Apollonian and Dionysian
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The Apollonian and Dionysian is a philosophical and literary concept, or dichotomy, based on certain features of ancient Greek mythology. Several Western philosophical and literary figures have invoked this dichotomy in critical and creative works, including Plutarch, Friedrich Nietzsche, Robert A. Heinlein[1], Ruth Benedict, Thomas Mann, Hermann Hesse, literary critic G. Wilson Knight, Ayn Rand (who rejected it in favor of mind-body integration), Stephen King and cultural critic Camille Paglia.
In Greek mythology, Apollo and Dionysus are both sons of Zeus. Apollo is the god of the Sun, lightness, music, and poetry, while Dionysus is the god of wine, ecstasy, and intoxication. In the modern literary usage of the concept, the contrast between Apollo and Dionysus symbolizes principles of individualism versus wholeness, light versus darkness, or civilization versus primal nature. The ancient Greeks did not consider the two gods as opposites or rivals.
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[edit] German philosophy
Although the use of the concepts of Apollonian and Dionysian is famously related to Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy, the terms were used before him in Prussia [2]. The poet Hölderlin used it, while Winckelmann talked of Bacchus, the god of wine.
[edit] Nietzsche's usage
Nietzsche's aesthetic usage of the concepts, which was later developed philosophically, was first developed in his book The Birth of Tragedy, which he published in 1872. His major premise here was that the fusion of Dionysian and Apollonian "Kunsttrieben" (artistic impulses) forms dramatic art's, or tragedy's, main prerequisite. He goes on to argue that that has not been achieved since the ancient Greek tragedians. Nietzsche is adamant that the works of Aeschylus, above all, and also Sophocles represent the summit of artistic creation, the true realization of tragedy; it is with Euripides, he states, that tragedy begins its "Untergang" (literally "going under," meaning decline, deterioration, downfall, death). Nietzsche objects to Euripides' utilization of Socratic rationalism in his tragedies, claiming that the infusion of ethics and reason robs tragedy of its foundation, namely the fragile balance of the Dionysian and Apollonian.
Apollo (Apollonian or Apollinian): the dream state or the wish to create order, principium individuationis (principle of individuation), plastic (visual) arts, beauty, clarity, stint to formed boundaries, individuality, celebration of appearance/illusion, human beings as artists (or media of art's manifestation), self-control, perfection, exhaustion of possibilities, creation.
Dionysus (Dionysian): chaos, intoxication, celebration of nature, instinctual, intuitive, pertaining to the sensation of pleasure or pain, individuality dissolved and hence destroyed, wholeness of existence, orgiastic passion, dissolution of all boundaries, excess, human being(s) as the work and glorification of art, destruction.
The relationship between the Apollonian and Dionysian juxtapositions is apparent, Nietzsche claimed in Birth of Tragedy, in the interplay of Greek Tragedy; The tragic hero of the drama, the main protagonist, struggles to make order (in the Apollonian sense) of his unjust (chaotic) Fate, though he dies unfulfilled in the end. For the audience of such a drama, Nietzsche claimed, this tragedy allows us to sense an underlying essence, what he called the "Primordial Unity", which revives our Dionysian nature - which is almost indescribably pleasurable. Though he later dropped this concept saying it was “...burdened with all the errors of youth” (Attempt at Self Criticism, §2), the overarching theme was a sort of metaphysical solace or connection to the heart of creation, so to speak. This perspective should not be construed, however, with Nietzsche's later works which disregarded this and other metaphysical arguments for more naturalistic lines of thought emphasizing individualism (supermen) and what is termed 'Perspectivism'.
[edit] Paglia's Use
Camille Paglia writes about the Apollonian and Dionysian in Sexual Personae [3]. The two concepts split a set of dichotomies that create the basis of Paglia's theory. For her, the Dionysian is dark and chthonic, and the Apollonian is light and structured. The Dionysian is associated with nature and women and sex, and the Apollonian is associated with clarity and solidity, and sexless goal oriented progress. Paglia attributes all the progress of civilization to men revolting against the Dionysian force of women, and turning instead to Apollonian ordered creation. The Dionysian is a force of chaos and destruction which is the overpoweringly alluring real state of nature, and the turn away from it towards societally constructed virtues accounts for the prevalence of asexuality and homosexuality in geniuses and in the most culturally prosperous places such as ancient Athens.
[edit] References
- ^ Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land, 1961
- ^ Adrian Del Caro, "Dionysian Classicism, or Nietzsche's Appropriation of an Aesthetic Norm", in Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 50, No. 4 (Oct. - Dec., 1989), pp. 589-605 (English)
- ^ Paglia, Sexual Personae, 1990
[edit] See also
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