. In other words, they more often found themselves in a situation of “inequality of equals”. According to Fishman, the modern era can be characterized as an “era of ressentiment”, since Modern societies proclaim ideals of equality but cannot realize this equality, and therefore constant social comparisons are inevitable, provoking feelings of envy and indignation. Consequently, he believes that it is better to abandon the “ressentiment gaze”, since this concept is essentially “empty”: everyone has reasons or causes to accuse each other of ressentiment, but this says little about the real causes of certain political emotions. Agreeing with most of the theses put forward by the author of the monograph, Dmitry Davydov draws attention to one debatable point. In his opinion, ressentiment can still be a useful concept if we recognize and acknowledge the tragedy of the classes that are going away into the past, which are left with nothing but indignation from powerlessness. Such recognition will help to understand the full depth of the problems that very broad strata of the population have faced in the era of rapid social transformations, which will allow to assess the current situation not so much as “inequality of equals,” but rather as “inequality of unequals” in a fundamental historical sense.