The Ascetic Ideal




The will to nothingness from the beginning, inspires all the values that are called "superior" to life.

This is Schopenhauer's greatest error: he believed that the will is denied in all values superior to life. In fact, it is not the will which is denied in superior values, it is the superior values that are related to a will to deny, to annihilate life.

Thus interpretation makes its discoveries by excavating three layers: knowledge, morality and religion; the true, the good and the divine as values superior to life. All three are connected: the ascetic ideal is the third moment, but also the sense and value of the other two moments.

Morality is the continuation of religion but by other means; knowledge is the continuation of morality and religion but by other means. The ascetic ideal is everywhere, but its means change, they are no longer the same reactive forces.

[Gilles Deleuze]
Nietzsche and Philosophy, p.97-8




[...] the ascetic ideal expresses the will which makes reactive forces triumph.

The sense of the ascetic ideal is thus as follows: to express the affinity of reactive forces with nihilism, to express nihilism as the "motor" of reactive forces.

[Gilles Deleuze]
Nietzsche and Philosophy, p.144-5



Related posts: