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The Ascetic Ideal

This book develops a reading of Nietzsche’s concept of ‘the ascetic ideal’, through which he tracks the evolution, mutation, and expansion of the system of slave moral values that he associates primarily with Judaeo-Christian religious belief through diverse fields of Western European culture—not just religion and morality, but aesthetics, science, and philosophy. The work of Stanley Cavell and Michael Fried, and its impact in the philosophy of film and literature, is central here, as is J. M.Coetzee’s on the philosophy of autobiography; Martin Heidegger’s critique of science and technology is also addressed. In so doing it also offers an interpretation of his genealogical method that aims to rebut standard criticisms of its nature, and to emphasize its potential for enhancing philosophical understanding more generally. The focus throughout is on developments in those fields which occurred after the end of Nietzsche’s intellectual career, and in particular on influential modes of thought and practice that have a contemporary significance. However, the goal is not simply to argue that Nietzsche’s diagnosis and critique retain considerable merit. It is also to show that Nietzsche is himself significantly indebted to the ideals he criticizes; and that this opens up a possibility of synthesizing elements of his approach with those drawn from its target. Hence, the book also tracks various ways in which the object of Nietzsche’s criticism has further mutated (just as his genealogical method would suggest), and in doing so has generated ways of pursuing the values central to asceticism that avoid Nietzsche’s criticisms.