It’s been two weeks since I’ve started reading Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy, and I’m finally finished. It was a dense read, but well worth it for anyone interested in the origins of drama and tragedy.
Nietzsche opens the book by discussing the two fundamental drives that he believes are at work in all humans – the Apollonian and the Dionysian. The Apollonian is the drive towards individuation, form, and clarity. The Dionysian, on the other hand, is the drive towards chaos, excess, and ecstasy. He posits that all art arises from the tension between these two drives. The Apollonian drives a person towards form and beauty, while the Dionysian pulls them towards excess and chaos. Nietzsche believes that the birth of tragedy occurs when the two drives are in balance.
When this balance is achieved, the artist is able to create a work of art that is both beautiful and meaningful. However, the danger is that the artist might overindulge in one drive or the other, resulting in a work of art that is either too chaotic or too static. The challenge for the artist is to find the right balance between the two drives. Nietzsche believes that the Greek tragedians were able to achieve this balance. They were able to create works of art that were both beautiful and meaningful.
He then goes on to discuss how the Ancient Greeks were able to create such beautiful works of art – largely to their understanding and harnessing of those two drives. They had gods like Apollo representing the Apollonian ideals and Dionysus representing the Dionysian. They also had festivals dedicated to each god where people would dress up as satyrs and maenads and let loose in drunken revelry. In other words, they embraced the excess of the Dionysian drive. This is what Nietzsche believes is the true meaning of the word tragedy. It is a celebration of the Dionysian drive.
However, Nietzsche believes that over time, the Dionysian drive has been increasingly suppressed in Western society. This is primarily because of the way in which we have developed an aversion to suffering and to pain. As a result, Western society has been able to suppress the Dionysian drive and instead embrace the Apollonian drive. It is this Apollonian drive that Nietzsche believes is the root of our most abhorrent and repugnant actions and thoughts.
For example, he believes that the root of all violence is the desire for power. If we could only overcome our desire for power, we would not be so violent. This is because we do not experience any real pain in this desire. If we did, we would not be able to justify our actions. However, we have learned to repress this desire and instead direct our focus towards creating art and beauty. Nietzsche believes that this is the true meaning of tragedy. It is not simply the story of a hero who was wronged. It is the celebration of the Dionysian drive.
The question that Nietzsche poses is this: can we actually make ourselves beautiful and meaningful by embracing the Dionysian drive? Or is this merely a mask for the Apollonian drive? Is there a way to overcome or abolish desire for power and instead embrace the Dionysian drive? This is the question that Nietzsche answers in this book.
To illustrate this with an example; think of a piano. We know that when we strike the keys on a piano, they will produce sounds that we recognize as musical. However, the sounds we hear from a piano are not the sounds we produce. It is the piano that produces the sounds that we hear. The piano is the instrument. We are merely the musicians. We play the piano.
We are not the piano. Similarly, we are not the Dionysian drive. We are merely the Apollonian drive. We are the Apollonian drive that wants to create beautiful things. We want to create beautiful things, and we want to experience beauty in our lives. But since we are not the Dionysian drive, we cannot create beauty. The Dionysian drive is not under our control. We can only express it. We can only pursue it. We can only cultivate it. We can only find pleasure in it. We can only recognize it when it is present in our lives. But we cannot create it.
The Dionysian drive is a part of our being, but it is not a part of our thinking or our actions. We must learn to let the Dionysian drive express itself in our lives.
Nietzsche is not a philosopher that is interested in abstractions. He wants to show that our concepts and our ideas are in fact not as real as we think. He wants to show that they are simply a representation of something else.
This is why Nietzsche believes that the most important thing we can do is to overcome the Apollonian drive and embrace the Dionysian drive. This is because when we do this, we are able to overcome the world and what we are fighting against when we are fighting for power. When we are fighting for power, we are fighting for the ideas that we have about ourselves.
Thus, paradoxically, the Apolian drive gives us power. But when we fight the Apollonian drive, we are not fighting power. We are fighting ourselves. We are fighting the idea that we have of ourselves. And in that fight, we are fighting the world and the the way it is. We are fighting the idea that we are a certain way. It is essentially a rebellion against our own self-concept. And the paradox ultimately is that this “self-concept”, which is Apolian in nature, is actually destructive. Why is it destructive? Because it is the very thing that keeps us from accepting our own humanity.
As Schoppenhauer and many others have shown, we are fighting for the ideas we have about ourselves and we are fighting for our own ideas of ourselves. The ultimate way out is to overcome the Apollonian drive.
The rejection of the Dionysian has led to a decline in art as well as a general sense of malaise among people. In order to remedy this situation, Nietzsche calls for a “rebirth of tragedy.” We need to find ways to integrate both the Apollonian and Dionysian drives into our lives once again so that we can create works of beauty and experience moments of ecstasy.
In conclusion, Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy is a dense but important read for anyone interested in art or philosophy. Nietzsche posits that all art arises from the tension between two fundamental drives – the Apollonian and the Dionysian – and that Ancient Greeks were able to create such beautiful works of art because they understood and harnessed these drives. However, over time, Western society has suppressed the Dionysian drive leading to a decline in art as well as a general sense of malaise among people. In order to remedy this situation, we need to find ways to integrate both drives into our lives once again.