Genealogy Three Notes

What Do "Ascetic Ideals" Mean?

• Ascetic ideals have a multiplicity of meanings: they mean different things and utilities for different groups. And yet, the ascetic ideal has become an "expression of the basic fact of the human will... would rather will nothingness than not will."(67)
• For "The Artist"? (2-6)
  • Is it meant seriously? Or comedically?
  • It means absolutely nothing. Artists do not stand independently in the world and against it for their valuations, but rather have been vehicles for morality, philosophy, and religion. (70-71)
  • A true spirit stands alone when he pays homage to the ideal.
  • The artist rises to the sense of priest when he speaks of a particular form expressing more than the form itself, but the "language of the will itself". The priest claims to speak from the in-itself of things.
• For "The Philosopher"? (7-10)
  • Philosophers have a predisposed bias and affection for the ascetic ideal. Why is this?
    • Because at its base, the animal strives to be placed in the optimum conditions in order for them to vent their power and feel it completely. The Ascetic allows such a feeling.
    • The Philosopher, unlike others, does not negate existence in his use of the ascetic. He rather, affirms his existence. He is thinking of himself. (75-76)
  • The three characteristics of the Ascetic Ideal that appeals to the philosopher as his optimum condition:
    • Poverty
      • The philosophical spirit grows larger when it is left to think, not compelled to speak. It abhors luxuries that glare and blur. "In this he is like a shadow: the more the sun sets for him the greater he becomes." (78)
    • Humility
      • The philosophical spirit directs him toward situations in which he can think other than himself. Philosophy and its demand of the will demand everything from the philosopher, and in this he can be relieved of himself.
    • Chastity
      • It is not a hatred of the sensual for the philosopher, but that dominant instinct that demands the will. Sensuality becomes something greater than just sexual stimulus for the philosopher, it becomes "transfigured" in that spirit.
  • How are the ascetic ideal and the philosopher inextricable?
    • All things originated in not having courage in itself, it would be external facing (looking for help, fearing others).
    • The drives of modern philosophy go against these primordial instincts.
    • That which is good originated out of something that was originally bad. Same inversion goes for the bad.
    • The birth of the contemplative:
      • Were unwarriorlike, mistrusted in their perceived inactivity.
      • The only thing they were able to do with this fear is to begin to fear themselves and their inner philosopher. And with this awakening of fear of oneself, all value judgments against them, one gave birth to meanings to combat that fear.
      • "Anyone who ever built a 'new heaven' first found the power to do so in his own hell." (82)
      • Thus, the ascetic ideal was the form in which the philosopher could first appear. Any "no" to life in the philosopher is preconditioned by its ascetic origin.
• For "The Ascetic Priest" and "The Sick"? (11-22)
  • How does the ascetic priest differ from the philosopher?
    • The philosopher merely finds in the ascetic the conditions for maximal power exertion. His existence is not contingent on those conditions. However, for the ascetic priest, his existence is directly contingent with the ideal, it "stands and falls" with it.
    • The ascetic priest relates life to a different realm of existence, where that realm directly opposes immediate life. It negates itself in the insistence of that realm, makes the empirically real the other. He insists his valuation of existence in all.
    • In this sense, the ascetic life is a self-contradiction, a power-will that does not desire to become lord over oneself, but over life itself. And he does this in negating life through the insistence of transcendence. He enjoys himself in this contradictory dissonance: "Triumph precisely in the final agony" (84)
      • "Life against life" (85)
      • Epistemic/Metaphysical contradiction in the agnostic/ascetics: "There is no knowing: consequently - there is a God." (113)
  • Where does the Ascetic Priest seek to vent his power?
    • He goes after where "true life instinct most unconditionally posits truth", and negates it, shows it as error. A violence toward oneself in the more integral sense. He attempts to posit his own universal truth.
    • We must combat this instinct to "truth", against "pure reason, absolute spirit, in itself"
      • Rather, "objectivity" for Nietzsche, is the capacity to have one's multiplicity of perspectives in one's power. To know how to precisely make use of these for knowledge.
      • "There is only a perspectival seeing, only a perspectival knowing... the more affects we allow to speak about a matter... that much more complete will our 'concept' of this matter, our 'objectivity' be." (85)
  • What does perspectivism reveal of the nature of the ascetic ideal?
    • This "life against life" is merely provisional, an interpretation. It does not get at what it claims to get at... the "in itself".
    • The ascetic ideal comes from a degenerating life struggling to maintain its existence, in which the ideal exists as a means to provisionally escape death, preserving life. The wish for a "different existence" to escape one's own. (86) And yet this wishing is his fetter!
  • The Weak
    • The weak are the greatest threat to the strong.
    • Fear of man is not what should doom man, but rather disgust and compassion for man.
    • The weak are the one's who most "undermine life", who call our confidence in life into question.
    • The weak exist in the ascetic contradiction as well.
    • This will of the sick will lead to a tyranny over the healthy, the strong.
    • When do the sick reach their pinnacle? When the happy begin to doubt their right to happiness (89)
    • The strong must maintain a "pathos of distance" from the sick in order to guarantee a future.
  • The Ascetic Priest simultaneously belongs to the negation of life and its affirming forces.
    • He is that animal that has done more than others - his apparent "yes" is actually a serious "no", because it originates from a "no". "He wounds himself, this master of destruction, self-destruction - afterwards it is the wound itself that compels him to live." (87)
