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Third EssayWhat Do Ascetic Ideals Mean?10
The same book, on page 39, explains the system of values, the pressure of a system of values, which the most ancient race of contemplative men had to live under, a race that, when it was not feared, was widely despised! Contemplation first appeared on earth in a disguised shape, with an ambiguous appearance, with an evil heart, and often with a worried head. There`s no doubt about that. The inactive, brooding, unwarlike elements in the instincts of contemplative people for a long time fostered mistrust around them, against which the only way to cope was to arose an emphatic fear of the self. The ancient Brahmins, for example, understood that! The most ancient philosophers knew how to earn meaning for their existence and their appearance, some security and background, because of which people learned to fear them. To look at the matter more closely, this happened because of an even more fundamental need, that is, the need to win fear and respect for themselves. For they discovered inside them that all judgments of value had been reversed; they had to beat down all kinds of suspicions about and resistance to "the philosopher inside them." As men of dreadful times, they achieved this with dreadful means: cruelty against themselves, inventive self-denial - that was the major instrument of these power-hungry hermits and new thinkers, who found it necessary first to overthrow the gods and traditions inside themselves, in order to be able to believe in their innovation.
I recall the famous story of King Vishvamitra, who, through a thousand years of self-torments, acquired such a feeling of power and faith in his own capabilities that he committed himself to building a new heaven, that weird symbol of the oldest and most recent history of philosophers on earth. Everyone who at some time or another has built a "new heaven," found the power to do that first in his own hell. . . Let`s condense this whole fact into a short formula: the philosophical spirit always had to begin by disguising himself, wrapping himself in a cocoon of the previously established forms of the contemplative man, as priest, magician, prophet, generally as a religious man, in order to make any kind of life at all possible. The ascetic ideal for a long time served the philosopher as a form in which he could appear, as a condition for his existence. He had to play the role, in order to be able to be a philosopher. And he had to believe in what he was doing, in order to play that role.
The characteristically detached stance of philosophers, something which denied the world, was hostile to life, had no faith in the senses, and was free of sensuality, which was maintained right up to the most recent times and thus became valued as the essence of the philosophical attitude - that is above all a necessary consequence of the conditions under which, in general, philosophy arose and survived. In fact, for the longest time on earth philosophy would not have been at all possible without an ascetic cover and costume, without an ascetic misunderstanding of the self. To put the matter explicitly: up to the most recent times the ascetic priest has provided the repellent and dark caterpillar form which was the only one in which philosophy could live and creep around. . .
Has that really changed? Is that colourful and dangerous winged creature, that "spirit" which this caterpillar hid within itself, at last really been released and allowed out into the light, thanks to a sunnier, warmer, brighter world? Nowadays do we have sufficient pride, daring, bravery, self-certainty, spiritual will, desire to assume responsibility, and freedom of the will so that from now on "the philosopher" is possible on earth? . . .
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