Aesop’s fable The Fox and the Grapes looks like a simple story with an obvious moral: losers turn sour. Yet in Ressentiment, Max Scheler claims that the fable describes the first step towards ressentiment, a mechanism that begins with “sour grapes,” which symbolize a three-step path: the denial of value, the reversal of value (“trans-valuation”), then to the destruction of values, especially as represented in ideals or heroes.1
When the fox says that the grapes are sour, he basically lies to himself to protect his feelings from the failure to reach the grapes that he desires. But imagine another fox came along and was taller, stronger, and more handsome; that fox had no difficulty reaching the grapes. The first fox becomes envious of the second, filled with ressentiment, and eventually engaged in some form of “hero-slaughter.” What I call “hero-slaughter” is active aggression toward those who succeed where we fail. Their destruction is a way to remove the standard that, by its sheer presence, judges us. Thus, if the process is not stopped, the shame of failure leads to moral inversion and later to the abandonment or destruction of the ideal.
The initial problem is the discrepancy between a desire and the ability to satisfy it. The first fox says, “I want the grapes,” but he cannot jump high enough. He fails. He feels discouraged, perhaps ashamed. Of course, one solution to the problem would be to work on his jumping skills or find external help. Instead, he chooses a different path of degrading the object of desire: “The grapes are sour!” And it works. It provides peace of mind. He feels good again. Of course, this way the fox is hurting himself, but he also learns that this kind of mental trick works.
Aesop ends here, but according to Scheler, we do not always stop here. The grapes are still there, and they are still sweet and desirable. Their presence judges the fox and reminds him of his failure. He must find a way to achieve a longer-lasting peace of mind. He transforms his inability to achieve what he wants into a moral choice. This is how Nietzsche described “slave morality” in On the Genealogy of Morals, where he stated that this is precisely what weak people (i.e., women and slaves) do—namely, they rebrand humility and cowardice as peacefulness and prudence. In other words, they present their weaknesses and shortcomings as virtues. Their impotence and deficiency become moral superiority and merit.
What follows is a complete reversal of traditional values and virtues. The grapes are no longer sour; they are a source of moral corruption. Jumping is for idiots because honorable men crawl. Climbing is a sign of arrogance and unhealthy ambition.
And here we come closer to the actual act of hero-slaughter. If jumping is bad, then what shall we do with the jumpers? What will the first fox do to the second one? Aren’t jumpers the ones who demoralize our youth? aren’t they the ones who set a bad example for the rest of us? should we tolerate jumping? and what if they keep jumping?
We find in the Bible a few examples of what happens when inferior people face their superiors. One is the story of Cain and Abel. Another one is the story of Saul and David. Cain fails at the altar. Saul fails in battle. Neither Abel nor David accuse them nor make fun of them. Yet, they succeed where Cain and Saul fail. They do not have to pass on any judgment on them because their existence is a mirror of Cain and Saul’s inadequacy. As long as they are around, Cain and Saul’s feelings of self-worth will be bothered.
Yes, both can work on their inadequacies. God offers them help and a way out. But bitterness and hurt feelings do not let them take the offer. They do not want to be debtors. Being a debtor is another reminder of inadequacy. And thus, they find a way around. They try to kill the ideal that judges them. They want to eliminate the ideal so that their mediocrity becomes the new standard. They chose the path of a hero-slaughter. They retreat from the light of their ideals, which exposes their failures, into the darkness of crooked lies and murder.
We live in times when statues of old heroes are being torn down, and the first foxes are destroying the memorials of the second foxes. But is it always the case that they are torn down because the heroes were not actual heroes? Perhaps, at least in some cases, we simply do not want to bear the judgment of their greatness on our failure? With both non-governmental and state-sponsored wokeism, we live in a reality of institutionalized “sour grapes” mentality. We praise those who feel the most wounded and victimized instead of those who are most capable and upright. Yet we should not be surprised that in a society that not only discourages “jumping skills” but even demonizes them, we have fewer and fewer jumpers.
