Download or read book Disciplinary Moral and Ascetical Works written by Tertullian and published by . This book was released on 1959 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Ascetic Ideal written by Stephen Mulhall and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-08-12 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Ascetic Ideal, Stephen Mulhall shows how areas of cultural life that seem to be either essentially unconnected to evaluative commitments (science and philosophy) or to involve non-moral values (aesthetics) are in fact deeply informed by ethico-religious commitments, for better and for worse. The book develops a reading of Nietzsche's concept of 'the ascetic ideal', which he used to track the evolution, mutation, and expansion of the system of slave moral values, associated primarily with Judaeo-Christian religious belief through diverse fields of Western European culture—not just religion and morality, but aesthetics, science, and philosophy. Mulhall also offers an interpretation of Nietzsche's 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. The goal is not simply to argue that Nietzsche's diagnosis and critique retains considerable merit, but 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 undergone further mutations (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, and might even further his own goals.
Download or read book Sites of the Ascetic Self written by Niki Kasumi Clements and published by University of Notre Dame Pess. This book was released on 2020-05-31 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sites of the Ascetic Self reconsiders contemporary debates about ethics and subjectivity in an extended engagement with the works of John Cassian (ca. 360–ca. 435), whose stories of extreme asceticism and transformative religious experience by desert elders helped to establish Christian monastic forms of life. Cassian’s late ancient texts, written in the context of social, cultural, political, doctrinal, and environmental change, contribute to an ethics for fractured selves in uncertain times. In response to this environment, Cassian’s practical asceticism provides a uniquely frank picture of human struggle in a world of contingency while also affirming human agency in ways that signaled a challenge to followers of his contemporary, Augustine of Hippo. Niki Kasumi Clements brings these historical and textual analyses of Cassian’s monastic works into conversation with contemporary debates at the intersection of the philosophy of religion and queer and feminist theories. Rather than focusing on interiority and renunciation of self, as scholars such as Michel Foucault read Cassian, Clements analyzes Cassian’s texts by foregrounding practices of the body, the emotions, and the community. By focusing on lived experience in the practical ethics of Cassian, Clements demonstrates the importance of analyzing constructions of ethics in terms of cultivation alongside critical constructions of power. By challenging modern assumptions about Cassian’s asceticism, Sites of the Ascetic Self contributes to questions of ethics, subjectivity, and agency in the study of religion today.
Download or read book Ethics Through Literature written by Brian Stock and published by UPNE. This book was released on 2007 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why do we read? Based on a series of lectures delivered at the Historical Society of Israel in 2005, Brian Stock presents a model for relating ascetic and aesthetic principles in Western reading practices. He begins by establishing the primacy of the ethical objective in the ascetic approach to literature in Western classical thought from Plato to Augustine. This is understood in contrast to the aesthetic appreciation of literature that finds pleasure in the reading of the text in and of itself. Examples of this long-standing tension as displayed in a literary topos, first outlined in these lectures, which describes “scenes of reading,” are found in the works of Peter Abelard, Dante, and Virginia Woolf, among others. But, as this original and often surprising work shows, the distinction between the ascetic and aesthetic impulse in reading, while necessary, is often misleading. As he writes, “All Western reading, it would appear, has an ethical component, and the value placed on this component does not change much over time.” Tracing the ascetic component of reading from Late Antiquity through the Renaissance and beyond, to Coleridge and Schopenhauer, Stock reveals the ascetic or ethical as a constant with the aesthetic serving as opposition, parallel force, and handmaiden, underscoring the historical consistency of the reading experience through the ages and across various media.
Download or read book Disciplinary Moral and Ascetical Works written by Tertullian and published by Literary Licensing, LLC. This book was released on 2011-10-01 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Additional Translator Are Emily Joseph Daly And Edwin A. Quain. Fathers Of The Church, Volume 40.
