What, For Nietzsche, Is The Nature And Significance Of The Ascetic Ideal? Is He Convincing?

What, for Nietzsche, is the nature and significance of the ascetic ideal? Is he convincing? For Nietzsche, the ascetic ideal, in the form of Christian morality and the post-Christian morality that was developing out of it, was a ruinous development in morality that came to dominate European thought and culture. In this essay I will discuss what Nietzsche considers the nature of the ascetic ideal to be in On the Genealogy of Morality (GM), before assessing his scathing critique of it. I will conclude that Nietzsche s argument against the ascetic ideal is convincing but could be strengthened by a more detailed account of what Nietzsche would suggest in place of the ascetic ideal. At the beginning of On the Genealogy of Morality Nietzsche explains that he aims to provide what contemporary English psychologists around him were failing to provide: a proper genealogy of our morality, that traces back its diverse origins all the way to Antiquity and beyond. Raymond Geuss compares genealogy with a pedigree and in doing so provides insight into what a genealogy is (Nietzsche and Genealogy, I). A pedigree can provide a source of value by tracing an unbroken line of succession from the origin to that item (Ibid.), such as by tracking a noble family name through history up to the present item in question, such as a coat of arms, whose value is to be demonstrated by the pedigree. Unlike a pedigree however, a genealogy need not have such aims of valuation in mind and can merely trace the diverse and branching origins of a certain thing, in this case our morality, back through the ages. Nietzsche claims that those around him attempting a similar project, the English psychologists`` (GM1, 1), had failed in their attempts so far to write a history of the emergence of morality , suggesting that historical spirit itself is lacking in them (GM1, 2). Ansell-Pearson notes that in The Gay Science Nietzsche spells out their fundamental mistake that their inquiries do not go deep enough and the problem of the value of morality is not raised by them (GM Introduction). Nietzsche on the other hand, wishes to provide a real history of morality (GM Preface, 7) and will do so via historical and etymological methods, as well as by freeing himself from the Christian moral perspective that he thinks the English psychologists are confined to. I emphasize the project of On the Genealogy of Morality , for in analysing Nietzsche s critique of others genealogies, and assessing Nietzsche s own, the nature and significance of the ascetic ideal should be spelled out. The first mistake that Nietzsche attributes to the English psychologists is in their attempt to convey the descent of the concept and judgement of good (GM1, 2). Nietzsche claims that the real breeding ground for the concept good has been sought and located in the wrong place (Ibid.) by these historians of morality. They erroneously locate the origin of goodness in unegoistic acts , claiming that such acts were called good by their recipients by the people to whom they were useful (Ibid.). Nietzsche rejects this explanation, claiming that goodness does not emanate from those to whom goodness is shown but from the good themselves , where good means the noble, the might, the high-placed and the high-minded (Ibid.). According to Nietzsche, usefulness was none of their concern (Ibid.). Thus, Nietzsche claims the origins of good and bad are based on a pathos of distance between a higher ruling kind and a lower kind (Ibid.). Just as good refers to all those things associated with rulers, bad refers to all those things associated with the lower kind. Nietzsche uses etymology to justify his claim, stating that in different languages the terms for good all lead back to noble , aristocratic in social terms (GM1, 4). Similarly, he traces the origin of `bad` to a sense of "`common, `plebeian`, `low`" (Ibid.), such as the German word "schlecht", which means bad but is identical with "schlicht" meaning "plain, simple" (Ibid.). Nietzsche notes that it refers to the simple person "with no derogatory implication, but simply in contrast to the nobility" (Ibid.). Having emphasized this contrast, Nietzsche goes on to explain how the meaning of good and bad was distorted, by way of the introduction of the ascetic ideal. Nietzsche explains this process through a distinction between the "priestly method" and the "chivalric-aristocratic method" (GM1, 7). The traditional, chivalric method, made value judgments "based on a powerful physicality" and "effervescent good health that includes things needed to maintain it" such as "war, adventure, hunting, dancing, jousting ... strong, free, happy action" (Ibid.). According to Nietzsche, it was the priests, or "priestly people", specifically the Jews, who rejected the "aristocratic value equation (good = noble = powerful = beautiful = happy = blessed" (Ibid.), and by way of a reversal, claimed "`Only those who suffer are good, only the poor, the powerless, the lowly are good`" (Ibid.). Such a reversal, Nietzsche believes, grew out of "revenge and hatred, Jewish hatred" (GM1, 8). While it may seem compassionate on the surface, Nietzsche argues that this reversal of morality serves only to dethrone the powerful and to convince the lowly that they are somehow better than the masters. Nietzsche also emphasizes a distinction between the activeness of master morality and the passivity of slave morality. Nietzsche claims that "all noble morality grows out of a triumphant saying `yes` to itself" whereas "slave morality says `no` on principle to everything that is `outside`, `other`, `non-self`" (GM1, 10). In other words, there is no double action, or reactive effort required for noble morality, it is self-justifying. The masters do master things (wage war, conquer, hunt, dance) and it is self-evidently good, it justifies itself, "they did not need ... to construct their happiness artificially by looking at their enemies" (Ibid.). The Christian, slave morality, on the other hand "first has to have an opposing, external world ... to act at all" (Ibid.). According to Nietzsche, slave morality involves reacting to others. The adherent sees the powerful and noble, and reacts, and in doing so offers their value judgement. Nietzsche invokes the comparison of separating "lightning from its flash" (GM1, 13). Just as people incorrectly take the flash to be something performed by the subject, the lightning, when they are in fact one in the same, so does slave morality separate "strength from the manifestations of strength" (Ibid.). This process is spurred on by "ressentiment" (GM1, 10), or resentment, a feeling that Nietzsche sees as integral to the Christian, slave morality. Nietzsche notes also that the noble man has respect for his enemy, for to be his enemy in the first place he must have admirable qualities and "a great deal to be honoured" (Ibid.). The lowly are not considered their enemy: the masters pity the bad for their poor and lowly situation, but whoever is worthy to be considered the enemy of the nobleman would not be bad . The man of ressentiment, on the other hand, conceives the "`evil enemy` ... as a basic idea to which he now thinks up a copy and counterpart, the `good one` - himself!" (Ibid.) Thus Nietzsche astutely emphasizes the distinction between good and bad, and good and evil. The nobleman of old would not dwell on the `bad`, any conception of the bad would be merely an "afterthought, an aside" (GM1, 11). When the man of ressentiment on the other hand considers one "evil", contained within that judgement is the entire reversal of morality, spurred by powerful hatred, that Christianity induced: "the actual deed in the conception of slave morality" (Ibid.). Who is this "evil" person? According to Nietzsche, "precisely the `good` person of the other morality, the noble powerful, dominating one ... re-interpreted ... through the poisonous eye of ressentiment" (Ibid.). In the second essay of "On the Genealogy of Morality" Nietzsche gives some psychological and historical background which he believes explains why the ascetic ideal of Christian morality caught on and became the dominant morality of Europe. Nietzsche defines bad conscience as a psychological feature of us as humans that has developed through history, that renders us predisposed to a feeling of guilt. Nietzsche claims that to "breed an animal with the prerogative to promise" (GM2, 1) is the process that allowed bad conscience to creep in. While animal man may have had the ability to forget (to go about his business without feeling guilt), modern man has been conditioned, through punishment and "mnemonics": repeated promises in the style "I will do not x" that are "burnt in so that it stays in the memory" (GM2, 3). Nietzsche believes the relationship "between creditor and debtor" (GM2, 4) holds the key to understanding where the feeling of guilt in humans originated. In pre-Christian morality, Nietzsche claims punishment was doled out by a creditor to a debtor who failed to honour his debt. Something was owed and the creditor got what he was owed by inflicting pain on the debtor. As society grew in size however, according to Nietzsche, the community "ceases to take the offence of the individual quite so seriously", since the crimes do not seem