Discuss ascetic here.
ASCETICISM, the theory and practice of bodily abstinence and self-mortification, generally religious. It embodies a metaphor taken from the ancient wrestling-place or palaestra, where victory rewarded those who had best trained their bodies. Not a few other technical terms of Greek philosophic asceticism, used in the first instance by Cynics and Neo-pythagoreans, and then continued among the Greek Jews and Christians, were metaphors taken from athletic contests - but only metaphors, for all asceticism, worthy of the name, has a moral purport, and is based on the eternal contrast of the proposition, “This is right,” with the proposition, “That is pleasant.” The ascetic instinct is probably as old as humanity, yet we must not forget that early religious practices are apt to be deficient in lofty spiritual meaning, many things being esteemed holy that are from a modern point of view trifling and even obscene. We may therefore expect in primitive asceticism to find many abstentions and much self-torture apparently valueless for the training of character and discipline of the feelings, which are the essence of any healthy asceticism. Nevertheless these non-moral taboos or restraints may have played a part in building up in us that faculty of preferring the larger good to the impulse of the moment which is the note of real civilization. Aristotle in his Ethics defines, as the barbarian’s ideal of life, “the living as one likes.” Yet nothing is less true; for the savage, more than the civilized man, is tied down at every step with superstitious scruples and restrictions barely traceable in higher civilizations except as primitive survivals. It is not that savages are devoid of the ascetic instinct. It is on the contrary over-developed in them, but ill-informed and working in ways unessential or even morally harmful. It is the note of every great religious reformer, Moses, Buddha, Paul, Mani, Mahomet, St Francis, Luther, to enlighten and direct it to higher aims, substituting a true personal holiness for a ritual purity or taboo, which at the best was viewed as a kind of physical condition and contagion, inherent as well in things and animals as in man. Read more…
adjective
1) Retired from the world, and engaged in devotions and mortifications.
“... he entered into such an ascetic course as had well nigh put an end to his life.” - Life of Bishop Burnet
2) Severe, harsh, rigid, precise.
noun
Ordinary language
1) One who retires from active and adopts a contemplative life spent in devotion, in mortification of the body, etc., a hermit, a recluse. In the days of Jesus Christ the Essenes were a large and influential sect of men who lived in the wilderness. John the Baptist was an example of these ascetics.
“I am far from commending those ascetics, that, out of a pretense of keeping themselves unspotted from the world, take up their quarters in deserts.” - Norris
2) One who, whether he retires from active life, or not, adopts habits of self-mortification.
Church History
A class of persons who, aspiring after higher attainments in holiness than other Christians, thought they would best attain their object by self-mortification. They therefore abstained from wine, flesh, matrimony, and worldly business; and moreover emaciated their bodies by long vigils, fasting, toil, and hunger. Both men and women embraced this austere mode of life. During the second century of the Christian era, when they first attracted notice, they lived by themselves and dressed differently from others, but did not altogether withdraw from the society and converse of ordinary men. During the course of the third century they gradually withdrew to the Egyptian desert, and early in the fourth (about A.D. 305), were associated by Anthony into monastic communities.
“The Ascetics who obeyed and abused the rigid precepts of the Gospel.” - Gibbon
