Scheler

Max Scheler attempted to reconcile Nietzsche's ideas of master–slave morality and ressentiment with the Christian ideals of love and humility. Nietzsche saw Christian morality as a kind of slave morality, while Greek and Roman culture was characterized as a master morality. Scheler disagrees. He begins with a comparison of Greek love and Christian love. Greek love is described as a movement from lower value to higher value. The weaker love the stronger, the less perfect love the more perfect. The perfect do not love the imperfect because that would diminish their value or corrupt their existence. Greek love is rooted in need and want. This is clearly indicated by the Aristotelian concept of God as the "Unmoved Mover". The unmoved mover is self-sufficient being completely immersed in its own existence. The highest object of contemplation, and who moves others through the force of attraction because efficient causality would degrade its nature.
In Christian love, there is a reversal in the movement of love. The strong bend to the weak, the healthy help the sick, the noble help the vulgar. This movement is a consequence of the Christian understanding of the nature of God as fullness of being. God's love is an expression of His superabundance. The motive for love is not charity nor the neediness of the lover, but it is rooted in a deeply felt confidence that through loving I become more personalized and most real to myself. The motive for the world is not need or lack (à la Schopenhauer), but a creative urge to express the infinite fullness of being. Poverty and sickness are not values to be celebrated in order to spite those who are rich and healthy, but they simply provide the opportunity for a person to express his love. Rich people are harder to love because they are less in need of your generosity. Fear of death is a sign of a declining, sick, and broken life (Ressent 60). St. Francis' love and care for the lepers would have mortified the Greek mind, but for St. Francis, the threats to well-being are inconsequential because at the core of his being there is the awareness that his existence is firmly rooted in and sustained by the ground of ultimate being. In genuine, Christian love, the lower values that are relative to life are renounced not because they are bad, but simply because they are obstacles to those absolute values which allow a person to enter into a relationship with God. It is through loving like God that we are deified. This is why Scheler sees the Christian saint as a manifestation of strength and nobility and not manifesting ressentiment.