In characterising the "development of art" as being "bound up with the duality of the Apollonian and the Dionysian, just as reproduction similarly depends upon the duality of the sexes", Nietzsche has effectively represented a singular natural fact which has this aspect of opposing forces, "two very different drives [going] hand in hand, for the most part in open conflict with each other and simultaneously provoking each other all the time"1 (11). Nietzsche's conception2, as a whole, is juste this connexion between the labour of a general physiology and its extension, or what are the same things, its self-perpetuation & its self-reflectivity, into that equally volatile realm of thought. It signifies less an appeal to metaphysics (but at once a preservation of virginal metaphysics) & more a kind of being restricted within temporal phenomena.
We shall now exercise a level of blind faith in the proceeding moment, by pointing a Hegelian mirror at this idea, a mirror which regards the nature of conscious Understanding & its being related in no insignificant manner to forces which are freely observed in the natural manifold, by casting these godly ikons in the role of said forces, & seeing if they in fact reveal each other: "The interplay of the two Forces thus consists in their being determined as mutually opposed, in their being for one another in this determination, and in the absolute, immediate alternation of the determination--consists, i.e. in a transition through which alone these determinations are[,] in which the Forces seem to make an independent appearance . . . The first Force has its determinateness only through the other, and solicits only in so far as the other solicits it to be a soliciting Force"3 (84). Also, "these two sides are moments of Force; they are just as much in a unity, as this unity, which appears as the middle term over against the independent extremes, is a perpetual diremption of itself into just these extremes which exist only through this process", (83) and "the dispersal of the independent 'matters' in their [immediate] being, is the expression of Force; but Force, taken as that in which they have disappeared, is Force proper, Force which has been driven back into itself from its expression" (81). This "singular natural fact" which was juste recently established by Nietzsche is likewise conceived through the phenomenologist's observation, & this will only become apparent to us so long as we have taken up the Nietzschean drive (der Trieb) & the Hegelian Force (die Kraft) in an amalgamation which, incidentally, raises the significance of the gendered articles in parentheses, a synthesis which may be called die Triebkräfte4, or roughly, the "driving force", i.e., the primum mobile which has freed the anonymous narratour of Poe's "Imp of the Perverse".
In view of this transformation we discover an endless playing-out of driven-out-forces whose remarkable expression is contained in the middle term "art", which itself is the pre-self-conscious reflectivity of Understanding, which will in its development out of nature effectively become self-consciousness. We have effectively seen the forms of these Triebkräfte; because there exists an aesthetic distance between us which draws our contemplation, we have seen it in its effects. Its content is of course another matter. But this remains an endless playing-out, & we must rely on Plato if we are to grasp the full meaning of "endless": "Then now I think that you will have no difficulty in understanding my meaning when I asked the question whether the end of anything would be that which could not be accomplished, or not so well accomplished, by any other thing? . . . And that to which an end is appointed has also an excellence?"5 (29) In light of this definition, & in light of the contours supplied to us by nature's impulse, such a driving-force is understandable precisely because its endlessness is juste this Understanding's Spiritual return to itself, this labour whose end is the perfexion of itself, which is continually driven by the excitement of these forces that, for some Reason, provoke or solicit each other in this delicate "interplay", & which has the aspect of being expressed in an inside-out manner. As Nietzsche writes, "man is no longer an artist; he has become a work of art: the artistic power of all nature, to the highest rhapsodic satisfaction of the primordial unity, reveals itself here in the transports of intoxication" (13). We have therefore established a ringing hierarchy whose formalised antipodes represent a total undressing from abstraxion on the one hand (Dionysian), & a total being submerged in abstraxion, on the other (Apollonian), in an endless cycle of being perfected, endless since its reaching excellence must be determined in a spatial & temporal fashion, i.e., depend on artwork.
