Ascetic ideals Term Analysis

What is the meaning of ascetic ideals?

At any rate, this should be the case with all mortals who are sound in mind and body, who are far from regarding their delicate balance between ‘animal’ and ‘angel’ as necessarily an objection to existence—the brightest and most insightful of them, such as Goethe and Hafiz, have even seen in this another of life's charms. Such ‘conflicts’ actually make life all the more enticing.

He suddenly realized that more could be effected by the novelty of the Schopenhauerian […] notion of the sovereignty of music, as Schopenhauer understood it; music set apart from and distinguished from all the other arts, music as the independent art-in-itself, not like the other arts, affording images of the phenomenal world, but rather speaking the language of the will itself, straight out of the ‘abyss,’ as its most personal, original and direct manifestation.

But, as I feared, the contrary was always the case and so, from the very beginning, we get from our philosophers definitions upon which the lack of any refined personal experience squats like a big fat stupid worm, as it does on Kant's famous definition of the beautiful. ‘That is beautiful,’ says Kant, ‘which pleases without interest.’

Without interest?! Compare this definition with this other one, made by an ‘artist,’ an ‘observer’ truly capable of aesthetic appreciation—by Stendhal, who once called the beautiful une promesse de bonheur.

Schopenhauer has described one effect of the beautiful—the calming of the will—but is this effect the usual one?

Every animal […] strives instinctively after the most favourable conditions: those under which it can exert its full strength, and experience its greatest feeling of power; every animal also instinctively abhors (and with an acute sense ‘surpassing all reason’) any kind of disruption or hindrance which obstructs or could obstruct his path to this optimum (it is not his way to ‘happiness’ of which I speak, but his path to power, to action, the most powerful action, and in point of fact in many cases his way to misery).

We know the three great catch-words of the ascetic ideal: poverty, humility chastity; and if we look closely at the lives of all the great productive, creative intellects, we will find these present again and again, in some measure.

There is only a seeing from a perspective, only a ‘knowing’ from a perspective, and the more emotions we express concerning a thing, the more eyes, different eyes, we train on the same thing, the more complete will be our ‘idea’ of that thing, our ‘objectivity.’

Look into the background of every family, of every institution, of every community; you will see everywhere the struggle of the sick against the healthy[.]

‘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.

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[.]

No! This ‘modern science’—mark this well—is now the best ally for the ascetic ideal, and for the very reason that it is the least conscious, least spontaneous, least known of allies!

Man will desire oblivion rather than not desire at all.