Nietzsche and Embodiment: Discerning Bodies and Non-dualism

CHAPTER 4: Nietzsche’s Ascetic Ideals as a Process of the Production of Meaning

CHAPTER 4 Nietzsche’s Ascetic Ideals as a Process of the Production of Meaning PART I. THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS WITH RESPECT TO DEFINITIVE VALUATION The title of Nietzsche’s “Third Essay” (1887/1989), “Was bedeuten asketischen Ideale?” (KSA 5, 339), can be translated “What do ascetic ideals mean?” The German sentence assigns to the signifier asketischen Ideale a grammatical role as an agent giving forth or producing meaning. Indeed, the essay communicates that the concept of ascetic ideals is an agent for the production of meaning. The meaninglessness of suffering, not suffering itself, was the curse that lay over mankind so far— and the ascetic ideal offered [bot] man meaning [Sinn] [Nietzsche’s emphasis] (GM 3, 28). Human beings suffer from meaninglessness, “not [from] suffering itself.” The concept of the ascetic ideal presents itself to human beings as a fulfillment of a need for a purpose (Sinn)—a purpose for existence and for human suffering. The “ascetic ideal offered man meaning” [bot ihr einem Sinn] [Nietzsche’s emphasis] (GM 3, 28). At the beginning of his “Third Essay: What is the Meaning of Ascetic Ideals [Was bedeuten asketischen Ideale]?” Nietzsche refers to ascetic ideals in the plural. Many times in the essay, however, he refers to the ascetic ideal in the singular. In the first paragraph of the “Third Essay,” Nietzsche lists multiple meanings of ascetic ideals (asketischen Ideale) and then unites these into one. He notes: “That overall the ascetic ideal [asketische Ideal] has meant so much, in this the basic fact of the human will expresses itself” (KSA 5, 339). Nietzsche refers to the ideal as a unity and as a plurality at different points throughout the essay. An inherent tension builds between a conventional tendency to view a constitution as an entity—as a unified particularity,1 and an emerging sensibility to understand a constitution as a transforming constellation of forces. 59 Such conflict between the unity and the plurality of the concept of (the) ascetic ideal(s) can be illustrated by the several interpretations of the concept proposed in Nietzsche’s “Third Essay” and by the logic of genitive phrases. Indeed, the different interpretations help to illustrate the obscuring of the agent-patient distinction significant in the structure of genitive phrasing. One recognizes that the ascetic ideal does not solely operate as an agent (or subject). The ascetic ideal also suggests in itself a role as a patient (or object). A theme in the “Third Essay” is that the ascetic ideal has many meanings.2 Nietzsche shows these meanings emerging in relation to different types of persons—an artist, philosopher, or priest, for example—and in each case the ascetic ideal discloses a different moral and definitive valuation. “What is the meaning of ascetic ideals?—In the case of artists they mean nothing or too many things; in the case of philosophers and scholars something like a sense and instinct for the most favorable preconditions of higher spirituality; . . . in the case of priests the distinctive priestly faith, their best instrument of power, also the ’supreme’ license for power” (GM 3, 1). The suggestion is that in any such context ascetic ideals not only exude meaning (agency) but also are imbued with meaning (patiency), that is, with moral and definitive valuation. Each human interprets the ascetic ideal. Thus, the ideal shows itself not only the producer of meaning but also the object of meaning, that is, of interpretation.3 This dual role as subject and object conforms to a quality of conflating implicit in the logic of the genitive structure of Walter Kaufmann ’s translation of “Was bedeuten asketischen Ideale.” He translates it: “What is the Meaning of Ascetic Ideals?” The genitive structure gives a twofold ambiguity. The “of” here invites both ascetic ideals and meaning to alternately be interpreted as the object or the subject of the genitive. This simultaneity as subject and object structure in genitive grammar, models the reciprocity named by the concept of dynamic non-dualism. Conforming to the genitive structure is a related aspect of the ascetic ideal. This is the idea that the ascetic ideal has meant so many things to human beings (KSA 5, 339). In a manner paralleling the (pre)menses example, which meant differently to and was meant differently by disparate researchers, the ascetic ideal means and is meant differently from one context to another. In the “Third Essay” Nietzsche gives four examples of these various meanings. One occurs in the context of Wagner, another in...