Platonism and Asceticism

Initially it is hard to see how Platonic dualism has affected Christian ethics. However, that is because it seems that dualism is/was so commonplace in our outlook as to blind us to its presence. Being more Aristotelian in my ethical stance, I cannot help but militate against the lack of 'instantiation' or 'incarnation' that is engendered by Plato's ethical/moral dualism. With that in mind, forgive me for beng largely critical (at least herein) of Plato in this respect.
I think that we see the negative effects of moral dualism across the breadth of Church history in the the various expressions of asceticism. It has been said all of Western philosophy is but footnotes and addendums (be they pro or con) to Plato. Much the same thing could be said of 'asceticism as central spiritual discipline.' As you will soon see, I will be coming down on the 'con' side.
The removal of man from his environment, that is, the incarnate life, with all its 'materialality'(which, whether we like it or not is where we are stuck for the time being, and in a redeemed fashion, what we will be resurrected into for the rest of eternity) doesn't do much to aid the living of the authentic Christian life in the midst of the world. I am not a rabid pragmatist/utilitarian by any means, but it is simply unabalanced, and it denies the created goodness of the physcial body, as well as the created order by extension. In its own way it is a retreat into the self, and away from the sometimes nasty, and certainly morally alloyed front lines of the Kingdom and ministry to the world. In emphasizing evil/sin as a thing that is 'of the body' or peculiarly linked to incarnate existence, we make the mistake of thinking we can avoid it by simply removing that which is 'of the body' (food, reasonable comfort, fellowship, sex;--which leads to another difficulty: what are the criteria for the determination of what is fleshly or not? What happens if asceticism takes a particularly ironic turn and calls study and communal scholarship a thing of the flesh, and then follows our culture into its pronounced inter-personal atomization?) Anyway...The danger of this is that it places sin/evil once removed from us as fallen beings. Inasmuch as we can say 'the devil made me do it' or 'I was in the flesh when that happened' we have rejected our own depravity as a meaningful anthropological category. We are sinful; we don't like to admit it, and so we attempt to justify ourselves by way of identifying a cosmic source of moral evil outside of ourselves to ease our throbbing consciences. Or we simply say that that its a matter of our 'physicality overwhelming our spirituality.' The former is true in a minimal sense regarding Satan simpliciter, but in a more holistic sense, sin is in me, not out there. Not in Satan, nor in strong drink, nor in the beauty that gives opportunity for lust. Even in that sentence is seen the core of the argument. One does not blame the beautiful woman for the lust of the lecher, but rightly the lecher is deemed blameworthy. Sin is not found in the warp and woof of physical beauty, (for her beauty is a gift from God, who does not give evil or substandard gifts) or at the bottom of a pint, or on on the shining porcelain of a plate licked clean after a great feast, but in the interiority of the lover/lecher, the drinker/alcoholic, or the feaster/glutton. The sin is inside me. It is the perversion of goodness to which my whole being is bent. I cannot extirpate these seeds by simply avoiding the soil they find most fertile, but only by allowing my garden to be weeded and my stock of seed replenished from a better Gardener than I. Moreover I think the New Testament miliates against Plato's faulty linking of moral evil with ignorance of the soul, as caused by its fleshly prison. Mere ignorance and mere knowledge are not the determinig factors for moral evil in the human person. More than a few intelligent and well informed people were/are very sinful. (Nazi doctors, the Nixon administration, me...) There must be another noetic/anthropological category by which we can explain our behavior. (I hear a voice in my head saying, 'It's the SIN stupid!') Any anthropology or ethical framework that doesn't take into account mankinds fully sinful constitution (spiritually and bodily fallen, to use a dichotomy I dislike) denies Scriptural testimony about us. Moral dualism of the Platonic variety, besides quietly elevating Satan to a position of parity with God (a la Zoroastrianism) also allows us an easy escape from the reality of our own depravity and responsibility, thereby cheapening the grace of God.