Povertà sottosopra

(Poverty Upside Down)

Abstract

Christianity introduces a dangerous shift in the order of categories so that poverty ends up assuming a role similar to that played by substance. Poverty becomes the central category to which all others make reference. Health, strength, reason, and success remain part of substance, but substance, the essence, by itself is inessential. Religion works as an order that overall suspends the logic of the world. Such logic is not abolished, it keeps functioning; yet it is revoked at the very moment when it is set into place. A confrontation with Scheler shows how his notion of “resentment” does not succeed in being entirely impermeable to Nietzsche’s criticism. This induces Scheler to engage in strategies of containment if not of underestimation of the Christian option in favor of the poor.