The Christian glorification of poverty still confirms property as the ground of morality

Evidence

It was the advent of Christianity that first negated this identification, with its proposition that a camel could pass more easily through a needle’s eye than a rich man enter heaven. But the special theological premium on poverty indicates how deeply the general consciousness was stamped by the morality of possessions. Fixed property was a means of differentiation from nomadic disorder, against which all norms were directed; to be good and to have goods coincided from the beginning. The good man is he who rules himself as he does his own property: his autonomous being is modelled on material power. — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia, 192

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the ADDENDUM material on sumptuary law and class signaling — the implicit wealth-based morality underlying moral panics. — connects to: Platonic dualism naturally generated an ascetic morality that Christianity partially adopted — Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy, 611
• DEFINE: Adorno’s own image — ‘to be good and to have goods coincided from the beginning’ — is the passage’s central compression.

Broader Connections

• Platonic dualism naturally generated an ascetic morality that Christianity partially adopted #expands (0.78) — Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy, 611