> Polanyi says you need a prior act of affiliation to kick start the kind of apprenticeship through which culture comes to be transmitted. But such acts of affi

> Polanyi says you need a prior act of affiliation to kick start the kind of apprenticeship through which culture comes to be transmitted. But such acts of affiliation, or “granting of one’s personal allegiance” to an authoritative figure, no longer seem routine. When a student shops for a professor, he may consult Rate My Professor Dot Com, that sophomore panopticon by which teachers are held to norms established by students: easiness, availability outside class, hotness, etc. Is the issue here that students choose professors with RateMyProfessor.com, or is that students are able to choose at all? > It is worth thinking about the significance of ressentiment. (In using the French word, I follow Nietzsche and all who are instructed by his account.) Nietzsche used the French word, because German doesn't have a word with the same latin root. English does. When you speak of ressentiment in english, you imply some difference between ressentiment (some intellectualized malady that affects only your opponents) and resentment (a commen emotion that affects everyone). > To indulge in ressentiment is to deny that something is good. What if it actually isn't good? Is it then not denial and ressentiment to say so? To resent someone's status (or the status of some classic work), means to feel that it's undeserved. It's resentment regardless of whether it really is deserved.