Dionysian & Apollinian?
Arizona Jules
I've started reading Nietzsche's 'Birth of a Tragedy' and he seems to
make multiple references to these two 'modes' as well as an explanation,
but I fear that my limited knowledge of Greek mythology (Apollo &
Dionysus?) is preventing me from fully udnerstanding this.
Could someone throw me a philisophical "bone"? ;)
Much appreciated....
J.
The Immortalist
news:3CAA7137...@hotmail.com...
Nietzsche became a professor of classics at the astoundingly young age of
twenty-four; he published a number of serious academic articles, taught
Greek literature and philosophy, and was beloved by his students, who gave
him a torchlight parade when they feared that he would be lured away from
the university by a better job offer. During this time as a professor,
Nietzsche fell under the spell of the composer Richard Wagner for some
years. His first book, The Birth of Tragedy, presents an original theory of
Greek tragedy that owes something to this enthusiasm; where others had seen
the Greeks as a people of noble moderation, Nietzsche saw them struggling to
attain a precarious but life-affirming balance between tendencies to
aesthetic order and the chaotic life of the instincts (the Apollinian and
the Dionysian). This book was also an ((answer)) ((to)) philosophical
((pessimism)), exemplified by the philosopher Arthur :(Schopenhauer:(
Nietzsche thought that the tragic world-view of the Greeks provided an
example of how one could live joyously even while recognizing the pain and
suffering of existence, but without any hope of future salvation (as in
Christianity).
As a philologist, the Greek culture greatly influenced Nietzsche's thought
and worldview. Nietzsche understood the Dionysus figure to be the epitome of
life, the cyclical annhilation and rebirth of a god in an inherently
meaningless world. Early in his work, he maintained a distinction between
what he determined to be the two opposing yet necessary aspects of human
existence, of which the gods Apollo and Dionysus were representative. The
Apollinian, as Nietzsche illustrated, flows from a profound abundance of
"vision, association, poetry;" essentially, a state of higher intelligence
and logical reasoning. By contrast, the Dionysian reflects an intoxicated
condition, one in which "gesture, passion, song, [and] dance" amplify a
sensuality consonant with the most primal human instincts.
These states do not exist independently, nor can a culture be considered
healthy and completely human without both. Nihilism, the realization that
the highest values have devalued themselves, takes root in a culture or
individual when one of these, particulalry the Apollinian, wrenches control
from the balance between the two. In short, according to Nietzsche, in a
healthy (_-dynamic-_), "All these climactic moments of life mutually
stimulate one another; the world of images and ideas of the one suffices as
a suggestion for the others: - in this way, states finally merge into one
another though they might perhaps have good reason to remain apart." This is
salvation in a world without god, the controlled explosion of abundant,
primal human intoxication in a world whose values we create.
Apollo
order
lawfulness
perfected
form
clarity
precision
self-control
individuation
Dionysus
change
creation
destruction
movement
rhythm
ecstasy
oneness.
Nietzsche's designations of two different Greek art forms and artistic
tendencies, reflecting two fundamental human and natural impulses. He
invoked the names of the gods Apollo and Dionysus to identify and
distinguish them in his discussion of the origin of the tragic art and
culture of the Greeks (which he traced to their --confluence--),
+(_-associating-_)+ (See The Birth of Tragedy (1872), sects. 1-5; The Will
to Power (1901), sects. 1049-52.) EDGE OF CHAOS
To conceive of the body, and not the mind, as the true self is part of a
change in perspective that has far reaching implications. One implication
for Nietzsche was a deep appreciation of the many non-rational faculties
that emanate from the passions of the body, and the darker and more
unconscious layers of the soul. Already in his first major work, The Birth
of Tragedy (1871), Nietzsche developed a theory of art which was radically
different from any theory of aesthetics that had been published before.
Nietzsche developed this theory by way of an innovative analysis of
classical Greek drama. The main inspiration for classical Greek tragedies
were, according to him, two forces or experiences that he called the
"Dionysian" and the "Apollinian" respectively. The Dionysian represents a
state of deep intoxication or frenzy; the Apollinian represents visionary
dreams. Deep intoxication was primarily experienced during the festivals in
honor of the god Dionysus, the god of wine (and in earlier times almost
certainly the god of hallucinogenic mushrooms). Significant dreams and
visions would come after the experience of deep intoxication and what was
then thought of as divine frenzy. In the arts the Dionysian is primarily
experienced in music, while the representation of the Olympic gods in
classical Greek sculpture are the epitome Apollinian vision.
