The son of Zeus and Leto, and the twin brother of Artemis. Apollo was the god of music (principally the lyre, and he directed the choir of the Muses) and also of prophecy, colonization, medicine, archery (but not for war or hunting), poetry, dance, intellectual inquiry and the carer of herds and flocks. He was also a god of light, known as "Phoebus" (radiant or beaming, and he was sometimes identified with Helios the sun god). He was also the god of plague and was worshiped asSmintheus (from sminthos, rat) and as Parnopius (from parnops, grasshopper) and was known as the destroyer of rats and locust, and according to Homer's Iliad, Apollo shot arrows of plague into the Greek camp. Apollo being the god of religious healing would give those guilty of murder and other immoral deeds a ritual purification. Sacred to Apollo are the swan (one legend says that Apollo flew on the back of a swan to the land of the Hyperboreans, he would spend the winter months among them), the wolf and the dolphin. His attributes are the bow and arrows, on his head a laurel crown, and the cithara (or lyre) and plectrum. But his most famous attribute is the tripod, the symbol of his prophetic powers.

Dionysus is the son of Zeus and Semele.  He was the god of fertility and wine, later considered a patron of the arts. He invented wine and spread the art of tending grapes. He has a dual nature. On the one hand bringing joy and devine ecstasy. On the other brutal, unthinking, rage. Thus, reflecting both sides of wines nature. If he choses Dionysus can drive a man mad. He is the only god to have a mortal parent. Zeus came to Semele in the night, invisable, felt only as a devine presence. Semele was pleased to be a lover of a god, even though she did not know which one. Word soon got around and Hera quickly assumed who was responsible. Hera went to Semele in disguise and convinced her she should see her lover as he really was. When Zeus next came to her she made him promise to grant her one wish. She went so far as to make him swear on the River Styx that he would grant her request. Zeus was madly in love and agreed. She then asked him to show her his true form. Zeus, was unhappy, and knew what would happen but, having sworn he had no choice. He appeared in his true form and Semele was instantly burnt to a crisp by the sight of his glory. Zeus did manage to rescue Dionysus and stiched him into his thigh to hold him until he was ready to be born. His birth from Zeus alone conferred immortality upon him.

 Dee Finney's blog

start date July 20, 2011

today's date January 4, 2013

page 417

TOPIC:   Apollonian and Dionysian Philosophy

NOTE:  I am currently studying Nutrition to get a Naturopath Certification and within that study came the topic of "temperaments" which I had never studied before.  Listed in the text were many ancient Philosophers, which I looked up and saved their details to my computer.  But then I came to Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche and his book "The Birth of a Tragedy".

I was really out of my element here as I wasn't allowed to go to college, and in later years, when I paid my way to go to Alverno College in Milwaukee, Nietzsche was not in the curriculum of my class that I can recall, and I got an A+ grade in the class and was very proud of it.

However, I couldn't afford to go another year in college and when I did later go to nightschool, I studied topics that were related to my job like accounting and drafting and supervisory management, etc. 

Now that I'm self-educating myself, I found this particular topic interesting. Hope my readers will too - at least 'some of them'.  This is not an easy topic and I have read some pages in my current class that was total gibberish to me, and thus I am not foisting that on my readers.  Consider yourself lucky.

Some of my pages are very long, but I hope interesting and this one will too if you like Philosophy.

The Apollonian and Dionysian is a philosophical and literary concept, or dichotomy, based on certain features of ancient Greek mythology. Many Western philosophical and literary figures have invoked this dichotomy in critical and creative works.

In Greek mythology, Apollo and Dionysus are both sons of Zeus. Apollo is the god of the Sun, of dreams, and of reason, while Dionysus is the god of wine, ecstasy, and intoxication. The Greeks did not consider the two gods to be opposites or rivals. However, Parnassus, the mythical home of poetry and all art, was strongly associated with each of the two gods in separate legends.

"In 1795, Shiller conceptualized two psychological types, the 'idealist' and the 'Realist'.  The German philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche in his first book, The Birth of Tragedy (1872); english translation, 1968) introduced his famous distinction between the Appolonian, or rational, element in human nature and the Dionsian, or passionate element as exemplified in the Greek Gods Apollo and Dionsis.  With a blend of the two principles, either in art or in life, humanity achieves a momentary harmony with the Primordial Mystery.

