Asceticism.

• Author: Denning-Bolle, Sara J.

We moderns are relentlessly preoccupied with ourselves. We are not surprised that our friends employ a regular therapist along with the family doctor and dentist. We have invented countless "anonymous" groups that range from Overeaters Anonymous to Emotions Anonymous, in order to analyze our personal feelings and figure out the roots of our problems. Students accuse their professors of not making them "feel comfortable" or "welcome" in their classes. Increasingly, we enquire of our students how they "feel" about a particular text when they have never read it before and know nothing about the discipline. We speak of "self" and "other" often without understanding what is meant, precisely, by these terms. We are intrigued by family trees and genealogies, more often than not for the little personal stories they reveal rather than for any serious historical interest. We have made our modern world irritatingly comfortable.

In a universe where the center is occupied by "self," it is refreshing for this ancient historian of an ascetic bent to witness the abiding, indeed, flourishing fascination with the study of asceticism. In 1993, an International Conference on the Ascetic Dimension in Religious Life and Culture convened at Union Theological Seminary in New York. Asceticism is a collection of addresses and papers presented at the conference. The efforts required to organize such a conference and the ensuing volume (of just over 600 pages) are impressive. At the same time, a careful perusal of the essays reveals the underlying difficulties involved in the study of so vast a topic as "asceticism."

Asceticism occurs in so many places and times as to provide an opportunity to do proper comparative, historical work. This seems to be the purpose of the volume if it is what John Hick means when he writes in the foreword, "The subject of asceticism functions as a window on to the history of religions through the ages and across the centuries" (p. ix). The volume is divided into seven major sections: "General Challenges and Reconsiderations" (with introductory essays by Kallistos Ware and Edith Wyschogrod), "Origins and Meanings of Asceticism," "Hermeneutics of Asceticism," "Aesthetics of Asceticism," "Politics of Asceticism," "The Discourse Refracted," and "Appendix: Ascetica Miscellanea." Following the initial section, headed by Bishop Ware, parts two through five are organized in a specific manner: first, three papers are presented, followed by a response to those papers, followed by three additional papers, with, again, a response to those three essays. Part six ("The Discourse Refracted") contains only one essay (Elizabeth A. Clark's "The Ascetic Impulse in Religious Life: A General Response") while the appendix ("Ascetica Miscellanea") includes a variety of essays in such areas as Manichaean asceticism, ancient and late antique asceticism, and early modern France. A concluding panel discusses "Practices and Meanings of Asceticism in Contemporary Religious Life and Culture." The authors of the introduction (Vincent Wimbush...