By SHANE STEINERT-THRELKELD
The ascetic ideal is a seemingly self-denying force characterized by “poverty, humility, chastity” (3:8, 108) [1]. It is piety embodied, sensuality restrained. That such an ideology has flourished and recurred (as Nietzsche references with India) throughout societal development is a seeming paradox: the dominant ideal of humanity is a life-denying one. How, or rather why, then, has the ascetic ideal triumphed? Where does it come from? One easy answer is that there were no competing ideals. This answer, because it is elliptical, …