to be "as dangerous and destabilizing for the survival of the whole" (GM2, 10). Once punishment ceases to be expressed outwardly, and people`s innate willingness to inflict pain has no subject to be applied to, Nietzsche claims that these "instincts that are not discharged outwardly turn inwards" (GM2, 16). These instincts have not gone away but are merely directed into oneself: "those instincts of the wild, free, roving man were turned backwards, against man himself" (Ibid.). Nietzsche graphically describes this phenomenon as the "animal who battered himself raw on the bars of his cage and who is supposed to be `tamed`" (Ibid.). Our instincts for cruelty have not gone away, we just have redirected them into ourselves, by way of necessity due to living ever closer to each other in larger and larger communities. This "will to self-violation" provides the base on which the ascetic ideal is founded: "the precondition for the value of the unegoistic" (Ibid.). By being willing to punish ourselves, the path is paved for the ascetic ideal to give that punishment meaning. Nietzsche notes that we have also developed a feeling of indebtedness towards our ancestors (GM2, 19) which is eventually transformed or distorted into a feeling of guilt towards God. Nietzsche claims that man sets up God as the "ultimate antithesis" to his "real and irredeemable animal instincts" (GM2, 22). Man suppresses his animal instincts, saying no to "himself, nature, naturalness and the reality of his being" and yes to "the holiness of God ... torture without end, as hell, as immeasurable punishment and guilt" (Ibid.). This comes naturally to us due to "man`s will to find himself guilty" (Ibid.). What has been established thus far in terms of the ascetic ideal? That it grew out of "ressentiment", or hatred. That it involves an inversion of the pre-Christian distinction of master morality between good and bad, to the slave morality distinction of good and evil That we are predisposed to its allure, due to our instinctive desire to inflict pain, that through the development of larger and closer nit communities has been redirected into ourselves, combined with an innate feeling of guilt before our ancestors. What is left? In the third essay of "On the Genealogy of Morality" Nietzsche goes into greater detail of how the ascetic ideal functions and how the priest was able to dupe mankind into adhering to it. According to Nietzsche, an important feature of mankind is that we prefer "to will nothingness rather than not will`` (GM3, 1). Nietzsche believes that the ascetic ideal is empty: it means "nothing at all" (GM3, 5). But, after our ability to conquer and all those things that motivated the nobleman of old have been stripped away, modern man would rather adhere to the ascetic ideal and will nothingness, than not will anything. The ascetic ideal guides man into himself: after outward expression is stripped away, through the ascetic ideal man "affirms his existence and only his existence" (GM1, 7). Nietzsche notes that this solipsistic mode of being appeals to the philosopher and points to a link between the ascetic ideal and his contemporary intellectuals, which does not depend on theological content. Nietzsche bemoans that Wagner, previously a champion of the sensual, was seduced by Schopenhauer s life-denying philosophy. Nietzsche claims we know what the "three great catchwords of the ascetic ideal are: poverty, humility, chastity" (GM3, 8). Influenced by Schopenhauer, Wagner became "an oracle, a priest ... a telephone to the beyond ... he did not just talk music, this ventriloquist of God, - he talked metaphysics" (GM3, 5). After Wagner stopped writing about the stuff of life, and communicated the message of God, Nietzsche believes it is a seamless transition to espousing the stuff to ascetic ideals: "hardly surprising that one day he ended up talking ascetic ideals, is it?" (Ibid.). God can be removed from the equation, and the ascetic ideal continues to promote a rejection of life`s goodness and an adherence to those life-denying activities such as chastity. This life-denying encouraged by the ascetic ideal is described by Nietzsche when he claims "the ascetic treats life as a wrong path that he has to walk along backwards till he reaches the point where he starts" (GM3, 11). The ascetic ideal does not encourage us to be master over "something in life, but over life itself and its deepest, strongest, most profound conditions" (Ibid.). Life involves meaningless suffering, the priest tricks man through misdirection by way of a magic trick, to "look for [a cause for suffering] within himself, in guilt" (GM3, 20). The underlying condition, the weariness of