Download or read book Moral And ascetic Works written by St. Isaac the Syrian (of Nineveh) and published by Independently Published. This book was released on 2020-07-22 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Moral-and-ascetic Works*Ascetic words *Three mystical treatises that were not included in the Greek translation of the first collection *Divine Mysteries and Spiritual Life *About knowledge. Selected chapters *Igniting the mind in a spiritual desert /Link in Russian// And why do others want victory and love it, but cannot gain it with their strong confrontation, on the contrary, every day they suffer defeat from bodily tickling and are in labor, in crying and exhaustion, working for their souls, and you can comfortably to bear the claims of the body, which are so fierce, and not be greatly confused by it? / If you intend to devote your soul to the work of prayer that cleans the mind, and to stay awake at night in order to acquire a bright mind, then move away from the sight of the world, stop talking with people and do not wish to accept your friends into your cell, even under the pretext of benefit 441 , except for those of the same kind, of the same mind with you and your fellow men; be afraid of disturbing the mental conversation 442 , which is usually excited involuntarily, after cutting off, and detachment, and the complete cessation of external conversation. Match alms with your prayer, and your soul will see the light of truth. For the extent to which the heart ceases to be disturbed by external objects, to the same extent, the mind can through the comprehension of thought 443to reach the comprehension of the Divine and to amazement (by them). For the soul usually quickly replaces (human meetings with conversations with God and the words of God and) 444 one conversation with another, if we try to show a little prudence. And in order to replace one interview with another, engage in reading the Scriptures, which opens the way for you to the subtleties of contemplation, and the lives of the saints, although at first you will not feel the sweetness due to the darkening closeness of things.
Download or read book The Vocabulary of the Moral ascetical Works of Saint Ambrose written by Sister Mary Finbarr Barry and published by . This book was released on 1926 with total page 524 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book On the Genealogy of Morals written by Friedrich Nietzsche and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2008-08-14 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 'On the Genealogy of Morals', Nietzsche exposes the central values of the Judaeo-Christian and liberal traditions - compassion, equality, justice - as the product of a brutal process of conditioning designed to domesticate the animal vitality of earlier cultures.
Download or read book Shaping the Future written by Horst Hutter and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2006 with total page 1978 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shaping the Future maps out the ascetic practices of a Neitzschean way of life. Hutter argues that Nietzsche's doctrines are attempts and 'temptations' that aim to provoke his free-spirited readers into changing themselves by putting philosophy into practice in their lives.
Download or read book The Genealogy of Morals written by Friedrich Nietzsche and published by Standard Ebooks. This book was released on 2023-10-09T20:05:09Z with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in German in 1887, The Genealogy of Morals was intended by Nietzsche as a clarification and supplement to his 1882 treatise Beyond Good and Evil. In his last published work, Ecce Homo, Nietzsche described the essays constituting The Genealogy of Morals as “three decisive overtures on the part of a psychologist to a revaluation of all values” and claimed that they were “as regards expression, aspiration, and the art of the unexpected, perhaps the most curious things that have ever been written.” While this self-assessment is probably an overstatement, The Genealogy of Morals is widely acknowledged to be a unique contribution to philosophy in both content and style. The style is intentionally difficult, contrived by turns to embolden, to repel, and to mislead. “In each case,” he wrote, “the beginning is calculated to mystify; it is cool, scientific, even ironical, intentionally thrust to the fore, intentionally reticent. … At the end, in each case, amid fearful thunderclaps, a new truth shines out between thick clouds.” In the first essay, Nietzsche introduces the idea of ressentiment, the source and basis (he contends) of the Christian and Jewish religions and the fundamental psychological mechanism of the associated “slave revolt” in morality, an evaluative inversion performed by the oppressed to compensate for, and to enable themselves to endure, their powerlessness and its attendant frustration. Nietzsche contrasts “noble” values, the central opposition of