In The Birth of Tragedy , the individual manifestations of the answer to the
question at hand, "How and why did tragedy die," center around the
corruption of the essence of tragedy, originally created in the image of its
constituent parts (the Apollinian and the Dionysian). The nature of this
corruption (which Nietzsche implies arose from the conflict-ridden and hence
unstable essence of tragedy itself) takes many forms. One guise of this
degeneration Nietzsche presents is the movement away from the healthy
symptom of a desire for suffering exhibited by the young Greek culture at
the time of The Birth of Tragedy . This sign of vim and vigor was over time
transformed into a flimsy optimism, a symptom of the decline of the Greek
spirit as it aged. Nietzsche specifically names this Socratic optimism the
death of tragedy. He also specifically mentions as the cause of tragedy's
death the abandonment of music in favor of rational dialectic as the basic
drive of tragedy. Yet another form the corruption takes is that of the most
classic Greek problem, the tension between the universal and the particular.
By flipping the Socratic definitions on their heads and equating the
universal with Nietzsche's description of the Dionysian, the degeneration
Nietzsche describes can be seen as a movement away from universal experience
toward immersion in the particular appearances of rational discourse.
So far we have only viewed half the task of literature--to investigate the
ambiguity and ambivalence of Man's relation to the earth. We have done that
by noticing fundamental contrasting domains that mirror a deep uncertainty
in the nature of Man himself. Even left with this schizophrenic break,
Nietzsche's Dionysian/Apollinian point about tragic drama fits the whole of
literature: both_sides_are_required: earth and sky; passion and form,
darkness and light, intensity and lucidity.
The unconscious behaves like an animal, admittedly an unbelievably clever
and sophisticated one, but zoological none-the-less. Each time the Ego
changes its attitude to it, there is a corresponding alteration in the
unconscious which reflects the new relationship. In other words, a constant
dynamic equilibrium exists between what we think we are, and how our psyche
as a whole, responds. As each of the four phases is attended to (and to make
matters worse, they overlap,) new responses come from the unconscious,
making new demands on us for new equilibria to be sought.
Jung mentions an additional complication. He propounded two types of
thinking (and presumably feeling,) which he called Apollinian and Dionysian,
the full nature of which far exceeds Nietzsche's aesthetic description of
them. While these are more or less opposites, the pair of them stand in
contrast to what Neitzsche called Socratic thinking. For modern Westerners,
the essential conflict seems more between conscious Socratic and unconscious
Dionysian forces, with ". Apollo himself as the glorious divine image of the
principle of Individuation." Unfortunately it is not that simple, for an
Apollinian approach is essentially introverted, and ". the process of
individuation must lead to more intense and broader collective relationships
and not to isolation." In fact Neitzsche's Dionysian vision # ibid. 877 of
"Nature, hostile or enslaved [reconciled] with her prodigal son - Man"
closely parallels Dorn's concept of unus mundus as "a synthesis of the
conscious with the unconscious." However that synthesis becomes more
difficult to aspire to when consciousness speaks like a Socrates, and the
unconscious replies visuo-spatially and sensuously as Dionysos. Apollo is an
admirable image of the sunlight of consciousness, but that is only one
component. The reflective lunar nature of Artemis complements this. She is
not simply darkness: she is, much more than John's logos, truly ". the light
that shines in the darkness ." John 1:5
Yet there is another feminine element missing. Dionysos and Apollo represent
the downward and upward expansions of the ego as it explores the
individuation process, instinct in its raw and transformed cultural forms;
and to assimilate both requires a link between them. Here lies anima as a
bridge, not just from ego to unconsciousness, but from instinct to culture.
She partakes of both, so she joins both.
Methods were not clearly deliniated for determining the "confluence or
associating" ie; "structural coupling" in order to determine the connectence
of nodes withing this network of attribures.
such as:
The cybernetic principle the engineers discovered is a general one: if all
the variables are tightly coupled, and if you can truly manipulate one of
them in all its freedoms, then you can indirectly control all of them. This
principle plays on the holistic nature of systems. As Latil writes, "The
regulator is unconcerned with causes; it will detect the deviation and
correct it. The error may even arise from a factor whose influence has never
been properly determined hitherto, or even from a factor whose very
existence is unsuspected." How the system finds agreement at any one moment
is beyond human knowing, and more importantly, not worth knowing.
Then there would be the matter of different levels that emerge from this
connectence, not higher but "chunkier" which would lead to an understanding
of the messiness (nihalistic/ordered) paradox. But that would have to wait
for the theory of the evolution of the evolution of evolutions (complexity
theory) .....
gotta crash but thanx had to update this particular root and update me data
base
pEaCe
oh ya and cant forget how the method would entail and "intuition" not
thought about, a system for pattern searching, like when an dogs learns to
predict where the ball will arive when thrown and runs to "associate"
position with intuition.....
please research this before you take my word on it, for i am tired right
now...
Mike Dubbeld
Dionysis God of Wine and Revelry is representative of animal
instinct/passions.
Apollo the Deadly Archer is also representative of Reason.
Mike Dubbeld
"Arizona Jules" <bari...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
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