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Friedrich Nietzsche
Nietzsche characterizes an ascetic priest as a person who believes that it’s good to be humble, chaste, and poor by denying psychological urges and aspects of life that are emotional, bodily, and materialistic. Ascetic priests include Christian religious leaders who believe that holding back from life’s sensual, emotional, and material aspects to practice “poverty, chastity, and humility” will lead people to “bliss” in heaven. Nietzsche thinks that religious ascetic priests depict themselves as leaders who help people, but really, they only exert power over the disenfranchised and make them suffer for believing natural human urges are “sinful.” Ascetic priests also include nonreligious figures like scientists and philosophers who also value the quiet life: they like to think, and they believe intellectual ideas are more evolved than emotional and bodily sensations, which they denigrate in their theories as primitive. The ascetic priest is Nietzsche’s central rival. Nietzsche thinks that ascetic priests—whether they’re religious or secular—are pathological and perverse, because they endorse the ascetic ideal of withdrawing from life’s messy day-to-day aspects. To Nietzsche, ascetic priests make people suffer, because they make people feel guilty for having natural bodily and emotional urges (which people can’t help, as it’s part of human nature). They advocate limiting people’s exposure to all the things that make life joyful, such as love, sex, friendship, success, and wealth.
Ascetic priest Quotes in On the Genealogy of Morals
The On the Genealogy of Morals quotes below are all either spoken by Ascetic priest or refer to Ascetic priest. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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What Do Ascetic Ideals Mean? Quotes
What is the meaning of ascetic ideals?
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Nietzsche opens his third and final essay with the question he’s going to answer throughout the remainder of the book. As he indicates in framing his question, he’s focusing on “ascetic ideals”: values that advocate maintaining distance from emotional, bodily, and materialistic urges. Nietzsche’s concern isn’t so much with what ascetic ideals are, but what they mean for a culture. Nietzsche aims to show that the ascetic ideal—the idea that distancing oneself from everyday life is meaningful—is pervasive in European culture and that its impact is disastrous for humanity. He’s going to show—by looking at intellectual figures like Wagner, Kant, Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis. Velit eaque error. Possimus corrupti soluta. Qui aut a. Rerum voluptas debitis. Voluptatem accusan
‘I suffer: someone is to blame’—all sick sheep think this. But his shepherd, the ascetic priest, says to him, ‘Quite so, my sheep, it must be the fault of someone but you yourself are that someone, you alone are to blame—you yourself are to blame for yourself;’ that is bold enough, false enough, but one thing is at least attained thereby, as I have said: resentment is—diverted.
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Nietzsche is discussing the role of religion in European culture. His main target is the “ascetic priest,” whom he characterizes as anybody who advocates ascetic ideals: holding back from emotional, bodily, and materialistic desires. In a religious context, the Christian priest embodies this role. To Nietzsche, priests tell their followers (“sheep”) to strive for humility, chastity, and poverty—priests effectively think that humility is good while being too emotional or egotistical is sinful. Priests also think that chastity is good, while sensual desires are sinful. Finally, they think that poverty (or charity) is good, so materialistic urges are also sinful. Nietzsche Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis. Velit eaque error. Possimus corrupti soluta. Qui aut a. Rerum voluptas debitis. Voluptatem accusantium est. Mollitia eaque ipsa. Perferendi
The hypnotic sensation of nothingness, the peace of deepest sleep, anaesthesia in short—this is regarded by the sufferers and the absolutely depressed as their supreme good[.]
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Nietzsche has spent most of his “Third Essay” discussing why ascetic ideals—which advocate withdrawing from everyday life’s ups-and-downs—are problematic because they make people suffer. Here, he acknowledges that there are spiritual leaders in other cultures who actually do use ascetic ideals to reduce their suffering. This means that to Nietzsche, ascetic ideals aren’t bad in themselves, they’re just misapplied in a Christian context. Some spiritual people devote years to training themselves to achieve emotional distance from life. If they succeed, they may well experience a “hypnotic sensation of nothingness”—a mental space that is beyond emotions, and therefore beyond experiences of Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis. Velit eaque error. Possimus corrupti soluta. Qui aut a. Rerum voluptas debitis. Voluptatem accu
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Ascetic priest Character Timeline in On the Genealogy of Morals
The timeline below shows where the character Ascetic priest appears in On the Genealogy of Morals. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Third Essay: What Do Ascetic Ideals Mean?
...it justifies the philosophers’ tendency to withdraw from society. Philosophers have celebrated living like “ ascetic priest [s]” for so long that they really buy into the idea rather than questioning it....
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11. Nietzsche thinks that the “ ascetic priest ” is a formidable opponent who finds “his faith” in living a withdrawn life. Acetic...
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...it, celebrates poverty, humility, and chastity. He says it’s not really correct to say that ascetic priest s turn their backs on life. In fact, Nietzsche thinks they’re motivated by a desire...
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...living actively and embracing life, somebody steps in to “make the sick healthy,” and the ascetic priest steps in to fill this role. The ascetic priest is accepted as a kind of...
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16. Nietzsche thinks the ascetic priest exploits the suffering of the sick by encouraging “self-discipline, self-surveillance, self-mastery” to render them harmless—meaning...
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...(including pain) is actually quite rare and requires a great deal of training and effort. Ascetic priests , however, use another tactic. They encourage ceaseless, mindless everyday work, which effectively distracts the...
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...work, abstaining from pleasure, and fostering community are relatively innocuous strategies—but he also thinks that ascetic priest s employ more harmful techniques. Despite encouraging release from emotions, ascetic priests also agitate people’s...
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...covers up symptoms rather than providing a cure. Their methods, however, worsen the underlying suffering. Ascetic priests effectively treat the apathy of depression but not depression itself. Nietzsche argues that ascetic priests...
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21. The ascetic priest would say that he has reformed humankind, but to Nietzsche, it looks more like the...
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22. Nietzsche even thinks that the ascetic priest has ruined people’s artistic tastes as well as their psychological well-being. He believes that early...
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