Nietzsche's Naturalistic Ethics - UNAIR | E-Book Collection

under circumstances in which deep-rooted, ingrained anger and resentment are already present inthe mind. Anger and resentment (or, again, some evolutionarily earlier versions thereof) arisebecause the evolution of the mind occurs in response to violent oppression of aggressive instincts.Nietzsche’s image of the animal that finds itself incarcerated and bites itself raw on the bars of itscage is helpful here (cf. GM II, 16): where previously instincts could be discharged against otheranimals, anger and resentment now grow. Contrary to Aristotle’s classic account in the Rhetoric(1378a34), this kind of anger is not directed against any specific individual, any more than theaggression of the earlier instincts was directed against anybody in particular. Once the mindbecomes conscious of itself, something new happens: anger and resentment resulting from theoppression of instincts are now directed not only against mental representations of others, butagainst mental representations of the mind itself. For the mind to become conscious of itself meansfor it to become able to refer to and reflect upon itself, perhaps by forming representations of itselfor beliefs, emotions, or other entities ”inside” or constitutive of it, perhaps in other, nonrepresentationalways. But once the mind is capable of making reference to itself, anger andresentment find new targets inside the mind: they become directed against the mind itself. Putdifferently, when the mind expands the scope of entities it can refer to, in this case to entities insideitself or part of it, anger and resentment expand their scopes as well. While any representation in themind provides internal targets for anger and resentment replacing the former external targets ofaggressive instincts now beyond reach, the mind’s becoming self-conscious increases the range ofsuch internal targets by including representations of the mind itself, including memories of itsdevelopment. Since the mind is from the beginning on an angry and resentful mind, anger and11