Apollonian and Dionysian

In Greek mythology, Apollo and Dionysus are both sons of Zeus. Apollo, son of Leto, is the god of the sun, art, plague and disease, of rational thinking and order, and appeals to logic, prudence and purity and stands for reason. Dionysus, son of Semele, is the god of wine, dance and pleasure, of irrationality and chaos, representing passion, emotions and instincts. The ancient Greeks did not consider the two gods to be opposites or rivals, although they were often entwined by nature.

Nietzschean usage

Nietzsche found in classical Athenian tragedy an art form that transcended the pessimism found in the so-called wisdom of Silenus. The Greek spectators, by looking into the abyss of human suffering depicted by characters on stage, passionately and joyously affirmed life, finding it worth living. The main theme in The Birth of Tragedy is that the fusion of Dionysian and Apollonian Kunsttriebe ("artistic impulses") forms dramatic arts or tragedies. He argued that this fusion has not been achieved since the ancient Greek tragedians. Apollo represents harmony, progress, clarity, logic and the principle of individuation, whereas Dionysus represents disorder, intoxication, emotion, ecstasy and unity (hence the omission of the principle of individuation).

Nietzsche strongly distinguishes his Dionysus from the Dionysus of the Orphic tradition, which he considers a later corruption of the original Dionysian force. To him in the pre-Homeric world, Dionysian civilisations were marked by barbarism, cruelty, and ecstatic sexual excess, unrestrained by rational or moral principles. Nietzsche associates this period with unmediated life-affirmation, where violence and eroticism intertwined as expressions of raw vitality. The Orphics, overwhelmed by anxiety toward this unmitigated savagery, reacted by turning away from the physical world and abstracting their gods into metaphysical ideas. In doing so, they transformed Dionysus from a figure of visceral power into a god of suffering and redemption and, in parallel, converted man from a being of flesh and instincts into a soul burdened with guilt and the need for purification.

Nietzsche criticises this Orphic reinterpretation as an early decline in Greek spiritual health, arguing that it marked the beginning of an anti-life tendency that would later manifest in Platonism and Christianity. He further argues that Socrates and Euripides continued the Orphic trajectory, replacing instinct, myth, and artistic frenzy with rationalism, dialectic, and moral didacticism. By doing so, they undermined the ecstatic and violent balance of Apollonian and Dionysian forces, ultimately leading to the decline of Greek tragedy.

Nietzsche used these two forces because, for him, the world of mind and order on one side, and passion and chaos on the other, formed principles that were fundamental to the Greek culture: the Apollonian a dreaming state, full of illusions; and Dionysian a state of intoxication, representing the liberation of instincts and dissolution of boundaries. In this mould, a man appears as the satyr. He is the horror of the annihilation of the principle of individuality and at the same time someone who delights in its destruction.

In this state one enriches everything out of one's own fullness: whatever one sees, whatever wills is seen swelled, taut, strong, overloaded with strength. A man in this state transforms things until they mirror his power—until they are reflections of his perfection. This having to transform into perfection is—art.

Nietzsche is adamant that the works of Aeschylus and Sophocles represent the apex of artistic creation, the true realisation of tragedy; it is with Euripides, that tragedy begins its Untergang (literally 'going under' or 'downward-way;' meaning decline, deterioration, downfall, death, etc.). Nietzsche objects to Euripides' use of Socratic rationalism and morality 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. Socrates emphasised reason to such a degree that he diffused the value of myth and suffering to human knowledge. Plato continued along this path in his dialogues, and the modern world eventually inherited reason at the expense of artistic impulses found in the Apollonian and Dionysian dichotomy. He notes that without the Apollonian, the Dionysian lacks the form and structure to make a coherent piece of art, and without the Dionysian, the Apollonian lacks the necessary vitality and passion. Only the fertile interplay of these two forces brought together as an art represented the best of Greek tragedy.

An example of the impact of this idea can be seen in the book Patterns of Culture, where the anthropologist Ruth Benedict acknowledges Nietzschean opposites of "Apollonian" and "Dionysian" as the stimulus for her thoughts about Native American cultures. Carl Jung has written extensively on the dichotomy in Psychological Types. Michel Foucault commented that his own book Madness and Civilization should be read "under the sun of the great Nietzschean inquiry". Here Foucault referenced Nietzsche's description of the birth and death of tragedy and his explanation that the subsequent tragedy of the Western world was the refusal of the tragic and, with that, refusal of the sacred. The painter Mark Rothko was influenced by Nietzsche's view of tragedy presented in The Birth of Tragedy.