Nietzsche Birth of a Tragedy

Nietzsche, Birth of Tragedy In Friedrich Nietzsche’s work The Birth of Tragedy, he argues that during the times of the ancient Greeks the artistic fusion between the Apollonian way of thinking and the Dionysian way of thinking lead to the creation of the greatest works of tragic art and music. Nietzsche believes that society needs to develop a new art form that recognizes the balance between the apollonian and Dionysian influence to reaffirm human existence.
Nietzsche uses the Greek Gods, Apollo and Dionysus to represent opposite sides of the artistic spectrum. The Apollonian side represents the side of reason, wisdom, order and sober thought. While the Dionysian side of the spectrum is more spontaneous, creative and intuitive. Nietzsche sees these distinct ways of thinking as vital to the creation of meaning in the world. Nietzsche contends “The continuous development of art is bound up with the Apollonian and Dionysian duality- just as procreation depends on the duality of the sexes…” Nietzsche makes his argument clear through analogy, without the balance between the two artistic styles of thinking we could not have truly great arts that recognize life, just as a society with entirely one gender cannot survive. A balance between the two is necessary; a purely Apollonian society would be concerned only with rational numbers and mathematical and quantifiable things. This entirely Apollonian society would have no connection with environment, and devoid of irrational or spontaneous activity. It would be too clinical and cold. Likewise a fully Dionysian society would be totally concerned with music, dancing and being drunk. He goes onto say, the mixture of these two ways of thinking permeates a culture and changes how we see the world as a whole. The two forces, Apollonian and Dionysian are considered the fundamental forces of Greek life, without a balance between the two styles of thinking art cannot express the true human spirit.
Another of Nietzsche’s arguments