which is that of “good” and “bad” as applied to human beings themselves, with “slavish” values, the central opposition of which is “good” and “evil” as applied to actions. The vaunting of the latter opposition in Christianity represents, according to Nietzsche, “the great insurrection against the dominion of noble values” common to pagan Rome and ancient Greece. The second essay begins with a discussion of promising and the value of forgetfulness, then traces the origins of guilt and bad conscience to self-directed cruelty, the inward application of a naturally brutal animal instinct that has been prevented from finding outward expression. Nietzsche goes on to supply an analysis of the origin and purpose of punishment in human societies. “Cruelty,” Nietzsche asserts controversially in Ecce Homo, “is here exposed, for the first time, as one of the oldest and most indispensable elements in the foundation of culture.” “Ascetic ideals,” whose “three great pomp words are poverty, humility, and chastity,” are the subject of the third essay, the longest of the work and perhaps its rhetorical high point. Nietzsche here considers the ascetic ideal as instantiated by artists, scholars, and priests, noting differences between the three groups in the ideal’s expression and effects. He asks why ascetic ideals are so powerful, given that they are, as he believes, generally detrimental to human health and well-being, concluding that the ascetic ideal’s power arose from a historical dearth of competing ideals and that “man will wish Nothingness rather than not wish at all.” Contending with the popular perception that a scientific outlook is in principle opposed to religiosity, the latter being the natural home of ascetic ideals, Nietzsche deduces from his analysis of the “will to truth” that the relation of science to ascetic ideals themselves is not at all antagonistic. In fact, “science represents the progressive force in the inner evolution of that ideal”; even further, “valuation of ascetic ideals inevitably entails valuation of science.” Nietzsche also interestingly implicates himself and his own Genealogy in the preservation of ascetic ideals, identifying the bond between such ideals and philosophy itself as very strong. The third essay is notable for having been singled out by Nietzsche as an exercise in exposition of an aphorism. Scholars, notably Christopher Janaway, have disputed whether the aphorism on which the essay is supposedly a commentary is the epigraph from his previous work Thus Spake Zarathustra, or instead the first of the essay’s numbered paragraphs. Nietzsche’s turbulent, haphazardly erudite style has contributed to his mixed reception in philosophy and the broader culture, and to the understanding that he was just as concerned with literary virtuosity as philosophical clarity. Nevertheless, despite the literary complexity of his work, it’s still possible to ask of its content—as Bertrand Russell did in his History of Western Philosophy—“What are we to think of Nietzsche’s doctrines? How far are they true? Are they in any degree useful? Is there in them anything objective, or are they the mere power-fantasies of an invalid?” “There is no escaping Nietzsche,” wrote H. L. Mencken in 1908. “You may hold him a hissing and a mocking and lift your virtuous skirts as you pass him by, but his roar is in your ears and his blasphemies sink into your mind.” Whether its blasphemous sympathies attract or repel us, and whether its analysis ultimately unsettles or only reinforces our initial ethical presuppositions, the Genealogy of Morals remains an essential work in the history of ideas whose moral and political relevance shows little sign of diminishing. This book is part of the Standard Ebooks project, which produces free public domain ebooks.
Download or read book The Ascetic Imperative in Culture and Criticism written by Geoffrey Galt Harpham and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2011-01-15 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this bold interdisciplinary work, Geoffrey Galt Harpham argues that asceticism has played a major role in shaping Western ideas of the body, writing, ethics, and aesthetics. He suggests that we consider the ascetic as "the 'cultural' element in culture," and presents a close analysis of works by Athanasius, Augustine, Matthias, Grünewald, Nietzsche, Foucault, and other thinkers as proof of the extent of asceticism's resources. Harpham demonstrates the usefulness of his findings by deriving from asceticism a "discourse of resistance," a code of interpretation ultimately more generous and humane than those currently available to us.
Download or read book Nietzsche s Naturalism written by Christian Emden and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014-05-29 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines Nietzsche's philosophical naturalism both historically and philosophically, establishing a link between his discussions of nature and normativity.
