Description
🏆 2024 BIBA® Philosophy/Self-Discovery/Asceticism Winner!
Man has always sought to discover himself and his soul’s “depth” and understand how to relate to divinity.
Man has been looking for methods and means to “improve” himself since ancient times. Asceticism, as a way of life, has existed in secular or religious forms since the beginning of human existence, depending on the areas of manifestation.
In this book, I showed that ascetic practices were not specific only to Christian monks or Buddhist ascetics. It was also practiced by ordinary people through which they tried to get closer to their inner self and God. Asceticism was practiced both by theologians and philosophers who, being atheists, were not looking for God but were looking for “the depth of themselves.” We could name this “deep within us” as God or otherwise; it does not matter.
In this book, I tried to deal with two themes.
The first was that asceticism, in different degrees, can be practiced by both the faithful and the less faithful. Both seek the same thing that they call different. I dealt with the subject of the Holy Fathers of the Desert from the Egyptian Pateric. I have tried to present the variety of ways of manifesting asceticism, from a “harsh” form made by these hermits of the desert to a more “diluted” form that manifests itself today.
The second theme that I tried to discuss was the “attempt to revitalize” the asceticism that can be seen in Western society today dressed in an environmental form.
In this book, I explained how I see the issue of asceticism and the connection with God without turning the content into a religious one. The book is a philosophical book that deals with religious themes, a combination of philosophy and theology in approaching doctrinal themes related to asceticism.
I hope that the reader will discover in the pages of this book an unsuspected universe, a man’s search for the discovery of his own person. Each of us must find himself so that we become responsible individuals in front of history and ourselves.
Each of us was born with a purpose. Let us be an active part in building our destiny to fulfill that purpose.
