Page 12 - GALIET CRUX, NUX OR LUX: Nietzsche IV

As Nietzsche will argue: ascetic life turns itself against the real; it claims that the ‘real’ is ‘unreal’ thus physical objects are an illusion; it promotes ego renunciation because ascetics believe reason is limited to dealing with the illusions of physical reality. Ascetics ‘know’ reason cannot penetrate truth itself and therefore they demolish perspectivism. It might be so, I still think Nietzsche did not experience the ascetic life in its full sense. A true ascetic or an idealist philosopher never feels alone 3⁄4 he communes with the heavens 3⁄4 while a Sophist, like Nietzsche, does for he communes with the world.
“The ascetic ideal points out so many bridges to independence,”7 says Nietzsche, and it is similar to the philosophical ideal,
“freedom from compulsion, disturbance, noise, from business, duties, cares; clarity in the head; dance, leap and flight of ideas; good air, thin, clear, free, dry as the air in high places is, in which all animal beings become more spiritual and acquire wings.”8
He recalls Plato. In Plato’s Phaedrus, the contemplation of beauty allows the soul to “grow wings” reminding us of Plato’s Theory of Forms where the Good becomes the loftiest Form, a wondrous, objective reality permeated by what we lack: the stability of meaning. While the Highest Good dwells in the
7 Nietzsche, Friedrich. On the Genealogy of Morality. Trans. Maudemarie Clark and Alan J. Swensen. Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, 1998. iii,7,29
8 Nietzsche, Friedrich. On the Genealogy of Morality. Trans. Maudemarie Clark and Alan J. Swensen. Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, 1998. iii,8, 5-9
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