PHL217H1 Lecture Notes - The Gay Science
Document Summary
The title is ironic, but we will return this point momentarily. The first essay of the genealogy of the origins concerns the good and bad, the origins of morality, no morality, Second essay focuses on guilt, and other moral valuations that characterizes our slave morality. All this is to say, that the key word, is mean, and the question what do ascetic ideals mean, we ask what do they mean to us. Nietzsche makes the surprising claim that modernity is a continuation of christian morality. There is another sense of mean in the title, the meaningfulness of human existence. Ascetic ideals seem to be what has given meaning to life. The human will needs an aim, or prefer to will nothingness, rather than not will at all. To call the priest life the embodiment of ascetic ideals seems pretty straight forward, priests, monks, all these people try to deny secular life.
