Nietzsche: Apollonian, Dionysian, and Transmutation of Values
Nietzsche: Apollonian and Dionysian Principles
Nietzsche gives an interpretation of Greece that is of paramount importance for the development of his philosophy. He distinguishes two principles: the Apollonian and the Dionysian, which correspond to the Greek gods Apollo and Dionysus.
Apollo is the symbol of serenity, clarity, measurement, and rationalism, and is the image of classical Greece. In contrast, the Dionysian represents impulsive behavior, excess, overflowing emotions, the total affirmation of life, eroticism, and excess as a culmination of life, the eagerness to live, and saying yes to life, despite the terrible and painful aspects.
According to Nietzsche in his book The Birth of Tragedy, the Greeks knew very well that life is inexplicable, an object of horror and terror at the senselessness of death. But although they comprehended the real nature of the world and human life, they were not delivered to pessimism. What they did was transform the world through art, and through this, they were able to justify the world as an aesthetic phenomenon. There were, however, two ways to do this, which correspond to the Apollonian or Dionysian attitudes or mentalities.
Dionysus, for Nietzsche, is the symbol of life’s flow that breaks down barriers and ignores all limitations. Apollo, on the contrary, is the symbol of the extent, if we accept that there is a limit. Now, if life is itself an object of horror and terror, as understood by Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, and Sartre, and we can escape this horror through art, there are two ways to do this. One is actually covering it with an aesthetic veil, creating an ideal world of perfect and beautiful forms. The other possibility is to embrace reality with all its darkness and horror; this is the Dionysian attitude, and its particular form of art is tragedy. Tragedy transforms existence into an aesthetic phenomenon, but not with a veil covering the exhibits, but affirming it.
For Nietzsche, the supreme embodiment of Greek culture before it was influenced by the Socratic spirit lay in a fusion of the Apollonian and Dionysian. According to him, the tragedies of Aeschylus were the supreme artistic expression or equilibrium of this fusion between the Apollonian and the Dionysian.
Critique of Morality and Transmutation of Values
Zoroaster is attributed with the creation of two opposing metaphysical principles: good and evil, a creation that, for Nietzsche, is the fatal moral dualism that Nietzsche wants to negate. But in his masterpiece Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche uses the character of Zoroaster, placing his philosophy as his hero, true to this world and against nonexistent metaphysical values.
Nietzsche denies the existence of any value transcendent to human life and criticizes the fact that people build their lives on something nonexistent that annuls the Dionysian spirit. Thus, we can see that positive nihilism destroys the values of the Western world that deny human life, and negative nihilism denies the Western metaphysical values that value only impulsive vital life.
Nietzsche, with domain and will, honors throughout history two types of morality. The morality of lords would be the powerful individualities with vital superiority, rigor themselves, and ultimately the moral demands and the affirmation of vital impulses. On the other hand, the morality of slaves is that of the weak, the degenerated, governed by a lack of confidence in the way and guided by the priestly caste, which frightens the herd with such pseudovalues of good and evil.
Nietzsche proposed that each individual change the false values imposed from the appearance of metaphysics and ethics, which aim for pure annihilation, and replace these with dogmatic morality based on the affirmation of life, instincts, and biological trends, where Christianity says ‘well,’ we will say ‘evil, despicable.’
Nietzsche denies any tour of morality, philosophy denies any prejudices and inspired metaphysical issues, and for him, metaphysics ceases to be a hoax as it defames the world of life. The earthly world is the only real one; the metaphysical is a hoax, and in his writing, he reflects this hatred towards the metaphysical, venting his wrath on the person of Socrates, the origin of all ontological speculation.