The Apollonian and Dionysian Dialectic

As a college student I was fascinated by philosophy.  Having returned from 8 months in Germany in 1975 with a reasonable competency in the language, I took a series of three courses at Stanford in German philosophy called Deutsche Geistesgeschichte.  One of the books we read was Nietzche’s The Birth of Tragedy.  This was Nietzsche’s first significant work.  At the time he was under the spell of Richard Wagner, the great opera composer, and the spirit of Wagner’s music was undoubtedly a big influence on Nietzche’s thinking.  The full title of the book was actually “The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music”, though it is generally known by the shorter title.

In this book Nietzsche argued, among many other topics, that art, and indeed the human condition, was a struggle between Apollonian and Dionysian forces.  For Nietzsche, Apollonian is used to describe the light-filled, measured and rational impulses in man.  Apollo, of course, is the god of light, and is also associated with refined beauty and aesthetic taste.  Apollonian character attributes are those that express individuality, control, refinement and intellect.

Dionysus, on the other hand, is the God of the wine harvest and the festival, of uninhibited, often sensual release and inebriation.  From Nietzsche’s perspective, Dionysian impulses connect us to a more primitive state of being, without the rigid boundaries of individuality, allowing us to connect to the energy and intoxication of a communal life force.

For Nietzsche, and here I agree from my own experience, music is primarily Dionysian in its effect, allowing us to transcend our egos and individuality to experience a state of primordial unity and experience a rush of pure, ecstatic emotion.

But the Dionysian is also seen in other aspects of culture – in our efforts to lift ourselves out of the tyranny of the day-to-day and the sometimes stultifying effect of our disciplined, sober lives.  Drinking, eating, dancing, laughing, sex, sport, gambling all have elements of the Dionysian, because they challenge the order and restraint of our lives.  Dionysus offers chaos, excess and ecstasy as an anti-thesis to Apollo’s discipline and ‘know thyself’ restraint.  Dionysus encourages total immersion in contrast to Apollo’s maintenance of a critical intellectual and aesthetic distance.

Isn't this dialectic, though presenting us with a lifelong contradiction of impulses, the very source of life’s most sublime moments?  Doesn't the art of living consist of finding the proper balance, not suppressing one or the other?

For surely those who view the Dionysian as sinful and try to order their lives in a purely Apollonian manner become dry husks of human beings with no ecstasy and a very narrow scope of joy.  And those who totally indulge the Dionysian lose the edges of their individuality and self-control, slipping into the abyss of debauchery and hedonism.

But balancing the dialectic is not an equation or a recipe in the battle of life.  There is no formula for success and there is risk at every juncture.  We careen from one corner of the ring to the other, a self-righteous, arrogant creature on one side and an inebriated, profligate mess at the other.  It is naive to hope for perfection, for order, for peace, for harmony.  Life is a struggle.