Resentment, from the French ressentir, means to feel again. This is replaying past injuries as present pain.
When unprocessed, this repetition ossifies into ressentiment, a deeper existential condition where the original wound is lost, and only the emotional charge remains.
As Nietzsche and Scheler observed, identity fuses with grievance, shaping a person’s worldview through a lens of injustice. This metastasized resentment becomes volatile—a pressurized self that seeks catharsis not through healing, but through projection or vengeance.
In such a state, liberation requires not justice, but the dissolution of identity built on pain.