What Are The Similarities Between Nietzsche And The Dionysian Aspect Of The World

Nietzsche and the Apollonian/ Dionysian Aspects of the World Amongst the numerous great gods of the Greek mythology were two outstanding antagonists; Apollo and Dionysus. Just as any other divinity, these were studied and compared by many. This subject being centered on the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, Mark Anderson’ in his journal said Nietzsche described them as “artistic energies which burst forth from nature herself” (Anderson, p.20), whereas Apollonian energy is being most manifested in “the image of dreams” and the Dionysian one in “intoxication and mystical self-abnegation” (p.20). Even though the two Greek gods were very similar in some ways, Nietzsche alongside numerous writers and philosophers argued on
In his book, Nietzsche describes his own view of Christianity and compares it to the
Dionysian spirit. Sorting out their similarities, he reports that “for both, art and life depend wholly on the laws of optics, on perspective and illusion; both to be blunt, depend on the necessity of error”. In making this comment, he argues that both concepts are built upon man ’s imagination and if not, won’t exist at all. This theory is extremely useful because it sheds insight on the difficult problem of the origin of all religions and the existence of an Almighty as a whole. He goes further describing Christianity as a concept which has a notion of “other and better life”, where life is always in the wrong and one must smother it under a load of compliant and constant negation. Of course, many will probably disagree with the assertion that even though life is always in the wrong one must always try his best in making it right no matter what it takes with a spirit of complete devotion to the religion. As an opposition to
Christianity, he observes that the Dionysian spirit has a secret instinct of destruction, no will to deny life, a principle of calumny, a reductive agent and for that reason; probably the
In accordance with my assumption, Schmidt in his journal propounds that “the truth of monotheism and Christianity has to be eliminated by the Dionysian lie, which is beneficial to the life of the genus and thus can become itself truth” (Schmidt, p.105). In other words, he says that Dionysus and his rites are a means of evasion to the complex and apathetic Christian mode of life. In addition to that I think people would want to escape from the load of constant negation (Christianity) and opt for a more joyful and positive mode of life (Dionysian cult). Acknowledged by Nietzsche in The Birth of Tragedy, conventional wisdom has it that the Dionysian spirit is characterized by its insanity whereas the Apollonian one is typified by its rationality. These features appear in one of Euripides’ plays where Medea, princess of the
Kingdom of Colchis, kills her own child by hand. The point of the argument is; did she do it on purpose or not? Or in other words, was her act rational or insane? In their journal, Shams and
Hadaegh studied the point of view of multiple deep-thinkers on the Dionysiac-Apollonian continuum offered by Nietzsche on Medea’s act (Hadaegh and Shams, p.329). On one