Ascetic Praxis occupies a complex and contested position within the depth-psychology corpus, appearing at the intersection of monastic spirituality, philosophical anthropology, and psychological transformation. The Philokalic and Evagrian traditions constitute its most concentrated locus: here, askesis names a structured regimen of fasting, prayer, vigil, and inner watchfulness that functions as the indispensable preparation for contemplative ascent. The Evagrian schema, particularly as elaborated in the Praktikos, situates ascetic practice as the first and necessary stage in the tripartite movement from praktike through natural contemplation to theology proper. Climacus extends this by framing ascetic labor within a temporal horizon bounded by memory of death, humility, and hope. Coniaris synthesizes the tradition to argue that askesis is not a discrete set of disciplines but an entire way of life oriented toward the restoration of the divine image. A significant tension runs through the corpus: the Philokalia consistently insists that ascetic practice must remain coordinated with contemplation — neither alone is sufficient — while Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, as treated by Sharpe and Ure, debate whether ascetic self-denial represents a genuine salvific orientation or a pathological will-negation. Hillman introduces a counterpoint from archetypal psychology, suspecting the dayworld voluntarism implied by praxis. The term thus illuminates fault lines between mortification and integration, discipline and spontaneity, renunciation and affirmation.
You must be governed by both ascetic practice and contemplation. Otherwise you will be like a ship voyaging without the right sails
This passage establishes the Philokalic axiom that ascetic praxis and contemplation are mutually necessary and mutually regulating disciplines, neither capable of sustaining spiritual progress alone.
, The Philokalia, Volume 4, 1995thesis
Askesis is not simply the practice of certain specific disciplines, it is an entire way of life, a lifestyle.
Coniaris argues that askesis transcends any particular regimen of exercises to constitute a comprehensive existential orientation aimed at the restoration of the divine image in the human person.
, Philokalia: The Bible of Orthodox Spirituality, 1998thesis
To abstain from food, then, should be a matter of our own choice and an ascetic labour. Gladly bear vigils, sleeping on the ground and all other hardships, looking to the glory that will be revealed to you
Evagrius grounds ascetic praxis in voluntary suffering freely chosen in orientation toward eschatological glory, distinguishing willed discipline from merely imposed hardship.
, The Philokalia, Volume 4, 1995thesis
Climacus works out his vision of ascetic spirituality as a living death longing for resurrection.
Sinkewicz identifies Climacus’s distinctive contribution as the integration of death-memory into the temporal and iconic framework of ascetic life, giving ascetic praxis an existential rather than merely disciplinary character.
, Evagrius of Pontus: The Greek Ascetic Corpus, 2003thesis
The three most comprehensive virtues of the soul are prayer, silence and fasting. Thus you should refresh yourself with the contemplation of created realities when you relax from prayer
This passage articulates the triadic structure of ascetic praxis — prayer, silence, and fasting — as the comprehensive framework within which the soul’s ascent to contemplation is organized.
, The Philokalia, Volume 4, 1995thesis
the truth of these religions lies not in their metaphysical doctrines, he maintains, but in their ascetic practices, which turn the will to life against itself
Schopenhauer, as read by Ure, relocates the soteriological truth of Buddhist, Brahmanical, and Christian traditions from doctrinal content to ascetic practice as the mechanism of will-negation.
, Philosophy as a Way of Life: History, Dimensions, Directions, 2021thesis
Ascetic identity will include virtues of self-denial, discernment, nonjudgment, mourning, repentance, obedience, humility, and love.
Sinkewicz catalogs the constellation of virtues that constitute ascetic identity in the tradition, showing that ascetic praxis is not reducible to bodily mortification but encompasses a comprehensive moral and relational formation.
, Evagrius of Pontus: The Greek Ascetic Corpus, 2003supporting
to separate the soul from the body lies as well in the power of the man who pursues virtue. For our Fathers gave to the meditation of death and to the flight from the body a special name: anachoresis.
Evagrius links ascetic praxis to the practice of anachoresis, arguing that voluntary withdrawal and meditation on death constitute the monk’s distinctive mode of bodily and psychic self-transcendence.
, Praktikos, 2009supporting
the state of virtue is the restitution of the soul’s powers to their former nobility and the convergence of the principal virtues in an activity that accords with nature.
Nikitas Stithatos argues that ascetic praxis aims not at an adventitiously acquired external state but at the recovery of an original, nature-given spiritual nobility implanted within the soul at creation.
, The Philokalia, Volume 4, 1995supporting
It needs fasting since an intemperate stomach begets an intemperate intellect.
Coniaris transmits the Philokalic doctrine that fasting as ascetic praxis has a direct cognitive function, correcting the disorders of the intellect that follow from bodily intemperance.
, Philokalia: The Bible of Orthodox Spirituality, 1998supporting
Evagrius was not alone amongst the monastics in adopting such pagan terminology to describe the goal of monastic practice.
Sharpe situates Evagrian ascetic praxis within a broader philosophical inheritance, demonstrating that monastic practice consciously absorbed Stoic and Platonic frameworks — especially the ideal of apatheia — as its conceptual vocabulary.
, Philosophy as a Way of Life: History, Dimensions, Directions, 2021supporting
God wants us to show our zeal for Him first by our outward asceticism, and then by our
Abba Philimon articulates a sequential ordering of ascetic praxis in which outward discipline precedes and enables the inward purity of intellect required for genuine prayer.
, The Philokalia, Volume 2, 1981supporting
Depth-psychology exists only if its outlook is not practical (pragmatic), but theoretical (theoretical even where it is a praxis).
Giegerich issues a critical corrective to instrumentalized understandings of psychological praxis, arguing that depth psychology’s praxis must retain a rigorously theoretical orientation rather than collapsing into pragmatic technique.
, The Soul’s Logical Life Towards a Rigorous Notion of, 2020supporting
Nietzsche aims to refute the Augustinian and Schopenhauerian ascetic denial of the value of life by demonstrating that it is possible to value this life, exactly as it is, as worthy of eternity.
Ure presents Nietzsche’s counter-position to ascetic life-denial, framing his thought as an attempt to affirm existence in its totality as a corrective to the pathological will-negation embedded in traditional ascetic ideals.
, Philosophy as a Way of Life: History, Dimensions, Directions, 2021supporting
The word praxis has a bad history. Homer used it for business affairs; Plato made it mean more the technical knowledge of applied sciences.
Hillman offers a genealogical skepticism toward the term praxis itself, tracing its dayworld and ego-bound connotations through Homer, Plato, and Aristotle before proposing a more refined, practice-oriented redefinition for depth-psychological work.
, The Dream and the Underworld, 1979aside
Patient endurance is the soul’s struggle for virtue; where there is struggle for virtue, self-indulgence is banished.
This passage frames patient endurance as the affective core of ascetic praxis, positioning it as the counter-force that displaces self-indulgence and opens the soul to purification.
, The Philokalia, Volume 4, 1995aside