[Nietzsche’s] questions – transcend, but where to; ascend, but to what height? – would have answered themselves if he had calmly kept both feet on the ascetic ground. He was too sick to follow his...

The de-spiritualization of asceticisms is probably the event in the current intellectual history of mankind that is the most comprehensive and, because of its large scale, the hardest to perceive, yet at once the most...