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Although one can find a robust philosophical tradition supporting asceticism in the West, from ancient Greece to at least early modernity, very little attention has been paid to what motivated this broad support. Instead, following criticism from figures such as Hume, Voltaire, Bentham, and Nietzsche, asceticism has been largely disregarded as either eccentric or uniquely religious. In this paper, I provide what I take to be the core moral argument that motivated many philosophical ascetics. In brief, acts of deliberate self-denial are practice in an important part of acting ethically and are thus practically rational as a means to acquiring virtue. And if this argument has been a core motivation for asceticism in the West then arguably philosophical ascetics have been on to something, especially given contemporary empirical research on self-control.
1 Fideler, David (ed.) The Pythagorean Sourcebook and Library, trans. Sylvan, Kenneth Guthrie (Grand Rapids: Phanes Press, 1987), 73–75Google Scholar.
2 Joseph Swain, ‘The Hellenic Origins of Christian Asceticism’ (Columbia University, 1916), 47.
3 Translation from Plato, Plato: Euthyphro. Apology. Crito. Phaedo. Phaedrus, trans. Fowler, Harold North, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999)Google Scholar, see also 83b5-7, Republic 404a, 518e, 536b2, Philebus 33b, and Protagoras 323d, cf. Butler, Travis, ‘A Riveting Argument in Favor of Asceticism in the Phaedo’, History of Philosophy Quarterly 29.2 (2012): 103–23Google Scholar; Ebrey, David, ‘The Asceticism of the Phaedo: Pleasure, Purification, and the Soul's Proper Activity’, Archiv Für Geschichte Der Philosophie 99.1 (2017): 1–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cooper, John M., Pursuits of Wisdom: Six Ways of Life in Ancient Philosophy from Socrates to Plotinus (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2013), 60–69Google Scholar.
4 Nichomachean Ethics, trans. Irwin, Terence, 2nd ed. (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1999), 29Google Scholar. These comments notwithstanding, Aristotle's positive comments about pleasure elsewhere make an interpretation of his attitude toward deliberate acts of self-denial for the sake of building character difficult. For an overview, see Kraut, Richard, ‘Aristotle's Ethics’, in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (ed.) Zalta, Edward N., Summer 2017 (Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, 2017), sec. 8Google Scholar, https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2017/entries/aristotle-ethics/. At the same time, a commitment to the view that pleasure plays a central role in human flourishing should not be taken as prima facie inconsistent with approbation of asceticism, as Aquinas's similar endorsement of pleasure should suggest (e.g. Summa Theologica I–II, Q.34, a.1–4).
5 Translation in Seneca, trans. Gummere, Richard M., vol. 4 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1917), 39Google Scholar. Yet for Seneca, the mean in these matters involves an unaffected austerity (cf. Epistles 5:5).
6 See especially Discourses 3.12. I thank Jacob Klein for this reference.
7 For a representative view, see Aquinas, Summa Theologica II–II, Q.88, a.2 ad3.
8 The World as Will and Representation, Vol. 1, trans. Payne, E.F.J., Reprint edition (New York: Dover Publications, 1966), 391–92Google Scholar.
9 Regarding Wittgenstein, see for instance Deangelis, William J., Ludwig Wittgenstein - A Cultural Point of View (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2007), 162Google Scholar, for Russell see Ironside, Philip, The Social and Political Thought of Bertrand Russell: The Development of an Aristocratic Liberalism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 41CrossRefGoogle Scholar – though Russell changed his mind on this later in life. And for Camus, Todd, Olivier, Albert Camus: A Life, trans. Ivry, Benjamin (New York: Knopf, 1997), 187–88Google Scholar. It seems most probable that Kurt Gödel's well-known asceticism was the result of a mental disorder, cf. Wang, Hao, Reflections on Kurt Gödel (Cambridge, Mass.: Bradford Books, 1990), 15Google Scholar, particularly as he died of malnutrition.