Download or read book Sites of the Ascetic Self written by Niki Kasumi Clements and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Sites of the Ascetic Self reconsiders contemporary debates about ethics and subjectivity in an extended engagement with the works of fifth-century ascetic, John Cassian (ca. 360-ca. 435), whose stories of extreme asceticism and transformative religious experience by desert elders helped to establish Christian monastic forms of life. The social, cultural, political, doctrinal, and rhetorical milieus shaping Cassian's late ancient understanding allow us to read his works as an ethics for fractured selves in uncertain times. Cassian's practical asceticism provides a uniquely frank picture of human struggle in a world of contingency while also affirming human possibility in ways that signaled a challenge to followers of his contemporary, Augustine of Hippo. Niki Kasumi Clements brings historical and textual analyses into conversation with contemporary theoretical debates, most notably French philosopher Michel Foucault's readings of Cassian as anticipating modern subjectivity vis-à-vis attention to obedience, submission, and self-renunciation. Instead of focusing on interiority and confession, Clements's engagement with Cassian's ethics contributes to contemporary reframings of religion as practice-centered, sharing methodological innovations with scholarship in the philosophy of religion that foregrounds the work of the body, the emotions, and intersociality alongside the role of critical reflection. With a focus on the lived experience and practical ethics of Cassian, Clements argues for constructions of ethics in asceticism as a lens to both critique and deepen our understanding of constructions of power-following the critical moves that Foucault himself develops. By challenging modern assumptions about Cassian's asceticism, Sites of the Ascetic Self proposes a new way to think about questions of ethics, subjectivity, and ethical agency in the study of religion today"--
Download or read book Asceticism in the Graeco Roman World written by Richard Damian Finn and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2009-07-02 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pagan asceticism: cultic and contemplative purity -- Asceticism in Hellenistic and Rabbinic Judaism -- Christian asceticism before Origen -- Origen and his ascetic legacy -- Cavemen, cenobites, and clerics.
Download or read book The Ascetic Ideal written by Stephen Mulhall and published by . This book was released on 2021 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "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"--Publisher's description.
Download or read book The Genealogy of Morals A Polemic written by Friedrich Nietzsche and published by Aegitas. This book was released on 2024-05-28 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Genealogy of Morals: A Polemic by Friedrich Nietzsche is a thought-provoking and controversial work that delves into the origins and evolution of morality. Originally published in 1887, this three-essay collection has sparked intense debates and critical analysis, making it one of Nietzsche's most influential and enduring works. In this book, Nietzsche sets out to challenge and uproot traditional moral systems, particularly those rooted in Judeo-Christian beliefs. He argues that morality is not objective, but rather a human construct that has been imposed on society by those in positions of power. He rejects the notion of an absolute right or wrong and instead presents a genealogical approach to understanding the development of morals. The first essay, "Good and Evil, Good and Bad," explores Nietzsche's concept of the "slave revolt in morality." He posits that the values of good and evil were originally defined by the ruling class as a means of controlling and subjugating the weak. In this way, the concept of good was associated with qualities such as submission, obedience, and meekness, while evil was associated with strength, independence, and power. Nietzsche argues that this system of morality has been internalized by the masses, leading to the suppression of their natural instincts and desires. In the second essay, "Guilt, Bad Conscience, and Related Matters," Nietzsche delves into the origins of guilt and how it has been used to control and manipulate individuals. He argues that the concept of guilt was created by those in power to maintain their dominance over the weak. This essay also explores the development of the concept of the soul and the role it has played in shaping morality. The final essay, "What is the Meaning of Ascetic Ideals?" delves into the ascetic ideals of self-denial and renunciation. Nietzsche argues that these ideals have been imposed on society in order to suppress the natural instincts and drives of individuals, creating a society of weak and sick individuals. The Genealogy of Morals is a scathing critique of traditional morality and a call to reject these inherited values and create new ones based on an individual's own instincts and desires. Nietzsche's ideas have greatly influenced modern philosophy, psychology, and sociology, and his work continues to be a subject of debate and analysis. However, it is important to note that this book has been subject to criticism for its provocative and often controversial ideas. Some argue that Nietzsche's rejection of traditional morality and emphasis on individualism can lead to a dangerous and amoral society. Others question the validity of his historical analysis and the generalizability of his theories. The Genealogy of Morals is a challenging and thought-provoking read that forces readers to question their deeply ingrained beliefs about morality. It is a polemic against societal norms and a call to embrace one's own instincts and desires. Whether one agrees or disagrees with Nietzsche's ideas, this book remains a crucial piece of literature that continues to influence philosophical discourse.
Download or read book Guardians of the Transcendent written by Anne Vallely and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2002-01-01 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores the many facets of what constitutes a moral life within the Terapanthi Svetambar Jain ascetic community, and examines the central role ascetics play in upholding the Jain moral order.
