Asceticism (n.) is a good thing as long as it is honest, that is, as long as it does not deceive itself (as it does for the ascetic priest) by resting on some kind of metaphysical idea that suffering now will result pleasure in some otherworldly life.
Asceticism (n.) is a rejection of embodiment... originating in such doctrines as augustine's original sin, it paints the world as fallen and seeks to transcend the world through mortification of the flesh or in (as in the story of Jesus) death.
Asceticism (n.) is able to provide the means for enhancing one's actual life and for affirming it more strongly. It is produced by a desire and a tendency, perhaps even a compulsion, to engage in what one is best suited for, regardless of the consequences: It is the product and expression of the will to power... its meaning is the will to power.
Asceticism (n.) is affirmative of life in the extreme when it is expressive of the desire to transform being not by escape into the otherworldly but by inserting oneself ever more deeply into the crevices of time and fissures in space.
Asceticism (n.) is an attempt to suppress all feeling and even the ego as an antidote to the melancholy and inferiority that plague the weak by distracting the mind and filling the day with activity.
Asceticism (n.) is an expression of degenerate life.
Asceticism (n.) is an instinct which the most noble, the strongest among men have felt : It is a fact, it must be taken into account if the value of life is to be appreciated.
Asceticism (n.) is grounded in looking for and finding satisfaction in failure, decay, pain, misfortune, ugliness, voluntary deprivation, destruction of selfhood, self-flagellation and self-sacrifice.
Asceticism (n.) is if gone about correctly, not an escape from life, but a force of life against the sickliness of the type of tame man who has lived up to now. It is wrestling with death.
Asceticism (n.) is man's need to exercise strength and lust for power turned in on the self. It is the tyrannizing over certain parts, segments, or stages of themselves.
Asceticism (n.) is not so much about self-denial as it is about the acquisition of some form of control, strength, power, and, interlocked with that, the intensification of the pleasures most closely associated with that process of acquisition.
Asceticism (n.) is only good if it promotes life. The otherworldly asceticism of the ascetic priests merely preserves life rather than increases power.
Asceticism (n.) is practiced well when it is practiced non-morally. That is, when it is neither as a denial of life, an atonement for past sin, nor a preparation for a future existence. Nonmoral asceticism glorifies one specific type of earthly life among others... it does not condemn the pleasures it avoids and does not dogmatically expect that others too would benefit from the practice.
Asceticism (n.) is self-imposed suffering in the hopes of escaping other forms of suffering. It is a sickness given over by judeo-Christian morality, but has also inculcated an important depth of personality.
Asceticism (n.) is a morality in which man worships a part of himself as God and for that he needs to diabolize the other part.
Asceticism (n.) pervades the whole of western civilization.
Asceticism (n.) is an involvement in the paradoxical effort to distance oneself from life as much as one possibly can and to renounce the goods they already possess for the otherworldly rewards which are, after all, nothing at all.
Asceticism (n.) is the amplification of weakness and as such, a justification and motivation for an easier path to a social order than through strength.
Asceticism (n.) is the exaltation of weakness and the hostility to life, bodily pleasure and natural drives.
Asceticism (n.) is the right way of thinking only for those who have to extirpate their sensual drives because they are ravening beasts of prey.