10 See, among others Foucault, Michel, Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth (ed.) Rabinow, Paul, trans. Hurley, Robert (New York: Penguin Press, 1997), 282Google Scholar; Foucault, Michel, Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault (ed.) Martin, Luther H., Gutman, Huck, and Hutton, Patrick H. (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1988)Google Scholar; Ramos, Alice, ‘Technologies of the Self: Truth, Asceticism, and Autonomy’, Bulletin de La Société Américaine de Philosophie de Langue Française 6.1/2 (April 1, 1994): 20–29Google Scholar; Bob Robinson, ‘Foucault, Michel: Ethics’, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2011, http://www.iep.utm.edu/fouc-eth/#SH3c. However, despite defending asceticism, Foucault neglects to identify the reason why ascetical practices lead to self-mastery, as this paper seeks to do.
11 Nietzsche seems to have thought that this was a necessary condition for the survival of the philosophical enterprise, thus ‘for the longest time philosophy would not have been possible at all on earth without ascetic wraps and cloak, without an ascetic self-misunderstanding’ in On the Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo, trans. Kaufmann, Walter (New York: Vintage, 1989), 115–16Google Scholar. Taken at face value, this empirical claim is supported by scant historical or sociological analysis. It is moreover prima facie implausible since the philosophers in question have been perfectly willing to stand against other countervailing social pressures, regardless of the long-term consequences for the social success of philosophy.
12 Magnus, Bernd, ‘Asceticism and Eternal Recurrence: A Bridge Too Far’, The Southern Journal of Philosophy 37, Supplement (March 1, 1999): 94–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
13 Nietzsche may have understood these considerations to be rationalizations driven more deeply by a semi-conscious impulse toward the ascetic ideal. Yet, one might hope for serious, charitable consideration of the rationales explicitly provided by philosophers in favor of asceticism – particularly since Nietzsche at times himself expresses positive approval of asceticism, e.g. in The Will to Power (ed.) Kaufmann, Walter, trans. Hollingdale, R.J., 1st edition (New York: Vintage, 1968), 483–84Google Scholar – a fact that may have inspired Foucault's later embrace of ascetical acts, cf. Urpeth, James, ‘“Noble” Ascesis Between Nietzsche and Foucault’, New Nietzsche Studies 2.3/4 (July 1, 1998): 65–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Without taking a philosopher's explicit explanation for supporting asceticism seriously, a hermeneutics of suspicion might be applied just as easily to Nietzsche's ‘natural’ asceticism and to Foucault's development of the same.
14 An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals: A Critical Edition (ed.) Beauchamp, Tom L. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 73Google Scholar.
15 In The Natural History of Religion, Hume claims that only religion could motivate ascetical practices like fasting or self-flagellation – practices, for Hume, that are totally removed from the exercise of virtue and are for this reason attractive to religious people as otherwise unprompted expressions of devotion to a deity. See Hume, David, Writings on Religion (ed.) Flew, Antony (La Salle, Ill: Open Court, 1999), 175–79Google Scholar. Thus Hume explains, ‘In restoring a loan, or paying a debt, his divinity is nowise beholden to him; because these acts of justice are what he was bound to perform, and what many would have performed, were there no god in the universe. But if he fast a day, or give himself a sound whipping; this has a direct reference, in his opinion, to the service of God. No other motive could engage him to such austerities’ op. cit., 177; cf. Irwin, Terence, The Development of Ethics: A Historical and Critical Study Volume II: From Suarez to Rousseau (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 644–55Google Scholar. Yet if the argument of this paper is successful, Hume is wrong to push such a division between acts of virtue and those of asceticism, and likewise wrong to see the claimed superfluity of the latter as giving it a distinctively religious color.
16 An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (ed.) Burns, J. H. and Hart, H. L. A. (Oxford: New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), chap. 2Google Scholar.
17 For Bentham at least, the ‘principle of asceticism’ was no strawman, for he explicitly identifies it (like Hume) with the common practices of monks, see op. cit. note 16, 17; cf. Rosen, Frederick, Classical Utilitarianism from Hume to Mill (New York: Routledge, 2003), 181Google Scholar, for discussion including Mill's nuanced appropriation of these criticisms.
18 See discussion in J.B. Shank, ‘Voltaire’, in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (ed.) Edward N. Zalta, Summer 2010, sec. 2.2, http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2010/entries/voltaire/.
