Grasping the Serpent: Wealth, Atonement and Transformation of the Self
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.3989/isegoria.2024.70.1456Keywords:
wealth, poverty, atonement, Clement of Alexandria, Cyprian of Carthage, Michel Foucault, spiritual poverty, penance, alms, works of charity, self-transformationAbstract
The following study identifies the emergence of a Christian procedure of subjectivation which, created in connection with the use of wealth between the end of the second and the middle of the third century AD, begins to imagine that the circulation of wealth among men and women on earth makes it possible to treasure wealth in heaven. It is a penitential procedure of self-transformation that will allow Christians to remit the evil done and manifest their truth through a peculiar use of their wealth. The study of this procedure of subjectivation may open a new chapter to explore the formation of a type of experience based on “a certain way of relating oneself to oneself and a certain relationship between evil and truth”, which Michel Foucault studies in Confessions of the Flesh. However, the experience forged apropos of wealth will not be an experience of the flesh. If we follow Clement of Alexandria, this experience could be called the constitution of a simple life by one who aims at being spiritually poor. At the same time, if we listen to Cyprian of Carthage, we would call it simply that of the constitution of a merciful subject. At the end of the study, I will propose that this experience of spiritual poverty or mercy rests on a non-verbalized profession of faith that reveals a co-existence between the act of faith and the act of truth based on the reflexivity of the subject on himself. In other words, I will argue that the penitential use of riches, even if not verbalized, was aimed at performing a reflexive act of truth.
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Fondo Nacional de Desarrollo Científico, Tecnológico y de Innovación Tecnológica
Grant numbers 11240853