In the end, the first fox eats bitter roots and eventually starves to death. Other foxes praise him as the one who never tasted those wicked grapes, making the fox a victim of a society where victimhood itself has become a virtue. They sing hymns about his moral superiority. They eventually raise a monument to him. But then, one day, another fox starts feeling guilty every time he crawls near the statue of the fox.
Wouldn’t it be easier and more beneficial just to admit that the grapes are sweet and desirable, but we are too short or too fat? The admission might hurt our feelings a bit, but it could also put us on the path to overcoming our shortness or fatness. And the prize would be sweet grapes. More than that, one day we could even become masters of the jumping board.
René Girard adds the mimetic element to the above. He wrote most extensively about it in Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World. He states that we are all imitators: this is how we learn, live, and evaluate ourselves. It starts with desiring what other people desire, like two children in the same room, completely ignoring a toy until one of them picks it up. Therefore, a lone fox is much less likely to get offended by the unreachable grapes than a fox in a pack. Also, the best “candidate” for a prey of ressentiment is the fox that witnesses another fox reaching the grapes while he is too weak to do the same. If he says, “The grapes are sour,” he probably means, “I hate the successful jumper. I hate him for who he is, and I hate him because I am not who he is.”
Perhaps this is what happened to Cain. Perhaps at first, he did not plan to kill Abel. Perhaps at first, he perceived Abel as a standard for human relationships with God. The problem was that Cain fell short not only of God’s expectations but also of Abel’s silent standard. In comparison to Abel, Cain was not “a good person.” Initial admiration can lead to eventual murder, because the admired person stands between us and our self-worth. This does not happen to a distant ideal, but to the one within the reach of the “loser.” Maybe this was why Cain turned against Abel rather than against God directly.
As Girard observed, the scapegoat mechanism is used by a society that is too internally disturbed by the fights arising from mimetic desires. It can be anybody who is blamed for the social disorder. But it could also be a hero, a person of popular admiration. A hero introduces differentiation; he proves that not everybody is equal. This leads to upheaval in a flat society. An easy solution to restore peace and reintroduce flatness is to expel the hero. I believe this is the source of all of today’s “cancellations,” especially on social media. We do this not because we hate the hero but because we want to destroy the mirror that reflects our emptiness and mediocrity.
I am afraid that we commit hero-slaughter not only in real life or on social media, but also when we read the Bible. We strip great heroes of faith like Jacob of their greatness. We prefer to look at them as merely recipients of grace: Jacob is a rotten deceiver, one of those “wretched sinners” who received “saving grace.” Thus, we ignore the heroism of his wrestling with God and its point. As a wretched sinner, Jacob does not judge us, though like the first fox we are more than happy to judge him. He may judge other sinners, reluctant to embrace grace, but not us, who are already saved. Such a Jacob is not a challenge for us because there is nothing in him to admire. He cannot judge us, but then neither can he inspire us. But maybe we are already so much infected by the spirit of ressentiment that we prefer grace without wrestling over wrestling with grace.
And this is not true only of Jacob. Abraham is a liar. Gideon is a coward. Samson is a reckless fool. Jephthah sacrifices his daughter. Hezekiah feared death. Isaac favored only one son. Adam disobeyed God and ate. “Surely I would never do that, we say.” We do not admire these great men; we slaughter these heroes so that our weakness will not feel so insufficient in comparison.
By eliminating heroes, ressentiment destroys the very ladder we need to climb. It kills all potential for greatness. It replaces aspiration with a corrosive bitterness that rots us from the inside out. And all that is left are cheap excuses or the destruction of ideals. However, the most dangerous consequence is spiritual: it inverts our reading of the Bible. It teaches us to view the Scriptures through the eyes of the resentful brother rather than the obedient saint—prioritizing the grievance of the loser over the glory of the noble.
Bogumil Jarmulak received his PhD from Christian Theological Academy in Warsaw, Poland.
NOTES
- Max Scheler, Ressentiment, trans. Lewis B. Cosper and William W. Holdheim (Marquette University Press, 1994), 8–9. ↩︎