ROBERT C. SOLOMON, NIETZSCHE, POSTMODERN, AND RESENTMENT

BIOGRAPHIC AND BIBLIOGRAPHIC

SELECTED SUMMARY NOTES ON THE TEXT

Postmodernists have seized on his failure to construct a systematic new philosophy that would enable us to find our own way; they claimed him as their own because of his fragmentariness and lack of closure. His perspectivist approach seemed to favor postmodernist pluralism, anti-universalism. However, says Solomon, Nietzsche wanted to assert an "affirmative ethics" (p. 276). He "stood for something." (p. 276) "He was no mere rhetorician or protodeconstructionist." (p. 276) He favored privilege; he opposed egalitarian pluralism. He sought (but did not articulate fully) a new system of values combining OLD NOBILITY with NEW MODERNIST CREATIVITY.

The remainder of Solomon's paper seeks to elaborate on this finding by examining the function of RESENTMENT in Nietzsche's thinking and in the mood of postmodernism.

Nietzsche's project was to identify resentment as the fatal flaw in western philosophy, based in Plato and in Christianity. It was then to eliminate resentment as the motive force. This would eliminate egalitarianism from a Nietzschean solution, since it was a primary consequence of the resentment of the slave mind.

S. finds that postmodernism does not eliminate egalitarianism, the denial of rank order. Instead, postmodernism embraces pluralism, which S. equates with egalitarianism. Nietzsche would oppose this. Worse, in S.'s view, postmodernism bases its embrace of pluralism on the very RESENTMENT that Nietzsche seeks to stamp out. The postmodern turn, S. says, is a "cry of desperation, a philosophy of victimization, an expression of deep resentment." (p. 284).

This negative turn is away from the modernist idea of progress, from teleology, from "the ideal as well as the reality of 'Truth.'" (p. 282)

S. attacks the "passions of postmodernism" because of their origin in the very resentment opposed by Nietzsche. The target of resentment-filled postmodernism from the right as well as the left is the secular humanism of the high modern. S. vigorously argues that the current virulence of religious fundamentalism is a characteristically postmodern development. The fundamentalist new right and the academic postmodernist "left" are alike: both in different ways attack mainstream society with the passion of RESENTMENT.

"The new religious Right, whatever its claims of love and righteousness, is clearly based on...that insidious passion [resentment]. So is academic postmodernism but without the pretensions of love." (p. 288)

Solomon flatly disagrees with Fredric Jameson. Jameson declared that the postmodernist sensibility is marked by "the waning of affect." He attributed that to the waning of a sense of depth in time. Solomon, contradicting Jameson, believes that the mood of postmodernism (which he largely limits to academic postmodernists) is RESENTMENT at the failure to resolve the modernist project:

"...if postmodernism is a violent reaction, we should expect an emotion that is suitably violent and enduring and anything but 'waning.'...Jameson is just plain wrong....the current cultural climate--even (especially?) within most English departments--is explosively charged with affect, and this emotion is resentment, fueled by impotent self-righteousness and aimed at nothing less--...from the odd phenomenon of professors attacking their own bread and butter and declaring it worthless to the broad theoretical denial of the major institutions of this society." (pp. 286-87).

Finally, in a polemical outburst, Solomon accuses postmodernism of fascistic sympathies by omission or commission. He angrily (resentfully?) attacks the self-serving character of postmodern cultural studies. Unlike postmodern academics, he says, Nietzsche, while rejecting (as does Solomon) the hegemony of Cartesian positivism, affirmed doing philosophy for a purpose in society. He tried to deal with life, not to avoid it. Unlike postmodernism, Nietzsche talked about the issues of friendship, ethics, death, life.

Solomon finds "not important" the question whether or not there is a postmodern Nietzsche. Postmodernism, after all, he says, is merely "an unusually hysterical reaction to the quickening historical process of evolution and change." (p. 291)

SIGNIFICANCE, EVALUATION, AND RELATIONSHIP TO OTHER WORK

1. THE MOOD OF RACE/CLASS/GENDER: By highlighting RESENTMENT, Solomon helps us to an understanding of the humorlessness and meanness of spirit of much of the discourse in academia centered in race/class/gender studies. The lack of a common ground for discourse is at play. Indeed, Solomon himself becomes strident and accusatory in his polemical conclusion, as if the nasty mood of the postmodernist object of his attention reflected back upon himself.

2. ACADEMIC VS. NON-ACADEMIC POSTMODERN SENSIBILITY: Solomon concentrates his attack on academics who espouse postmodernist theory. He does not address the larger cultural question, which THE PROGRAMME approaches, for example, in To Bear the Unbearable: does postmodern theory explain the life experience of those born between the World War II generation and the Baby Boom generation? We find that it does. By rejecting postmodern theory as mere hysterical reaction to the pace of change, Solomon removes an explanation for our life experience. He fails, we think, to see that the "hysterical reaction" of postmodernism may have its uses for the person trying to get through the woods safely. It at least calls attention to the shortcomings of modernism, particularly the terroristic effects of totalizing concepts and programs. (Ironically, as Solomon observes, the "hysterical reaction" fails to offer up a viable alternative to this teror; instead, it gives us a new opening for fascism.) Solomon omits any discussion of the power of postmodernist art to mimic experience and thus to domesticate the outrageous experiences of a period. In short, he is too immersed in the issues of the academy. He accuses postmodernists of talking mainly about postmodernism and not talking about life's issues. He falls into the same trap himself, if it is true that postmodernism involves more than academic theory.

3. HYPERTEXT AS THE ANALOG OF THE POSTMODERN: George Landow argues that hypertext converges with contemporary postmodern critical theory. THE PROGRAMME has affirmed this convergence with a positive evalution: it finds that hypertext offers techniques of association and integration that advance the process of thought over older technologies. Solomon's negative evaluation of postmodernism makes us wonder whether the easy association of hypertext with postmodernist values will hold up. This is a matter for further investigation.