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The Ascetic Ideal in Nietzsche and Weber, Because the ascetic priest…
The Ascetic Ideal in Nietzsche and Weber
The will to power
Nietzsche
For Nietzsche, the essence of life is "its will to power." We have an intrinsic "instinct for freedom" — a desire to will something and to see our will reflected and imprinted on the world around us. It is a type of Hegelian search for recognition; if you have power over something, you are alive.
"To talk of intrinsic right and intrinsic wrong is absolutely non-sensical...
life is essentially something which functions by injuring, oppressing, exploiting, and annihilating
, and is absolutely inconceivable without such a character" (62).
Nietzsche's vision of a deeply hierarchical society — split into the ruling and ruled class — means that one strata lacks the resources to exert their will to power. If not in a state of war, one group is inevitably repressed. This is unacceptable.
"That change whereby he finally found himself
imprisoned
within the confines of society and peace (56).
An
ascetic priest
provides a solution: Exert the will
back
inwards
through self-abnegation and self-discipline.
In doing so, the ascetic priest channels a force called "ressentiment."
"An unfulfilled instinct and power-will that wants to be master, not over something in life, but over life itself" (86).
The ascetic priest is the
"direction-changer of ressentiment" — "in the direction of 'guilt' as the
sole
cause of suffering" (93, 105).
Because there is no way for the lower strata to exert their will externally, the ascetic priest teaches them to do so internally, through an attack on and repression of the self.
"It prefers to will nothingness rather than not will" (68).
Tension:
For Nietzsche, this reorientation of ressentiment comes first. Then, the religious element — a debt to God — arrives as an "instrument of torture."
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“The beginning of the slaves’ revolt in morality occurs when
ressentiment itself
t
urns creative and gives birth to values
: the ressentiment of those beings who, denied the proper response of action, compensate for it only with
imaginary revenge”
(20)
Tension:
Weber says that Nietzsche's explanation is useful but overly simplistic. Weber argues that ressentiment is not the main impetus for the rise of a new values system.
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Guiding inquiry:
Friedrich Nietzsche first posits the concept of an "ascetic ideal" in his
On the Genealogy of Morality
. Max Weber, writing 17 years later in the
Protestant Ethic
, builds off Nietzsche and re-uses the framework of an "ascetic ideal" in his sweeping critique of modern capitalism. On the surface, the two appear to have similar visions of what this "ascetic ideal" is. But dig further and disagreements emerge. In the following map, I hope to investigate the Nietzschian and Weberian ascetic ideals — why they emerge and how they manifest in practice.
*Note:
Both Weber and Nietzsche agree that values are constructed — our ethical system doesn't merely appear sua sponte as a human instinct in the way that Adam Smith, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, or Immanuel Kant may have conceived of it. Instead,
a moral framework exists to the extent that it serves a function.*
Why does the ascetic ideal emerge?
Start:
For both Weber and Nietzsche, the ascetic ideal is a novel response to the
senseless suffering
of those without power — often the lower caste or the bottom of the social strata.
But the trace this causal relationship very differently — in other words, how and why the ascetic ideal resolves senseless suffering.
"What actually arouses
indignation
over suffering is not the suffering itself, but the
senselessness of suffering" (44).
Nietzsche: "Indignation" is key here. The lower strata is angry and thus needs a values system that assigns blame for our suffering and provides someone to assert revenge upon.
A psychological crisis
"The need for an ethical interpretation of the 'meaning' of the distribution of fortunes among men increased with the growing rationality of conceptions of the world...
*Individually 'undeserved' woe was all too frequent; not 'good' but 'bad' men succeeded. "
Weber:
We need a values system that offers an
explanation
for why some people are better off than others.
A religious crisis
The theodicy of suffering
Weber
Before:
Suffering could be explained away easily as punishment for "odiousness or secret guilt" (SP 271).**
"Men, permanently suffering, mourning, diseased, or otherwise unfortunate, were, according to the nature of their suffering, believed either to be possessed by a demon or burdened with the wrath of a god whom they had insulted"
(SP 271).
After:
To explain the senselessness of suffering required a complete reworking of the ethical system toward one that takes the "absolute imperfection of the world" as evidence for "the futility of worldly things" altogether (RR 354).
Predestination:
Rather than framing one's lot in life — and in the afterlife — as a function of their own worth or goodness, predestination took this question completely out of human hands and attributed it entirely to the "grace of God." In other words, God has
predetermined
the most important part of life — if you will go to heaven, and it would be presumptuous to assume any ability to influence that destiny.
"The
complete elimination of the theodicy problem
and of all those questions about the meaning of the world and of life, which have tortured others, was as self-evident to the Puritan..." (PE 65)
How do you know if you are one of the chosen few destined for heaven — one of the "elect"?
Weber's two asceticisms
"[An outer-worldly ascetic] proves himself against the world, against his action in the world. Inner-worldly asceticism, on the contrary, proves itself
through action
" (RR 326).
"On the one hand,
abnegation of the world
, and on the other,
mastery of the world
by virtue of the magical powers obtained by abnegation" (RR 327).
Outer-world asceticism and the mystic
Any engagement with the world is seen as a threat to the "other-worldly religious state." In its full expression, mysitcal asceticism requires "fleeing from the world" (RR 325).
Inner-world asceticism and the active
"The path to salvation is turned away from a contemplative 'flight from the
world' and towards
an active ascetic 'work in this world'
" (SP 290).
To prove you are one of the elect — to get "rid of the fear of damnation" — you devote your life to the constant practice of "good works."
These works are done not for any selfish pursuit, but to affirm the glory of God. (RR 342).
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Because the ascetic priest redirects ressentiment
inward
, life is sustained through self-hatred, discipline, and suffering — repayment for infinite guilt.
"Satisfaction is looked for and found in failure, decay, pain, misfortune, ugliness, voluntary deprivation, destruction of selfhood, self-flagellation and self-sacrifice" (86).
Again, Nietzsche's ascetic ideal is primarily an applied system of morality — of
emotional regulation and suppression
— that does not
necessarily
manifest in the physical world.
"The ascetic ideal and its sublimely moral cult, this most ingenious, unscrupulous and dangerous
systematization of all the methods of emotional excess
under the protection of holy intentions has inscribed itself... into his history" (106).
Nietzsche:
The ascetic ideal requires totalizing discipline directed toward internal condemnation.
Citations
Nietzsche, Friedrich.
On the Genealogy of Morals.
Translated by Carol Diethe. Cambridge University Press, 2006.
Weber, Max.
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.
Translated by Talcott Parsons. Routledge Classics, 2001.
Weber, Max. (1958). "Religious Rejections of the World and Their Directions." In H.H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills.
From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology
(pp. 323-359). Oxford University Press.
Weber, Max. (1958). "The Social Psychology of the World Religions." In H.H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills.
From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology
(pp. 267-301). Oxford University Press.
Note: I cite "Social Psychology" as SP, "The Protestant Ethic" as PE, and "Religious Rejections" as RR.
