Page 13 - GALIET CRUX, NUX OR LUX: Nietzsche IV

realm beyond 3⁄4 the hyper-urano 3⁄4 all Lesser Forms dwell in the Cavern: the world of experience and illusions. Like Plato, Nietzsche understands that those who follow ascetic ideals place their heart “in a foreign place, in the beyond, in the future...”9 In order for ascetics to achieve their goal, they must follow the ascetic ideal of “poverty, humility, chastity” thereby denying themselves life’s luxuries and its rich sensuality. Ascetics are attracted to voyeuristic journeys in the Atacama deserts in the same manner that philosophers keep awayfrom“fame,princes,andwomen.”10 Thedesertbecomes, therefore, an irresistible proposition; a fabulous spa, and retreat from the daily toils and vicissitudes of life.
Early Christianity is part of a movement towards monasticism and asceticism. Ascetics want to get away from it all including all distractions of the flesh. They go away to confront their own life of temptation just as Jesus himself does when he leaves for the desert. We find in Saint Anthony’s actions, one of the great desert saints, a vivid relationship between Nietzsche’s notions of shame 3⁄4 bad conscience & guilt 3⁄4 and asceticism:
“Saint Anthony went unto this holy life roaming daily at the thoughts of the mansions of heavens longing for them, and seeing the shortness of man’s life, and realizing the needs for food and sleep and the other needs of the body, shame came on him, in the spirituality of the soul. The thought of the
9 Nietzsche, Friedrich. On the Genealogy of Morality. Trans. Maudemarie Clark and Alan J. Swensen. Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, 1998. iii,8,13
10 Nietzsche, Friedrich. On the Genealogy of Morality. Trans. Maudemarie Clark and Alan J. Swensen. Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, 1998. iii,8,40
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