The Swiss writer of epic poetry, stories, novels, dramas, and essays, Carl Georg Friedrich Spittler in his epic Prometheus and Epimetheus (1881; English translation, 1931) reflecting the pessimism of Schopenhauer and the romanticism of Nietzsche describes two types called Prometheus and Epimetheus.

I found a cartoon in my research yesterday, that shows the four temperaments very well without being wordy:

THAT SAYS IT ALL:  THE LINES REPRESENT: 

CHOLERIC, PHLEGMATIC, MELANCHOLIC, AND SANGUINE

THE ONLY ONE THAT IS OBVIOUS IS THE MELANCHOLIC BECAUSE WE'VE ALL PRETTY MUCH HEARD OF MELANCHOLIA

OR 'DEPRESSION'.  I COULD NOT HAVE GUESSED WHAT THE OTHER THREE WERE. BUT THE PICTURES ARE EXCELLENT

DESCRIPTIONS OF THE TYPES.

HERE IS A CHART THAT FURTHUR EXPLAINS THE FOUR TEMPERAMENTS

ONE LAST CARTOON

 German philosophy

Although the use of the concepts of the Apollonian and Dionysian is famously linked to Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy, the terms were used before him in German culture.^[1] The poet Hölderlin spoke of them, while Winckelmann talked of Bacchus, the god of wine.

Nietzsche's aesthetic usage of the concepts, which was later developed philosophically, first appeared in his book The Birth of Tragedy, which was published in 1872. His major premise here was that the fusion of Dionysian and Apollonian "Kunsttrieben" ("artistic impulses") forms dramatic arts, or tragedies. He goes on to argue that this fusion has not been achieved since the ancient Greek tragedians. Nietzsche is adamant that the works of Aeschylus and Sophocles represent the apex of artistic creation, the true realization of tragedy; it is with Euripides that tragedy begins its downfall ("Untergang"). Nietzsche objects to Euripides' use 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.

The relationship between the Apollonian and Dionysian juxtapositions is apparent, Nietzsche claimed in The 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 and chaotic (Dionysian) 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 with the heart of creation.

Different from Kant's idea of the sublime, the Dionysian is all-inclusive rather than alienating to the viewer as a sublimating experience. The sublime needs critical distance, while the Dionysian demands a closeness of experience. According to Nietzsche, the critical distance, which separates man from his closest emotions, originates in Apollonian ideals, which in turn separate him from his essential connection with self. The Dionysian embraces the chaotic nature of such experience as all-important; not just on its own, but as it is intimately connected with the Apollonian. The Dionysian magnifies man, but only so far as he realizes that he is one and the same with all ordered human experience. The godlike unity of the Dionysian experience is of utmost importance in viewing the Dionysian as it is related to the Apollonian because it emphasizes the harmony that can be found within one’s chaotic experience.

In Anthropology

Anthropologist Ruth Benedict and other's writing in the Culture and personality school of anthropology in the mid 20th century, used the terms respectively to refer to characterize cultures that value restraint and modesty (Apollonian) and ostentatiousness and excess (Dionysian). An example of an apollonian culture in Benedict's analysis was the Zuñi people as opposed to the Dionysian Kwakiutl people.^[2] The theme was developed by Benedict in her main work Patterns of Culture.

 Paglia's usage

American humanities scholar Camille Paglia writes about the Apollonian and Dionysian in her controversial 1990 bestseller Sexual Personae.^[3] The broad outline of her concept is borrowed from Nietzsche, an admitted influence, although Paglia's ideas diverge significantly.

