In chapter 2 Nietzsche makes a distinction regarding how people respond to drama and response to events in real life. The arguments present the distinction between Apollonian and Dionysian personalities. The distinction of these two personalities is crucial in gaining an insight as to how people behave in this world. The ultimate goal is to promote full awareness of oneself and the behavior of humanities. It is also vital in discovering how humanities can work for different people. In studying humanities, referring to these personalities is vital in understanding the distinction of personalities portrayed by a person
According to Nietzsche’s famous distinction, Apollonian personalities are dominated by reason, rational, disciplined analytically and have a coherent thought. This side is also seen as the side corresponding to the Greek tragedy by seeking its meaning. According to him, the Dionysian personality is the one that is dominated by intuition, feelings, and freedom from limits. This side responds emotionally to force and fury of tragedy and music as well (Schulte 16).
Nietzsche derived these opposing Greek mythologies from Apollo, who was God of the sun; representing the light and truth. Accordingly he derived Dionysian from Dionysus God of spring and renewal and God of the Earth; thus everything was beyond rational analysis as it was natural. Dionysus was the god of the vibrant hence the energy of the earth, including spontaneity, emotion, and intuition. According to Nietzsche, the goal of life was to achieve reason and emotional balance. This balance was to enable them to achieve clarity in thinking, responsibility, being stable, and reliable for one’s actions. Also, the balance is to enable human beings to enjoy the fruits of the vine and enable them to express both hate and love unguided by any rules.
Nietzsche’s view proposes that music and art reflects a fusion of these two sides, and the best in life involves controlled passions. He even urged that people should not just live, but live with passion. According to him, taking chances would enhance personal growth even failure may result. Therefore, Nietzsche was arguing for reasonable passion, worthy of both Dionysus and Apollo and not irrational passion.
In the discussion of tragedy by Nietzsche, we recognize the tension achieved in the presence of Apollonian and Dionysian. They were not seen in ancient Greek as complete opposites, but rather as forming part of the whole. Apollonian emphasizes control and order in our psyches. The Dionysian side seems to balance this control and order by introducing the experience of emotional depths. Apollo’s god motto is ‘’ know thyself’’ is an ego overcoming the chaotic elements experienced through the unconscious, thus bringing order and sane life (Leeming 66). On the other hand, Dionysos is the need to delve into the experience of chaos and disorder before true wholeness of an individual is achieved.
Ridley answers a question, what motivates people’s delight in the landscape? According to him, the answer is sensibility. He argues that what permeates the whole of humanities is to define sensibility. According to Ridley, sensibility is a base for cultured emotional response to the actions of fellow humans. A refined feeling for recognition of manners, empathy for the other person, nature and art (Ridley, 207). According to him it cannot be Dionysian or coldly Apollonian, but meditates confidently in these two extremes. Non- scientific force is described by Thomas Hardy, where he describes the state of mind as an effect to the environment.
Further, according to him, natural magic is what influences sensibility. In his view, sensibility is what shows substantial cultural variation just like intelligence or other mental attributes. Sensibility is what causes a person to respond positively to music, rhetoric, and art. According to his analysis, it is the ‘’charge’’ that is contained in the conscious mind and responses to the forces of natural magic. In effect, the definition describes natural magic in broad terms of sensibility. According to Francis Bacon, magic is an honorable, ancient sense. The definition further describes natural magic as forces in nature which emotionally move people, and these forces undoubtedly are existent in nature as real as anything else.
Consequently, such views do not take account for Apollonian and Dionysus views to explain human behavior but rather sensibility. Sensibility is another natural way to explain human personalities, unlike the Socratic views which are dependent on one own insight of truths.
In the modern world, the Socratic stance was inherited thus losing the artistic impulses related to Dionysian and Apollonian. People see knowledge and truths as something that can be pursued its sake with one’s insight. The modern world is treated as something under the command of reason rather than something beyond what our rationality can fathom. According to Nietzsche’s distinction of culture, we are bound to fail because we belong to the Alexandrian culture. Nietzsche accepts the Aristophanes portrait of the Socrates as the first, mirror of epitome and supreme sophist for all sophistical tendencies. He argues that the Socratic notion is practical despite the teachings being against the notion that virtue is teachable. Nietzsche considers Socrates as the originator of rational moral process and education. However, their criteria for evil and good were not found in the traditions of past culture and achievements but they were allegedly objective and universal (Levine, 108).
Vision to these views by Nietzsche shows that he was an existentialist. The Dionysian sense of unity with nature is a direct experience with horror and terror in existence and is an experience that can helplessly leave one with a pessimistic view of life. This view, according to him caused the downfall of the melancholy Etruscans, and such views are incompatible with social and personal life. Therefore, they invented fiction gods to save themselves from such extinctions. The people were so vehement in desire and sensitive that they were capable of suffering if their gods were not revealed to them. The need for such metaphysical comfort is what caused the tragedies of Sophocles and Aeschylus; uniting the suffering Dionysian uniting them with the beautiful Apollonian form.
Conclusion
There has been instability of distinction between Dionysian views and Apollonian views which have been disseminated through Nietzsche’s discussions. In regards to his discussions, successive positions follow from the first distinction with the most obvious being the Dionysian with formlessness and the Apollonian with the innermost kernel preceding all history of things. The distinction between the formless Dionysian and the form of the Apollonian has proved impossible to maintain. The major problem lies in the discrepancies in Nietzsche’s claims. His language slips into a rhetoric form readily from time to time due to the formlessness described using Winckelmann’s disturbed visual rhetoric. It is important to recognize how visual is caught up in the binary structure of the birth tragedy. Nietzsche analysis can be seen to follow an orthodox of classism. According to him, classist subjectivity is described by rituality metaphors. It is an appearance in a dream or illusion. According to him, a plastic artist is in pure contemplation of images. Conclusively, he points out that his opinions are not a classist affirmation in visuality but rather there is an Apollonian redemption merely through appearance. Also, there is an effect of all powerful Dionysian through the Greek tragedy impulse, which shatters the individual fusion with his primal being (Mah, 103).
Works cited
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Mah, H. (2004). Enlightenment phantasies: cultural identity in France and Germany, 1750-
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Schutte, Ofelia. Beyond Nihilism: Nietzsche Without Masks. Chicago: The University of Chicago
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Bottom of Top of FormLevine, Peter. Nietzsche and the Modern Crisis of the Humanities. Albany: State Univ. of New
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