Aphorism 1 – Ressentiment

If Nietzsche gets to misapply the word aphorism then I’m going to do it, too.

I’ve heard about the bird of prey, let’s say a hawk, and the lamb. I have questions. Let’s say that the hawk has eaten too much so it’s slow, or that the lamb that he’s following is very fast, and he can’t catch the lamb. Soon the hawk is unable to catch any of the lambs on any day and the hawk begins to starve. Why doesn’t the hawk now regard the lambs as “evil”, or his slowness as “evil”? Is that not ressentiment? And why doesn’t the lamb say to themselves that they love their speed, and they love the hawk because it reminds them to remain quick? Why can’t the lamb simply love to live, and therefore it is “good” to live but “bad” (and not “evil”) to die?

If these situations are so perfectly reversible, how can you say that one side definitely expresses one sort of morality or the other? If you are saying that one side shows ressentiment, where does that ressentiment reside? Perspectivism, as I understand it, refers to the differing perspectives: the hawk’s perspective or the lamb’s perspective. Ressentiment is a creature not of either of those perspectives but of the perspective of a small-minded man trying to elaborate why he is upset by strikes.