Nietzche Concepts and Ideas

Apolline Drive

Drive for beauty. Based on rationality. (Necessary because life would not be possible without it. Gives life a meaning). Found in sculpture and epic poetry most evidently. 

Dionysian Drive

Drive based around emotion. Focuses on the primordial being and the emotional side. Found in things like music, festivals, and folk music.

Diviner of Dreams and Semblance

Related to Apolline Drive. Things like Olympians are semblances of a semblance (semblance = form or appearance). Meanings are constructed and created by us as semblances of the primordial being/whole.

Primordial Being

Innermost ground and connectedness of humans and the world. Connects us all through a common ground of suffering that humans face through their existence.

Principium Individuationis

Related to Apolline drive. Distinction and independence from the primordial whole. Apolline drive creates uniqueness. Allows you to have your own story  and feel different/better than others. Also used to give the Gods shape and substance. 

Sculpture and the Myth of Olympians

Related to Apolline drive. Rose from the terrors and horrors of existence. Told by Silenus. Silenus is a Satyr-God that confides in Dionysus, explains how the Gods rose from the chaos and irrationality of the world (primordial being).

Naive

Related to Apolline drive. Pertains to the Gods and Epic poetry, and how they assign meaning to life for the Greeks. The optimism people find in the Gods and in life is seen as naive.

Another idea of naive pertains to how semblances do not represent things as they really are, but they are constructed based on how we wish to see the primordial being. It is not reflective of what is real.

Self-Forgetting, oneness with primordial unity

Related to Dionysian Drive.Individuation is a basic evil because it creates separation and divides us from the primordial whole. To be true to human existence, you must forget your sense of self and thus come back to the common ground of the primordial whole. 

Ecstasy, Vigor, Redemption, Release

Related to Dionysian Drive. Music/dancing is deeply moving and arousing. This idea of ecstasy from the Dionysian drive is also related to the tragic hero with how we feel pleasure in seeing an otherworldly being better than us fall and come back to reality within the primordial being.

Music and Dance (Non-imagistic)

Related to Dionysian Drive. Comes out of primordial whole that we all share. Has a hold on us and can be deeply moving to get us entranced in a play.

TRUE

Related to Dionysian Drive. Pertains to the primordial whole with how the primordial whole focuses on what is real, and the reality of the suffering that comes with human existence and life.

From what earlier forms did Greek tragedy develop?

Apolline: Epic poetry (Homer), rhapsodes were the tellings of these. Focuses on the beauty and structure behind these poems.

Dionysian: Festivals, Folk music more specifically led to the formation of lyrical poetry and the Satyr Chorus. Raw, primordial energy found in these early forms led to the development of Attic Tragedy.

Satyr Chorus

Related to Dionysian Drive. Brings audience back to the Dionysian idea of the primordial whole through a common ground of raw emotion and suffering that is induced by the tragedy. Developed oringinally from Achilchus’ folk music which was common in Dionysian festivals, which led to the formation of the chorus in plays and tragedies to allow the audience to get entranced in what they were spectating as if they were witnessing it first hand.

Aspects of Greek Tragedy Related to Apolline

Rationale, Structure, Dialogue and Actors

Rationale is the decision making of each character and the consequences of their actions. Dialogue and actions set each character apart and distinct from the primordial being. Actors are their own individuals (Principum Individuationis)

Aspects of Greek Tragedy Related to Dionysian

Focus on the chorus (originated from the Satyr Chorus). Helps us transform into witnesses of the events in the tragedy rather than just spectators of the play. We lose ourselves in the story and feel like we are experiencing the play as primary sources to the events that ensue.

Nietzche’s Understanding of the Tragic Hero

Sees it as redundant, reveals the darkness of humanity through a tragic fate that follows a beloved character.

Explains that the tragic hero is an ‘otherworldly’ being that is far better than us which pertains to individuation (Apolline). The destruction of the tragic hero at the end leads to the Dionysian idea of ecstasy and release as we see that this high and mighty hero ultimately fell from grace back to the primordial whole built on a common suffering that all people face.

ex.) Oedipus is otherworldly with his pursuit of knowledge and his defeat of the Sphinx. His tragic fate at the end shows that he is like any other human and must suffer in his existence with the primordial whole. “Wisdom is abomination”

Why do we take the pleasure in the destruction of the tragic hero?

Destruction of the hero is the reconstitution/reconstruction of the primordial whole. Dionysian ecstasy gives us a feeling of primordial joy called tragic pleasure which is the joy found in the tragedy of an otherworldly being. Destruction is Dionysian because it destroys the individuation of a character.