Authors: Vincent L. Wimbush (Editor), Richard Valantasis
ISBN-13: 9780195151381, ISBN-10: 0195151380
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Date Published: May 2002
Edition: New Edition
Union Theological Seminary
Iliff School of Theology
From meditation and fasting to celibacy and anchoritism, the ascetic impulse has been an enduring and complex phenomenon throughout history. Offering a sweeping view of this elusive and controversial aspect of religious life and culture, Asceticism looks at the ascetic impulse from a unique vantage point. Cross-cultural, cross-religious, and multidisciplinary in nature, these essays provide a broad historical and comparative perspective on asceticisma subject rarely studied outside the context of individual religious traditions. The work represents the input of more than forty preeminent scholars in a wide range of fields and disciplines, and analyzes asceticism from antiquity to the present in European, Near Eastern, African, Asian, and North American settings.
Asceticism is organized around four major themes that cut across religious traditions: origins and meanings of asceticism, which explores the motivations and impulses behind ascetic behaviors; hermeneutics of asceticism, which looks at texts and rhetorics and their presuppositions; aesthetics of asceticism, which documents responses evoked by ascetic impulses and practices, as well as the arts of ascetic practices themselves; and politics of asceticism, which analyzes the power dynamics of asceticism, especially as regards gender, cultural, and ethnic differences. Critical responses to the major papers ensure the focus upon the themes and unify the discussion. Two general addresses on broad philosophical and historical-interpretive issues suggest the importance of the subject of asceticism for wide-ranging but serious cultural-critical discussions. An Appendix, Ascetica Miscellanea, includes six short papers on provocative topics not related to the four major themes, and a panel discussion on the practices and meanings of asceticism in contemporary religious life and culture. A selected bibliography and an index are also included.
The only comprehensive reference work on asceticism with a multicultural, multireligious, and multidisciplinary perspective, Asceticism offers a model not only for an understanding of a most important dimension of religious life, but also for future interdisciplinary study in general.
Foreword | ||
Acknowledgments | ||
Contributors | ||
Introduction | ||
1 | The Way of the Ascetics: Negative or Affirmative? | 3 |
2 | The Howl of Oedipus, the Cry of Heloise: From Asceticism to Postmodern Ethics | 16 |
3 | Women and Asceticism in Late Antiquity: The Refusal of Status and Gender | 33 |
4 | Christian Asceticism and the Emergence of the Monastic Tradition | 49 |
5 | Asceticism and Mysticism in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages | 58 |
6 | Practical, Theoretical, and Cultural Tracings in Late Ancient Asceticism: Response to the Three Preceding Papers | 75 |
7 | Rejecting the Body, Refining the Body: Some Remarks on the Development of Platonist Asceticism | 80 |
8 | Primitive Christianity as an Ascetic Movement | 88 |
9 | Tibetan Buddhist Perspectives on Asceticism | 108 |
10 | Trajectories of Ascetic Behavior: Response to the Three Preceding Papers | 119 |
11 | Asceticism and Anthropology: Enkrateia and "Double Creation" in Early Christianity | 127 |
12 | Ascetic Closure and the End of Antiquity | 147 |
13 | Pain, Power, and Personhood: Ascetic Behavior in the Ancient Mediterranean | 162 |
14 | Asceticism - Audience and Resistance: Response to the Three Preceding Papers | 178 |
15 | Deconstruction of the Body in Indian Asceticism | 188 |
16 | Ascetic Moods in Greek and Latin Literature | 211 |
17 | Asceticism in the Church of Syria: The Hermeneutics of Early Syrian Monasticism | 220 |
18 | Ascetic Moods, Hermeneutics, and Bodily Deconstruction: Response to the Three Preceding Papers | 246 |
19 | The Founding of the New Laura | 267 |
20 | Dreaming the Body: An Aesthetics of Asceticism | 281 |
21 | Mirabai as Wife and Yogi | 301 |
22 | Understanding Asceticism - Testing a Typology: Response to the Three Preceding Papers | 320 |
23 | The Significance of Food in Hebraic-African Thought and the Role of Fasting in the Ethiopian Church | 329 |
24 | Simeon the New Theologian: An Ascetical Theology for Middle-Byzantine Monks | 343 |
25 | Asceticism and the Compensations of Art | 357 |
26 | Sensuality and Mysticism - The Islamic Tradition: Response to the Three Preceding Papers | 369 |
27 | Asceticism and the Moral Good: A Tale of Two Pleasures | 375 |
28 | Gender and Uses of the Ascetic in an Islamist Text | 395 |
29 | Maximus the Confessor on the Affections in Historical Perspective | 412 |
30 | Toward a Politics of Asceticism: Response to the Three Preceding Papers | 424 |
31 | Renunciation and Gender Issues in the Sri Vaisnava Community | 443 |
32 | Body Politic among the Brides of Christ: Paul and the Origins of Christian Sexual Renunciation | 459 |
33 | Athanasius of Alexandria and the Ascetic Movement of His Time | 479 |
34 | The Politics of Piety: Response to the Three Preceding Papers | 493 |
35 | The Ascetic Impulse in Religious Life: A General Response | 505 |
36 | The Battle for the Body in Manichaean Asceticism | 513 |
37 | The Allegorization of Gender: Plato and Philo on Spiritual Childbearing | 520 |
38 | Shame and Sex in Late Antique Judaism | 535 |
39 | A Theory of the Social Function of Asceticism | 544 |
40 | Psychophysiological and Comparative Analysis of Ascetico-Meditational Discipline: Toward a New Theory of Asceticism | 553 |
41 | Flagellation and the French Counter-Reformation: Asceticism, Social Discipline, and the Evolution of a Penitential Culture | 576 |
42 | Practices and Meanings of Asceticism in Contemporary Religious Life and Culture: A Panel Discussion | 588 |
Selected Bibliography | 607 | |
Index | 623 |