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ascetic ideal
Nietzsche's term for the systematic valuation of self-denial, suffering, and the renunciation of earthly life, expressed in religious, philosophical, and moral traditions that treat the body and its drives as obstacles to higher truth or goodness. He argues in the Third Essay of the Genealogy that the ascetic ideal paradoxically represents the will to power in disguise: the ascetic still imposes meaning on suffering and exercises control over existence, but does so by denying life rather than affirming it.
Genealogical method
The genealogical method is Nietzsche's approach to understanding moral concepts by tracing their historical and psychological origins rather than evaluating them as timeless truths, asking how a value emerged, what human needs it serves, and whose interests it advances.
Will to truth
Nietzsche's concept of the will to truth identifies the unconditional drive to seek objective truth as itself a value choice grounded in asceticism rather than a neutral rational impulse, challenging us to ask whether this commitment might be a disguised form of life-denial.