From Modern physics to Nietzsche’s Dionysian and Apollonian

The APOLLONIAN REALITY REDUCTION is popularly employed, in WESTERN CULTURE constructions of reality, as a SUBSTITUTE REALITY rather than as a TOOL OF INFERENCE of the INEFFABLE-because-NONLOCAL-and-IMPLICIT DIONYSIAN REALITY.  This deployment of the APOLLONIAN as a SUBSTITUTE REALITY rather than as an INFERENCE of the ineffable-because-nonlocal-and-implicit DIONYSiAN REALITY is an error that we WESTERN CULTURE ADHERENTS continue to be troubled by.

 

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WHAT THIS IS ABOUT:  I am writing this to point out a major source of confusion coming from language-based representations of reality which continues to divide and polarize our WESTERN CULTURE social collective.  This involves what Nietzsche calls the DIONYSIAN and APOLLONIAN senses of reality.  While the following explanation will cover this, the DIONYSIAN reality corresponds with Modern physics wherein FIGURE-and-GROUND-are-ONE as with a CLOUD in the ATMOSPHERE (i.e. in Modern physics, material entities are condensations of the electromagnietic field), while the APOLLONIAN reality corresponds with Newtonian physics wherein FIGURE-and-GROUND-are-TWO (i.e. where the FIGURE is INDEPENDENT of the GROUND).  In Modern WESTERN CULTURE, the APOLLONIAN reality is currently dominant;

In a few years, it will be 150 years since Nietzsche called for a return to a Dionysian culture in his The Birth of Tragedy, at least in the Western context. Can we today say that the spirit of our contemporary culture is Dionysian? I would say not, although there are pockets of Dionysian practices in general culture and many Dionysian movements in the domain of the spirit. Modern dance was inspired by Nietzsche’s ideas on the Dionysian; Kandinsky appropriated the Dionysian into visual arts and thereby initiated abstract painting; in philosophy Bataille and Heidegger developed ideas on ecstasy and ecstatic disposition; installation and performance art forces human capabilities and operates along limit experiences; the whole drug culture, though fraught with nihilism (and in the US with racism) has Dionysian elements, and finally, psychoanalysis promotes the Dionysian indirectly insofar as it opens up new vistas and experiences for the non-rational in the human. However, these Dionysian movements of the last 100 years or so are divergent and lack coherence to a large extent. To make the Dionysian the spirit of our times will take much effort and also chance. As for the former, we can do our share; as for the latter, we can hope for Dionysus to appear.

 – – – from … The Dionysian Revealed Itself As Truth: Have We Understood it? By Yunus Tuncel

To give a very simple example of what’s involved in this shift in understanding, the APOLLONIAN conceptualization has us see forms as LOCAL, INDEPENDENT THINGS-IN-THEMSELVES with their own powers of AUTHORING actions and development such that we see the TOWN as something that is GROWING larger and more populous and productive in a FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-TWO sense (content and container as two).  However, the DIONYSIAN conceptualization has us see TOWNING in the TRANSFORMING LANDSCAPE as a RELATIONAL FORM in the transforming relational continuum.    The DIONYSIAN conceptualizing is supported by Modern physics while the APOLLONIAN conceptualization is supported by Newtonian physics and manifests in the WESTERN CULTURE concepts of INDEPENDENT BEING OF ‘HUMANS’, ‘NATIONS’ and ‘CORPORATIONS’.

Modern physics, indigenous aboriginal cultures, Taoism/Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta have this DIONYSIAN understanding that EVERYTHING-IS-RELATED (mitakuye oyasin).

 

This essay associates the DIONYSIAN with FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-ONE, and the APOLLONIAN with FIGURE-and-GROUND-as-TWO.

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