Kenosi e morte di Dio: ripensare secolarizzazione e modernità

This essay rethinks secularization and modernity through the intertwined motifs of the death of God and kenosis. It first reconstructs post-Nietzschean trajectories of God’s death in Sartre, Heidegger, Altizer, Vattimo, and Girard, clarifying how each confronts nihilism, violence, and the fate of transcendence. It then maps modern accounts of kenosis between “distance” and “proximity,” taking Hegel as a decisive prototype and examining its radicalization in Žižek and its hermeneutic-ethical reconfiguration in Vattimo, while critically engaging Derrida’s “economic” hesitation toward kenotic self-emptying. Against both apocalyptic theothanatology and overly pacified readings of post-metaphysical Christianity, the essay proposes a return to Hegel as a third way. Interpreted through the lens of Verwindung, kenotic thought is presented as a non-reconciliatory engagement with alterity that preserves conflict without sacralizing violence, and reorients modern agency toward decentering, creative caritas, and the retrieval of silenced memories.