life, is not treated, but the symptom, bad conscience , is treated with the phony medicine of Christianity, which acts as a narcotic that soothes (GM Introduction, p. xxvii). Our energy is channelled into assuaging our misplaced sense of guilt and sin: "the will to misunderstand suffering" is "made into the content of life" (GM3, 20). For Nietzsche, the significance of the ascetic ideal is that it dethroned the previous, superior pre-Christian master morality of the Ancient Greeks and Romans. He hopes that one day the ascetic ideal itself will be dethroned, and we will recapture our love for life itself, but doubts it will happen in his lifetime, hoping the man of the future will redeem us (GM2, 24). Whether we find his account convincing will depend on whether we agree with his criticism of the ascetic ideal and whether we can endorse what Nietzsche offers in its place. In his essay Nietzsche and Morality Raymond Geuss assesses what Nietzsche offers in terms of values he endorses and reveals some potential inconsistencies within Nietzsche s account. Geuss notes that Nietzsche endorses the self-affirmation of life (Nietzsche and Morality, p. 10): Nietzsche criticises the ascetic ideal for its negation of life as well as for its misguided separation of agent and action. Nietzsche endorses the master morality of Ancient society, where one s acts are pursued for their own sake& they are self-evidently good, there is no double movement of action and reflection required to deem whether it is moral and worthy of being pursued. Geuss however questions whether this championing of the self-affirmation of life might undermine some of Nietzsche s other arguments. Firstly, that it might undermine Nietzsche s rejection of the trend in German metaphysics to aim to establish an underlying "real, deep structure" (Ibid., p.11) which guides history on a particular course of development. Secondly, and more pertinently to the question of the significance of the ascetic ideal, that Christian morality and the ascetic ideal could be merely a form of life affirming itself. Geuss wonders if that if "`Life` really does affirm itself in one way or the other`` then perhaps for a population consumed in existential dread "which is in danger of giving up on existence altogether ... the most vital form of willing possible might be willing to negate life in a focused structured way." (Ibid., p.11). I think Geuss draws attention to perhaps the weakest area of Nietzsche`s account, his own metaphysical provision after tearing down the metaphysics` of his contemporaries. Why could the ascetic ideal not be life affirming itself, and thus tolerable to Nietzsche, even though on the surface it is represented by "the creation of a system of life-negating values" (Ibid., p.11)? The other element of Nietzsche`s account that Geuss draws attention to is his doctrine of the "will-to-power" (Ibid., p.11). Nietzsche criticises the ascetic ideal of Christianity for its lifenegating tendencies, because "it opposes the will-to-power, the vital human desire to be lordand-master ... even if this requires the sacrifice of our biological existence" (Ibid., p.12). Geuss doubts however, whether the will-to-power can be said to be "connected with more or less empirical biological urges" (Ibid., p.12). Self-preservation is a biological impulse and Geuss claims that rather than serving such impulses "it is just as likely ... [the] will-to-power will require thwarting and opposing anything we could understand as biological impulses or urges in any straightforward sense." (Ibid., p.12) I believe this is the most compelling criticism in Geuss` essay and attacks the most tenuous element of Nietzsche`s "On the Genealogy of Morality" in the form of the `will-to-power`. The biological, impulse-based reasoning behind the argument for the willto-power, that Nietzsche claims the ascetic ideal does wrong in overriding, could arguably be applied to the will-to-power itself. If we believe self-preservation is a fundamental biological drive, it is difficult to see how, as Geuss writes, the will-to-power could be "closely connected with more or less empirical biological urges" (Ibid., p.12). Nietzsche s criticism of the ascetic ideal, for its going against both the affirmation of life and our biological drive, could apply also to his own valuation system offered in its place: the will-to-power . Either we accept his criticism and reject both the ascetic ideal and his own valuation system in the will-to-power , or we reject his biological and life-affirming based criticism of both the ascetic ideal and the will-to-power , accepting both. Personally, I would lean towards the former, since I believe