19 Beyond Good & Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future, trans. Kaufmann, Walter (New York: Vintage, 1989), 67Google Scholar.
20 Nietzsche, op. cit. note 11, 312.
21 Nietzsche: “On the Genealogy of Morality” and Other Writings (ed.) Ansell-Pearson, Keith, trans. Diethe, Carol, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 103Google Scholar.
22 There appear to be religious motivations for asceticism distinct from those offered in this paper (e.g. those expressed in Colossians 1:24). This paper will only examine whether there are non-religious motivations favoring the rationality of asceticism, despite much of the Western debate over asceticism being religious in character.
23 Nietzsche, op. cit. note 11, 117.
24 Nietzsche, op. cit. note 11, 122.
25 Magnus, op. cit. note 12, 94–96.
26 Op. cit. note 11, 128–29, 140–41; cf. R. Lanier Anderson, ‘Friedrich Nietzsche’, in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (ed.) Edward N. Zalta, Summer 2017, 2017, https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2017/entries/nietzsche/.
27 Magnus, op. cit. note 12, 95.
28 One might also read the collective criticisms of Hume, Bentham, and Voltaire as attacking the view that ascetical practices are ends in themselves. So understood, however, their criticisms ignore what little had been said in asceticism's defense by philosophers up to that time, namely that asceticism is a sort of training for virtue.
29 Interpreting Nietzsche on this point is a matter of difficulty (e.g. references to the influence of the ‘ascetic priest’ may be intended as emblematic, rather than literal; cf. Magnus, op. cit. note 12, 94–95). However, Nietzsche appears to have fallen into a similar historical error in ostensibly characterizing philosophical asceticism as ultimately arising from religious sources (cf. op. cit. note 11, 115–16.). Although the priests (and to a lesser degree, lay members) of Greek religions commonly practiced ritual purification rites and some limited self-denial (e.g., celibacy) during important yearly ceremonies, little evidence suggests highly ascetical practices were encouraged as perpetual (Abaris the Hyperborean notwithstanding). Orphic and Pythagorean cults may count as two exceptions, though in both cases extant evidence suggests their asceticism consisted primarily in the avoidance of meat and beans. Whereas the ascetical ideas favored say by Plato, among others, seem more robust in contrast, making Nietzsche's historical-psychological theory of the ascetic ideal less plausible as a general explanation of ascetical practices. Put differently, ancient Greek ascetics were more likely to be philosophers than priests (and correspondingly associate asceticism with virtue creation rather than guilt expiation), suggesting that any causal role may well have been driven more by philosophy than by religion.
30 So defined, self-denial is a broad category that could even include some vicious acts, if the vice is unpleasant to its perpetrator. Although a more refined definition of self-denial is desirable, the definition of asceticism given here makes a narrower definition unnecessary for the purposes of the paper, since asceticism will only involve the morally beneficial types of self-denial.
31 Athletic training is more like asceticism in this respect, since one does not typically become a failed athlete by skipping a workout. Yet, Diogenes's comparisons notwithstanding, asceticism differs from the self-denial involved in athletics because self-denial involved in athletics is ordinarily not directly chosen, but is an unintended aspect of athletic training and performance. Even if some athletes do choose acts of self-denial directly as a means to bolster willpower for a successful future performance, this would differ from asceticism in that the latter has a specifically moral direction that would be lacking in the pursuit of a closely analogous athletic self-discipline.
32 On this point, Hume was close to the mark (see note 8). But one would commit the fallacy of composition if one inferred that, because token acts of a type are superfluous, they are also collectively superfluous (or even unhelpful). Each individual workout may be superfluous for an athlete's success, for instance, but the athlete would be foolish to conclude that working out itself can be discontinued without loss.
