Research subject Asceticism and Ritual Self-Practices

Asceticism is a concept that originated in ancient Greek culture. The term askêsis originally referred to training and exercises of a more physical and gymnastic nature, but also came to denote the strictly regulated spiritual way of life that distinguished philosophical and religious sects.

Today, the term is used in a broader sense of a spiritually transforming way of life that requires deprivation (sexual abstinence, isolation, silence, reduced diet, etc.) and a disciplining of daily routines for long, sometimes lifelong periods. If rites are often collective, not infrequently public events limited to particular festivals or life events, then ascetic techniques can be seen as individualized, permanent, and annihilated equivalents of collective rites. Asceticism can thus be seen as a ritualization of life and the self with the aim of achieving deeper forms of spiritual transformation, salvation and insight.

In several of today's major religions, asceticism occurs in varying forms, often in connection with special premises, orders and communities, but also in the form of voluntary isolation from all kinds of social contexts. For example, asceticism is prominent in Christian, Hindu and Buddhist monastic settings as well as in contemporary forms of fundamentalist Islam and ultra-Orthodox Judaism where distancing from majority communities is prominent and enclavism is advocated.

From a historical and comparative long-term perspective, asceticism appears to be closely associated with so-called salvation religion. The new salvation religions emerging in India (e.g. Jainism, Buddhism) and West Asia (philosophical sects, mystery religions and finally various forms of Christianity) from the middle of the 1st millennium BC often have ascetic elements and allow themselves to be compared against the background of similar social patterns and tendencies in these societies: a critical approach to older religious establishments supported by a demilitarized aristocracy, a centering around founders with an inner circle of devout adepts, an aversion to blood sacrifice, and the establishment of canonical text collections.

Even in modern societies with a palpable secular orientation, ascetic tendencies can be discerned. The aims of asceticism are then no longer defined only in traditionally religious/spiritual terms, but also in terms of such things as psychophysical health and economic success. The German sociologist Max Weber, for example, has emphasized the connections between the ascetic ideals of Reformed and Protestant Christianity and modern capitalism.