1、 中文 3370 字 外文资料原文： The Dramas of Resentment By Amelie Oksenberg Rorty (Adopted from The Yale ReviewJ, Blackwell Publishers, INC, 2000. P 89 97) The resentment whose drams I explore here is the resentment that is focused on a wound that has become infected and threatens to spread. The injury is not p
2、erceived as necessary or as merely accidental: no one resents mortality or the common cold. Infected and enduring resentment can be directed to circumstances and situations, as well as to people or groups. Resentment and indignation. Although resentment is often allied, and sometimes fused, with ind
3、ignation, the two are nevertheless distinguishable by their typical scenarios and consequences. Targeted resentment carries a story of grievance. The perpetrators are presumed to have been primarily responsible for an unwarranted injury that they could have-and should have-been able to avoid. While
4、it is possible to resent having been harmed by someone that one cannot identify, targeted resentment is generally expressed by characterizing or naming specific offenders: Palestinians resent those who condone (what they see) as the Israeli occupation of their land. In such case the resentful tend t
5、o describe their grievances in great detail； they often harbor ill will to the perpetrators of their injuries, but they need not have a general theory about the injustice of their situation. Unlike those who suffer targeted resentment, the indignant tend to take themselves to represent other, simila
6、r cases of dishonor or oppression. They often describe and justify their indignation in general terms, without necessarily targeting specific offenders as responsible for their wrongs. Parents who resent the inequities of their childrens access to sound education or to adequate medical care can, wit
7、hout charging any particular official, implicitly justify their resentment by a general principle: “Discriminating inequality is disrespectful, unfair, unjust.” Similarly, a Turk whose family has lived in Germany for three generations can indignantly resent being disenfranchised while a South Africa
8、n of fourth-generation German descent automatically receives full civic rights and benefits. But although Turks may hold strong views about the criteria for citizenship, they need not harbor grudges against South African immigrants of German descent or wish them any harm. Those who harbor circumstan
9、ce-resentment nevertheless often indict representative collaborators, charging them with culpable, voluntary ignorance or self-deception. In itself, unalloyed by anger, resentful indignation need not motivate remedial action. But when it moves to anger or rage, it tends to thoughts of revenge and re
10、tribution. As Aristotle puts it: “Anger may be defined as a desire for revenge for a painful, inappropriate, and undeserved slight towards oneself or ones friends.” Resentment and envy. Envy and resentment are cousins； they feed each other and are fed by one another. Both are sustained by claims of
11、rights, benefits, or privileges that seem unfairly distributed. But whereas the pains and fantasies of the envious resemble those of the resentful, the envious need not attribute the disparities of the natural or social lottery to intentional malevolence or collusive intrigue. They need not even bel
12、ieve that there has been a pattern of unfairness or injustice. When a society is organized around competition for resources and goods, when it generates the desires that prompt envy-for wealth or influence, for power or honor-envious rivalry is sometimes promoted in the belief that it sparks inventi
13、veness, provides productive incentives. Envy is then experienced as painful unappeased-and unappeasable-longing； its connection to resentment is often repressed； and its divisive social harm is unacknowledged. The envious may be so absorbed in their desired and ambitions, complicit in the structures
14、 that produce their injuries and afflictions, that they blame themselves for their hardships, attributing their relative deprivations to personal failures. Their resentment is turned inward: they resent and blame themselves for this or that flaw, without being able to recognized their condition as p
15、art of a general pattern. Nietzsche was right about at least one thing: his description of those of us who do not share his dream of radically free and self-creative individuals is accurate and precise. We are objectively and practically dependent on one another. And although we moralizingly call co
16、mparisons odious, we live and move in a world of constantly tested and hotly contended hierarchical comparisons of power. Even self-reliant, self-disciplined Emersonians find themselves internalizing what they take to be the glancing look of their fellows. In all its varied guises, resentment beings
17、 with a sense of injury at an imbalance of power, an unjust disequilibrium of goods, rights and privileges. As the criteria for the scope and distribution of justice and fairness vary, so do the dramas-and the grounds-of resentment, envy, and indignation. Who holds the power to define and control th
18、e distribution of justice? Is it military might, political or economic dominance, financial control, intellectual authority, charm and charisma, the gift of words? Whatever it is-whatever we believe it to be-we seek it for its own sake as an expression of our worth and because we think it serves our
19、 interests. The struggles to achieve or retain dominance are manifest in the dynamics of politics, in the subtleties of social life, and even in learned academic journals. The actions of the powerful are met by reactive counter-challenges. But when the dynamics of action and reaction appears to be p
20、ermanently and unjustifiably unbalanced-when the injured feel themselves to be entirely without recourse to redress-resentment can move to increasingly violent destructive devastation. In its extreme forms, the cycles of mutual wreckage can issue in willful, open-eyed self-destruction and self-annih
21、ilation. The reigning motto of “better dead than defeated” seems virtually incomprehensible to those of us who, despite everything, still envision ourselves as absorbed in progressive Enlightenment projects: the extension of education, just governance, and fair distribution. Even those of us who are
22、 uncertain about whether the Enlightenment vision is an ideal or an illusion are deeply disturbed by the endless cycles of resentful retribution. Even when it occurs far from us-among peoples whose lives we can barely imagine-it threatens our understanding of the world, and so also our understanding
23、 of ourselves. The varieties of resentment, their convergence with indignation and envy, arise from broken promises or from the denial of rightful expectations. Like all attitudes, they can rest on genuine insight or on misapprehension； they can be excessive or insufficient； they can be expressed de
24、ftly or ineptly； they may have-or fail to have-an adequate therapeutic program. The dramas of resentment raise further difficult questions. Is it appropriate to be resentful on behalf of others, especially if the oppressed protest that they do not believe themselves injured? Certainly parents are of
25、ten resentful on behalf of children who may not experience themselves as having been wronged. Political reformers often express resentment on behalf of an oppressed class, whom they believe to have bee duped into accepting their condition. To be sure, vicarious resentment borders on indignation or outrage. But the vagueness or indeterminacy of the