Nietzsche s criticism of the ascetic ideal for its negation of life holds a lot of weight. For this to be coherent however, the will-to-power needs to be either reformed or rejected, lest it be susceptible to the same criticism Nietzsche applies to the ascetic ideal. Were this to happen, Nietzsche s criticism of the ascetic ideal would not be made less convincing by the inconsistencies with his seemingly metaphysical claims. While I may not be able to readily accept Nietzsche s own form of valuation, his assessment and critique of the ascetic ideal remains thoroughly convincing. At the end of his essay Nietzsche and Genealogy Raymond Geuss notes that For those of us not able to adopt Nietzsche s perspective and form of valuation it might suffice to accept his more plausible and well-supported account of our puzzling history than other available alternatives (Nietzsche and Genealogy, p. 288). This is the position I find myself in. Nietzsche s physiological, etymological and historical account of how the ascetic ideal rose to prominence is an incredibly astute analysis of the origins of our morality that no one prior had considered or dared to attempt. After setting up the concept of bad conscience in the second essay of GM, there is a transition, so seamless as to be convincing, into his descri ption of the priest as a genius in consolation (GM Introduction, p. xxvii) who provides phony medicine& the ascetic ideal as a narcotic to soothe the symptoms of the sickness that afflicts man: suffering without meaning and existential dread. I agree that those are features of human life and that while The interpretation of suffering developed by the ascetic ideal has succeeded in shutting the door on a suicidal nihilism this is not a long term solution for this saving of the will has been won at the expense of the future (Ibid., p. xxviii). In addition, I found Nietzsche s explanation of how the intellectual can just as easily be an adherent of the ascetic ideal as the religious person convincing. Nietzsche claims that From the very moment that faith in the God of the ascetic ideal is denied, there is a new problem as well: that of the value of truth. (GM3, 24). I believe Nietzsche, as he often is in his genealogy, is prophetic here. Nietzsche claims that these modern intellectuals who believe they are all as liberated as possible from the ascetic ideal are in fact the ascetic ideal s most intellectualized product (Ibid.). In their obsession with truth, they are very far from being free spirits for just as the religious person negates life through faith in God, so does the intellectual negate life for their unconditional will to truth, is faith in the ascetic ideal itself (Ibid.). I agree with Ansell-Pearson that the will to truth of science needs a justification The fact that this is not taking place today reveals a gap in philosophy (GM Introduction, p. xxix). This will-to-truth has only become more ubiquitous since the time of Nietzsche s writing. Evermore of life s irregularities and imperfections are to be ironed out through executive decisions taken by those in power on our behalf, based on studies and data. If faith in God was on the decline at Nietzsche s time of writing, I believe faith in truth may be on the decline now. Writing at the time of a pandemic, the world attentively watches Sweden, who bucked the trend of imposing a strict lockdown on their citizens based on scientific studies that purport to prove it will curb the spread of the virus. Whether or not the Swedish government s decision is vindicated, the keen interest with which many watch suggests to me a hope for truth to lose this battle, perhaps they value what life has to offer more. Ultimately, Nietzsche s account of the ascetic ideal in On the Genealogy of Morality is a convincing and engaging explanation of the diverse origins of modern morality. While the ascetic ideal in the form of Christian faith and Schopenhauerian morality may have declined, the will-totruth is ever more present. Nietzsche s man of the future may not be here yet, but certain tremors in society suggest to me that a desire to be free from the great nausea, the will to nothingness (GM2, 24) exists and could be made manifest. Bibliography Ansell-Pearson, Keith, Introduction, On the Genealogy of Morality (Cambridge University Press, 2017) Geuss Raymond, Nietzsche and Genealogy, European Journal of Philosophy 2:3 (Basil Blackwell Ltd. 1994) Geuss, Raymond, Nietzsche and Morality, European Journal of Philosophy 5:1 (Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 1997) Nietzsche, Friedrich, On the Genealogy of Morality (Cambridge University Press, 2017) [originally published 1887]