The Apollonian and Dionysian concepts comprise a dichotomy that serves as the basis of Paglia's theory of art and culture. For Paglia, the Apollonian is light and structured while the Dionysian is dark and chthonic (she prefers Chthonic to Dionysian throughout the book, arguing that the latter concept has become all but synonymous with hedonism and is inadequate for her purposes, declaring that "the Dionysian is no picnic."). The Chthonic is associated with females, wild/chaotic nature, and unconstrained sex/procreation. In contrast, the Apollonian is associated with males, clarity, celibacy and/or homosexuality, rationality/reason, and solidity, along with the goal of oriented progress: "Everything great in western civilization comes from struggle against our origins."^[4]

She argues that there is a biological basis to the Apollonian/Dionysian dichotomy, writing: "The quarrel between Apollo and Dionysus is the quarrel between the higher cortex and the older limbic and reptilian brains."^[5] Moreover, Paglia attributes all the progress of human civilization to masculinity revolting against the Chthonic forces of nature, and turning instead to the Apollonian trait of ordered creation. The Dionysian is a force of chaos and destruction, which is the overpowering and alluring chaotic state of wild nature. Rejection of – or combat with – Chthonianism by socially constructed Apollonian virtues accounts for the historical dominance of men (including asexual and homosexual men; and childless and/or lesbian-leaning women) in science, literature, arts, technology and politics. As an example, Paglia states: "The male orientation of classical Athens was inseparable from its genius. Athens became great not despite but because of its misogyny."^[6]

Post-modern reading

Nietzsche's idea has been interpreted as an expression of fragmented consciousness or existential instability by a variety of modern and post-modern writers, especially Martin Heidegger, Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze.^[7][8] According to Peter Sloterdijk, the Dionysian and the Apollonian form a dialectic; they are contrasting, but Nietzsche does not mean one to be valued more than the other.^[9] Truth being primordial pain, our existential being is determined by the Dionysian/Apollonian dialectic.

Extending the use of the Apollonian and Dionysian onto an argument on interaction between the mind and physical environment, Abraham Akkerman has pointed to masculine and feminine features of city form.^[10]

 Michael Pollan

The dichotomy is a major theme in Michael Pollan's book, "The Botany of Desire" in which he details humanity's attempt at controlling nature through large-scale production of food crops. He argues any attempt to bring control to a single variable in a natural system only results in more variables to which disorder and entropy will reign. Thus, all control is partial, temporary and largely illusory. Some farmers accept this and use strategies like crop rotation, variety and secondary crops which complement their main crops with beneficial insects and such. Other farmers try to sustain monocultures, which is the ultimate attempt at order among chaos, and must depend on chemicals or genetic tampering to defend against encroaching disorder. Farmers who embrace the chaos are usually far more successful and less beholden to corporations, but can't match the production or homogeneity necessary to supply restaurant chains.

 Stephen King's usage

American novelist Stephen King uses Apollonian and Dionysian analysis in Danse Macabre (1981),^[11] a non-fiction survey of horror literature that was expanded from King's lecture notes for creative writing and literature courses he taught at the University of Maine in the late 1970s. Though wary of indulging in what King describes as "academic bullshit," he nevertheless argues that mythology can illuminate recurring themes in horror, saying "I used the terms Apollonian (to suggest reason and the power of the mind) and Dionysian (to suggest emotion, sensuality, and chaotic action)."^[12]

NOTE FROM DEE:  I HAVE TWO FAVORITE NOVELISTS:  STEPHEN KING IS ONE OF THEM.

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, the rational/logical and reasonable.

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 irrational and non-logical.

 References

v t e Friedrich Nietzsche Works The Birth of Tragedy Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense Untimely Meditations Hymnus an das Leben Human, All Too Human The Dawn The Gay Science Thus Spoke Zarathustra Beyond Good and Evil On the Genealogy of Morality The Case of Wagner Twilight of the Idols The Antichrist Ecce Homo Nietzsche contra Wagner The Will to Power (posthumous) Concepts Amor fati Apollonian and Dionysian Eternal return Free will God is dead Herd instinct Last man Master-slave morality Nietzschean affirmation Perspectivism Ressentiment Transvaluation of values Tschandala Übermensch Will to power World riddle Related articles Works about Nietzsche Influence and reception of Nietzsche Anarchism and Nietzsche Nietzsche-Archiv Nietzsche-Haus, Naumburg Nietzsche-Haus, Sils-Maria Nietzsche Music Project Relationship with Max Stirner My Sister and I