Asceticism
Definition
Asceticism is the practice of the denial of physical or psychological desires in order to attain a spiritual ideal or goal. Hardly any religion has been without at least some features of asceticism. [1]
Origins of Asceticism
It was man's attempts to achieve various ultimate goals or ideals: development of the "whole" person, human creativity, ideas, the "self", or skills demanding technical proficiency - that led to the creation of asceticism.
- Ancient Greeks
Among the ancient Greeks, athletes preparing for physical contests disciplined their bodies by abstaining from various normal pleasures and by enduring difficult physical tests. In order to achieve a high proficiency in the skills of warfare, warriors also adopted various ascetical practices. - Ancient Israel
The ancient Israelites, for example, were known to abstain from sexual intercourse before going into battle.
As values other than those concerned with physical proficiency were developed, the concept expressed by askēsis and its cognates was applied to other ideals, like mental facility, moral vitality, and spiritual ability.
Among the Greeks such training of the intellect led to the pedagogical system of the Sophists - itinerant teachers, writers, and lecturers of the 5th and 4th centuries BC who instructed in return for fees.
Another change was when the notion of such training was applied to realm of ethics in the ideal of the sage who is able to act freely, to chose or refuse a desired object or an act of physical pleasure. This training was then further exemplified by the stoics. This view that one ought to deny one's lower desires (sensuous or bodily) in contrast with one's spiritual desires and virtuous aspirations, became a central principle in ethical thought.
Plato believed that it is necessary to suppress bodily desires so that the soul can be free to search for knowledge. This view was propounded by Plotinus, one of the founders of Neoplatonism, a philosophy concerned with hierarchical levels of reality . The Stoics, among whom asceticism was primarily a discipline to achieve control over their emotions, upheld the "dignity of human nature" and the wise man's necessary imperturbability, which they believed would become possible through the suppression of the affective, appetitive, part of man.
The value of asceticism in strengthening an individual's will and his deeper spiritual powers has been a part of many religions and philosophies throughout history.
The 19th century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, for example, advocated for a type of asceticism that annihilates the will to live; his earlier contemporary, Immanuel Kant, held to a moral asceticism for the cultivation of stoics in according to the maxims of the Stoics.
The view that one must be in a state of purity as a necessary condition for entering communion with the supernatural, the idea of earning pity, compassion, and salvation, and the sense of guilt and sin that prompted the need for atonement all played a role in the rise and cultivation of religious asceticism.
#TODO Forms of Religious Asceticism