The current project aims to take up an old theme of research in the study of
religion, and in particularly of the history of Christianity: asceticism. The
aspiration is to set a new standard in terms of selection of available sources and
selection of methods not commonly used in conversation with each other. This
process should drive to a novel perspective for conceptualising and framing an
astounding set of practices and believes, which is still waiting for its reassessment.
By tradition asceticism has constituted a stock theme of great interest in religious
studies, anthropology, sociology and theology, but rarely the various ascetic
traditions have been interpreted from a large and multi-disciplinary viewpoint.
Very few, then, are the theoretical and comparative researches, which focused on
asceticism as a whole. On the contrary, many of the histories and critical analysis
have assumed that the ascetic within a particular religious or cultural tradition was
simple in character, and most have respected the artificially designated boundaries
between particular religious systems or cultures (Christian, Jewish, Greek…).
These historical-interpretive analysis on asceticism seem to be questionable in a
very similar way to what we may see in the broader religious studies. If we look at
the history of religions, in the last forty years the traditional way of dealing with
this subject has been criticized over on two major grounds. First, it sets religious
experience up as the perfect example of something unique or sui generis. Second, it
constituted religion (and the religions) as a special aspect of human culture set
apart from other aspects. Critics claimed that this approach isolated the study of
religion from other disciplines and masked a tacitly agenda of a liberal ecumenical
kind.
Similar considerations should be extended to asceticism.
1. A methodological remedy
According to these premises, the first urge is to find a remedy for this (misleading) approach by orientating any theorizing act about asceticism beyond the discursive bounds of the traditional fields. In this manner, we shall bridge a traditional gap in scholarship, but at the same time add a novel perspective that has not previously been adopted in studying asceticism. In the wake of Peter Sloterdijk, I take asceticism in its primary Greek meaning as training (askesis). He defines it as programs of training in which he includes a wide array of phenomena that are not traditionally really taken in account in studies of asceticism, but in which the focus always has been directed on elements of renunciation and self-control. By this notion, Sloterdijk is able of proceeding from antiquity to modernity and, thereby, shed light on the presence of asceticism in multiple phenomena like coaching cultures, fitness, sports, art performances, selfstinging or anorexia. This pervasiveness of asceticism takes it to an extent in which every human being is called to develop her or his own individual life program. Sloterdijk, then, has an extraordinary appreciation of the relationships between such phenomena and those confined to a considerably smaller part of society in antiquity. Under this theoretical umbrella, the aim is not to offer a survey or catalogue of the forms of the ascetic life from the third to the tenth century of the Common Era, but, on the contrary, to enucleate the principal characteristics of this form of R. Alciati, Kolloquium MWK, 07.11.2016 2 life and the over-imposed historical debate, from late antiquity onwards. What the research program represents is mainly the effort to expand and radicalize the concept and valence of asceticism. The idea is to detach the practice – or the discourse about it – from its western Christian historicistic-theological moorings, to question and interrupt the apologetic agenda, with its assumptions about cultural exceptionalism and religion and spirituality as the privileged – if not exclusive – domain of activity and interest.
1. A methodological remedy
According to these premises, the first urge is to find a remedy for this (misleading) approach by orientating any theorizing act about asceticism beyond the discursive bounds of the traditional fields. In this manner, we shall bridge a traditional gap in scholarship, but at the same time add a novel perspective that has not previously been adopted in studying asceticism. In the wake of Peter Sloterdijk, I take asceticism in its primary Greek meaning as training (askesis). He defines it as programs of training in which he includes a wide array of phenomena that are not traditionally really taken in account in studies of asceticism, but in which the focus always has been directed on elements of renunciation and self-control. By this notion, Sloterdijk is able of proceeding from antiquity to modernity and, thereby, shed light on the presence of asceticism in multiple phenomena like coaching cultures, fitness, sports, art performances, selfstinging or anorexia. This pervasiveness of asceticism takes it to an extent in which every human being is called to develop her or his own individual life program. Sloterdijk, then, has an extraordinary appreciation of the relationships between such phenomena and those confined to a considerably smaller part of society in antiquity. Under this theoretical umbrella, the aim is not to offer a survey or catalogue of the forms of the ascetic life from the third to the tenth century of the Common Era, but, on the contrary, to enucleate the principal characteristics of this form of R. Alciati, Kolloquium MWK, 07.11.2016 2 life and the over-imposed historical debate, from late antiquity onwards. What the research program represents is mainly the effort to expand and radicalize the concept and valence of asceticism. The idea is to detach the practice – or the discourse about it – from its western Christian historicistic-theological moorings, to question and interrupt the apologetic agenda, with its assumptions about cultural exceptionalism and religion and spirituality as the privileged – if not exclusive – domain of activity and interest.
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