    • The Ascetic Priest is the physician of the sick, he is sick himself. (89)
    • the shepherd of the sick herd. Lord over those that suffer. He maintains a will to power, he is a god to them. A bastardized "beast of prey", taming his herd.
    • He defends the sick against the healthy and envy for the healthy. He also defends the herd from itself.
    • Determined to sow self-contradiction in the herd, simultaneously wounding and tending.
    • He wields the power of collective ressentiment. The priest knows how to direct this power, changes its direction.
  • The causality of ressentiment
    • "Longing for the anesthetization of pain through affect" "Someone must be to blame for the fact that I feel bad." (91)
    • The Priest directs that blame toward the sick ones themselves. He directs ressentiment toward the source of that ressentiment. Again, sowing self contradiction!
    • The Priest has sought to destroy the sick through themselves, they are self-directed, harmless therefore.
  • What is Nietzsche getting at?
    • sinfulness and feelings of guilt are not factually inherent in humanity, but are only interpretations and misattributions of factual inherence. Priests are architects of this artifice that feels intrinsic.
    • In this sense, "It is no longer binding on us" (93)
  • If what priests purport is only interpretation, what are they doing?
    • The priest only combats the listlessness of suffering, not its cause.
  • How is this listlessness combatted (innocent)?
    • Hibernation/Hypnosis - They reduce the feeling of life to its lowest point. The highest redemption is total hypnosis of nothingness, absence of suffering through absence of everything.
    • Mechanical Activity - a insistence on labor in order to leave little to no room for considering one's own suffering. A mindless activity.
    • The prescription of a "small joy" - being told to find joy in giving joy, loving one's neighbor. This arouses the most primal instinct - the will to power. An inversion of the will to be superior, to cause pain. A will to mutuality. This herd formation combats a sense of listlessness. The strong strive to distinguish themselves, the weak strive toward one another.
  • Guilty means - invoking some "excess of emotion/orgy of feeling"
    • When the priest wields these affects of the sick and one by one releases them under some religious justification. Its pretext is that it was done under good conscience, but it makes the sick sicker, this is why it is guilty.
    • They exploit guilt. Sin is the priest's reinterpretation of bad conscience. He is to understand his guilt and suffering as punishment. "Out of the invalid 'the sinner' has been made..." (102) Guilt as indicative of sinfulness becomes the cause of suffering.
    • The priest has been successful: "people no longer protested against pain, they thirsted after pain; 'more pain! more pain!'" (103) Wherever the priest has been successful, the sickness has spread.
• What actually is the "Ascetic"? (23-27)
  • It appropriates and interprets, affirms and negates, for its own sake.
  • What tries to oppose it?
    • Modern science?
      • Is said to be an opponent, standing in a will to itself, without God and virtues that negate.
      • And yet the opposite is true, it has no faith in itself. It does not oppose the ascetic ideal, but is its most current form.
      • Science is the hiding place for ressentiment, the place that festers without an ideal.
      • Science needs an ideal, it is not value creating.
      • It does not negate the ascetic ideal outright, but only its exterior. If anything, it renders the ideal stronger in a subterranean sense, more mysterious.
    • Anti-idealist philosophers?
      • They claim to be detached from the ideal, free from it, but it is them that precisely have it as well.
      • "They are by no means free spirits: for they still believe in truth..." (109) Nietzsche ties a freedom of the spirit with a renouncement of the will to truth.
    • Modern Historiography?
      • affirms as little as it negates, merely describes. Ascetic and nihilistic in this inactivity. "here nothing more prospers or grows." (113)
      • worse are contemplative historians:
        • Purporting objectivity when they are really operating with the ascetic.
    • The comedian?
      • At least they arouse mistrust.
  • How are the ascetic ideal and the will to truth tied?
    • The will to truth is grounded in the ascetic ideal itself: a belief and faith in the value of the in itselfness of truth. "We too still take our fire from that great fire... that truth is divine." (110)
    • "The truthful one... affirms another world than that of life. Insofar as he affirms this 'other world'... must he not negate its counterpart, this world, our world?" (110)
    • The ascetic ideal has become lord over philosophy because truth has been posited as being, it hasn't been interrogated as a problem.
    • The moment the ascetic ideal is negated, the value of truth is called into question.
  • Unconditional atheism is not the direct opposer to the ascetic, but rather its last stages in development. Christianity perished of its own morality.
    • "All great things perish through themselves, through an act of self-cancellation." (117)
    • It is the will to truth's becoming conscious of itself that leads to a perishing of morality.
• What does the Ascetic mean? (28)
  • something was lacking, he did not know how to affirm himself, he suffered from a problem of his meaning (117)
  • Man is willing to suffer and wants it provided one interprets it for him, gives him meaning. The ascetic was a meaning for man. And any meaning is better than no meaning at all.
  • The meaninglessness of suffering is man's curse.
  • In this meaning, man's will was saved. And again, "man would much rather will nothingness than not will at all."

How are will and meaning tied together?
Meaning is an interpretation of a particular arrangement of forces, of wills. It is a modality, a direction in which will can exert itself. Nietzsche detaches meaning and interpretation from the supposed claim to inherence they make, which frees one from the fetters of pre-existent meaning and allows one to not only consider what other meanings are available, but what the value of truth is at all.