33 Although asceticism is popularly understood as requiring self-inflicted pain (of an extreme variety, e.g. Silas in The Da Vinci Code), it is a mistake to narrowly define ascetical acts in terms of well-known forms of corporal mortification. Ascetical literature is full of recommendations for a broad spectrum of acts of deliberate, though not necessarily physically painful, self-denial. Thus, for instance, Jean Baptiste Marie Vianney, a canonized 19th century Roman Catholic priest, practiced extreme asceticism (including self-flagellation, lengthy fasts, and encircling himself with iron chains, among others). Yet, he accompanied these practices with those much more mundane and non-painful. One of his biographers recounts that Rev. Vianney practiced a ‘perpetual self-restraint by which he closed every avenue to the most innocent enjoyment of the senses, and refused to avail himself of the most ordinary alleviations of pain and discomfort. He had imposed, as a rule, upon himself never to smell a flower, never to drink when parched with thirst, never to brush off a fly, never to appear to be conscious of an unpleasant smell, never to express disgust at any repulsive sight, never to complain of any thing whatever which affected him personally, never to sit down, never to lean against any thing when kneeling. He had a great shrinking from cold, but would never take any means to preserve himself from it’ Monnin, Alfred, Life of the Curé d'Ars (London: Burns and Lambert, 1862), 257Google Scholar. He also commonly recommended non-painful ascetical acts to others in his public preaching, see Vianney, Jean, The Spirit of the Curé of Ars. (ed.) Bowden, J.E. and Monnin, Alfred (London: Burns, Lambert, and Oates, 1865), 109Google Scholar.
34 For some mentally imbalanced individuals, acts of this sort can become pathological and disjoined from any effort to acquire virtue; hence, ‘self-harm’ is a common symptom of multiple mental disorders. Yet, the foregoing argument should make clear why asceticism does not endorse this pathology: for individuals like this, feeling pain has become desirable as an end in itself. It thus ceases to have those essential features that make mortification a practice in self-control for people who are mentally balanced. For individuals like this, the more appropriate practice in virtue would be the incorporeal mortification of listening to and following carefully the relevant advice of a competent mental health specialist.
35 Some qualification is appropriate here. For it may well be the case that part of the reason mortification works in the acquisition of self-control is due to how the ascetical agent conceptualizes her activities (e.g., seeing them as acts of practice in self-control or listening to reason). So, although experimental design may get participants to do acts that externally resemble mortification easily enough through rewards, such activities are not genuinely ascetical. Capturing this cognitive element without running into issues of sampling bias seems a difficult but crucial constraint on direct empirical testing of the above argument.
36 Cf. Hurka, Thomas, Perfectionism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 27, 66–77Google Scholar.
37 This is so called ‘ego deficit’; cf. Vohs, Kathleen D. et al. , ‘Making Choices Impairs Subsequent Self-Control: A Limited-Resource Account of Decision Making, Self-Regulation, and Active Initiative’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 94.5 (May 2008): 883–98CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Hagger, Martin S. et al. , ‘Ego Depletion and the Strength Model of Self-Control: A Meta-Analysis’, Psychological Bulletin 136.4 (2010): 495–525CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.
38 Baumeister, Roy F., Vohs, Kathleen D., and Tice, Dianne M., ‘The Strength Model of Self-Control’, Current Directions in Psychological Science 16.6 (December 1, 2007): 351–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Muraven, Mark and Baumeister, Roy F., ‘Self-Regulation and Depletion of Limited Resources: Does Self-Control Resemble a Muscle?’, Psychological Bulletin 126.2 (March 2000): 247–59CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.
39 Muraven, Mark, ‘Building Self-Control Strength: Practicing Self-Control Leads to Improved Self-Control Performance’, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 46.2 (March 1, 2010): 465–68CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.
40 Berkman, Elliot, ‘Self-Regulation Training’, in Handbook of Self-Regulation: Research, Theory and Applications (ed.) Baumeister, Roy F. and Vohs, Kathleen D., 3rd ed. (New York: Guilford, 2017), 440–57Google Scholar.
41 It would be a misconception to expect that increases in trait self-control will lead to a uniform acquisition of every virtue, however. For self-control is only one part of the virtues, and given variations in temperament, personality, and upbringing, we should expect that people will find particular, moderate gains in self-control do help them act rightly in some moral domains while other domains – those in which they have greater moral weaknesses – remain difficult (perhaps requiring greater gains in trait self-control).
