Setting the Stage for The Will to Power 303general, manifests his controlling nature by establishing rigorous control
over his own body and its array of sensual needs. The ascetic is a virtu-
oso of saying no and a powerful anti-Dionysus. Ascetics embody life as
a spirit that engages with life. Nietzsche admitted to a certain admiration
for this stance because he was aware that he himself had ascetic leanings
despite his Dionysian affirmation. The dynamics of the final chapter cen-
ter on this very issue. Nietzsche realized that he himself was a part of the
problem he was attempting to address with the "pathos of distance"
(5,259; GM First Essay § 2). He had devoted his life to knowledge, and
the will to truth was his most powerfiil impetus. But isn't the will to truth
that turns against spontaneity, beneficial illusions, and pragmatic restric-
tions itself an ascetic spirit that engages with life? If ultimately this will
to truth relegates human beings and their world to the background, if the
sciences work toward the "self-belitdement of man" (5,404; GM Third
Essay § 25) in the cosmos, and if the will to truth ushers in honest athe-
ism, it will be "the awe-inspiring catastrophe of spending two millennia
to breed truth, which ultimately forbids itself the lie of belief in God"
(5,409; GM Third Essay § 27). This breeding of truth, however, is
Christian asceticism. Nietzsche was well aware that he was a belated heir
of this breeding. Thus, toward the close of the On the Genealogy of Morals,
Nietzsche turned introspective:^4 <What meaning would our whole being
have if it were not that in us that will to truth has become conscious of
itself as a problem within us?" (5,410; GitfThird Essay § 27).
Nietzsche wrote On the Genealogy of Morals in great haste during the
summer of 1887 in Sils-Maria. In August, it was already beginning to
snow. Everything around him turned white and silent, and the hotel
guests began to depart. Only Nietzsche remained behind, proving him-
self an ascetic of the will to truth. On August 30, he wrote to Peter Gast:
"Nevertheless, I have found a kind of contentment and progress in
every regard; above all, a good will to experience nothing more that is new,
to avoid the 'outside' somewhat more strenuously, and to do what one is
therefor" (£8,137).
But what is one there for?