42 Among others, cf. de Ridder, Denise T. D. et al. , ‘Taking Stock of Self-Control: A Meta-Analysis of How Trait Self-Control Relates to a Wide Range of Behaviors’, Personality and Social Psychology Review 16.1 (February 1, 2012): 76–99CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Hofmann, Wilhelm et al. , ‘Yes, But Are They Happy? Effects of Trait Self-Control on Affective Well-Being and Life Satisfaction’, Journal of Personality 82.4 (August 1, 2014): 265–77CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Adriaanse, Marieke A. et al. , ‘Effortless Inhibition: Habit Mediates the Relation between Self-Control and Unhealthy Snack Consumption’, Frontiers in Psychology 5 (May 16, 2014)CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Ent, Michael R., Baumeister, Roy F., and Tice, Dianne M., ‘Trait Self-Control and the Avoidance of Temptation’, Personality and Individual Differences 74 (February 2015): 12–15CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Moreover, formed habits have been found to be motivating even when an agent experiences the sort of depleted willpower or motivational deficit that arises after making difficult choices, cf. Neal, David T., Wood, Wendy, and Drolet, Aimee, ‘How Do People Adhere to Goals When Willpower Is Low? The Profits (and Pitfalls) of Strong Habits’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 104.6 (June 2013): 959–75CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed. So, an agent who has been engaging in ascetical behaviors for the sake of virtue will likely remain motivated to act on their developed habits even if they otherwise feel drained by some recent act of mortification.
43 Cf. Inzlicht, Michael and Berkman, Elliot, ‘Six Questions for the Resource Model of Control (and Some Answers)’, Social and Personality Psychology Compass 9.10 (October 2015): 511–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
44 In the Platonic and Christian traditions, ascetical rhetoric can give a life-denying impression. Plato speaks of philosophy as the practice of dying. And in the New Testament, one can find a refrain of death to self. In the case of the Christian tradition at least, talk of death to self is most commonly understood in a metaphorical way, representing a suppression of excessive desires in keeping with the ascetical argument above. Plato in contrast takes this language seriously, but centrally because he sees life in the body to be unnatural state for the soul at odds with a genuinely flourishing life – for Plato, any Nietzschean affirmation of the appetites of the body is thus far more life-denying.
45 Asceticism seems incompatible only with views that suggest one ought ordinarily to concede to one's strong internal drives, no matter one's best judgment to the contrary. Perhaps the Cyrenaic hedonists such as Aristippus would deny this, as they apparently advocated no delay in gratification – including in, say, visiting prostitutes, see Lampe, Kurt, The Birth of Hedonism: The Cyrenaic Philosophers and Pleasure as a Way of Life (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014), 105–7Google Scholar.
46 Nietzsche, op. cit. note 13, 483–84.
47 As Anderson, op. cit. note 26, explains, Nietzsche would have no objection to self-discipline in the interest of virtue, which is expressly what the preceding argument appeals to. See also Urpeth, op. cit. note 13.
48 It goes without saying that virtue theories in ethics tend to rank virtues as highly valuable, and theorists in this camp have included both Hume and Nietzsche, see Swanton, Christine, The Virtue Ethics of Hume and Nietzsche (John Wiley & Sons, 2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Yet the positive appraisal of virtue in other normative theories is somewhat less well-known. For Kant's approbation of virtue, see among others essays in Betzler, Monika (ed.) Kant's Ethics of Virtue (New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Consequentialist theories may at first glance seem to have open to them plausible grounds for denying the positive value of cultivating the right sorts of habits, but against this among contemporary consequentialists, see e.g. Pettit on ‘robustly demanding goods’ in The Robust Demands of the Good: Ethics with Attachment, Virtue, and Respect (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015)Google Scholar. And among classic utilitarians, Mill, J.S. seeks at length to appropriate the value of virtue in Utilitarianism, ed. Sher, George, 2nd ed. (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 2002), 36–41, 61, 64Google Scholar, to name some prominent normative theories.
49 I wish to thank Leonard Sidharta, Jacob Klein, and M.V. Dougherty for their insightful comments and suggestions.