(We should not over-question the legitimacy of this association, for even Nietzsche said of Birth, sixteen years into its lifespan, that "Taken up with some degree of neutrality, The Birth of Tragedy looks quite untimely . . . One might sooner believe that the essay was fifty years older. It is indifferent toward politics . . . [and] it smells offensively Hegelian . . . An 'idea'--the antithesis of the Dionysian and the Apollinian--translated into the realm of metaphysics; history itself as the development of this 'idea'; in tragedy this antithesis is sublimated into a unity; and in this perspective things that had never before faced each other are suddenly juxtaposed" (270-71).6 This defensive posturing taken up by Nietzsche echoes his attitude expressed in "An Attempt at Self-Criticism", that in spite of being "an impossible book", it is never-the-less one " which, as its effects proved and continues to prove, must also understand this issue well enough to search out its fellow rhapsodists" (Birth, 5); whatever flaws it may present, the Spirit of Birth, this invisible music which possesses the uncanny power of arresting the individual, is the self-same Spirit found in man's innermost being, & because this appears to be the case, it draws man in, satisfying an essential longing for which the base-line individual has no outlet. Indeed, Birth is juste this life-affirming offensive attack on deadened senses in general, but this offense must also have its opposition in an Apollonian defense mechanism which keeps the lasting effects of nullified individuation in check.7)
A man who behaves contrary to the laws established by this delicate balance, if he is not in other words of sound mind, if e.g., his mind has sounded the abyssal reaches of the natural manifold without guarding himself against the lasting effects of nullified individuation, he acts in a suicidal manner, & is transfigured into a mangled effigy; on the contrary, supposing his faith lies completely on the side of Apollo, here too we encounter a man behaving pathologically, effectively suffering the rigor mortis of a sculpture, an art-not-work. Now, the principle issuing out of this dialectic forces us to recognise the inherent truth attending this singular natural fact, whose essence is its being neutral, or amoral.
It would for this Reason be unproductive, or worse yet, counterproductive, for any undertaking if it did not have its basis firmly rooted in this natural neutral principle. I say, therefore, wholly in the Spirit of that neutrality, the fruits of whatever labour will attain their most potent expression only if man subjects himself to an unconditioned dehumanisation; fore juste as with Hamlet's being rendered null, one's humanity is rooted in the hyperconscious deliberation of these Triebkräfte.
The Significance of Childish Behaving as It Pertains to Demonstrating Willful Neutrality in Plain Sight
As it happens, people faced with a child's wanderlust will reflect considerable appreciation in their countenance, this pure being-for-selfish stream-of-conscious sense-data in-take. Normally, we like to attribute a divine sense in children who are wide-eyed & engaging the natural manifold, but it would be a mistake not to see a child's hypoconscious behaving as the actual expression of juste this kinship shared by man & the natural manifold. But common sense dictates it is juste this wild speculation frome which children ought to be protected, by instilling fear, in order to avoid trauma. In this manner society perpetuates the development of a filter through which order comes into being, which are the senses deadened in an Apollonian manner: this drawing back which becomes dread in the event of being overstated.
But of course it would be negligent in ignoring how, left free & to its own devices, childhood faces these dangers on which that pathology has its basis. Nullified individuation, i.e., senselessness, or a fugue state which has no end, & which "as it intensifies, the subjective fades into complete forgetfulness of the self" (Nietzsche 13), is nature's reclamation of itself, say, in the image of worms feasting on a corpse, or thick vegetation rising above ground & overtaking ruinous architecture. Hegel says, "For just as life is the natural setting of consciousness, independence without absolute negativity, so death is the natural negation of consciousness, negation without independence, which thus remains without the required significance of recognition" (114). Forms of independence--e.g., Sense-Certainty, Perception, Understanding, Self-consciousness, all having followed their natural evolution & which have resisted being absolutely consumed by life--subsist in their native realm, i.e., nature, of which they are higher order extensions, juste as Self-consciousness persists as a higher order extension of Consciousness-qua-Understanding, Understanding as a higher order extension of Consciousness-qua-Perception, etc., etc. The reverse, which grasps the free play of negativity (the natural manifold per se) in an unnatural manner, i.e., so radically as to detach natural agents from the processes of nature ("negation without independence"), is nothing more than the formal absence of independence in the face of pure negativity, & therefore the absence of a recognising agent. In reality Self-consciousness, emerging from the depths of nature, requires the satisfaction of its Desire, but since it has been conditioned by those natural depths from which it emerged, this longing for recognition will be grasped as a constituting element inherited from that very same nature, & so we hold that Spirit, which is Self-consciousness, is the form in which nature conceives & enjoys the reflectivity of itself.
Because childhood provides us with this invaluable insight into the processes of nature, more significantly because there is no "right" or "wrong" inside it, or what is the same thing, because there is no overstated preference between either the Dionysian or Apollonian principle, we should feel confident in assigning primacy to this natural neutrality. Childhood which has the significance of enjoying natural recreation observes the healthy boundaries erected by nature--instinct--in order to discover novel situations accompanied by proportional reinforcement.8 The disruption of this natural order reflects either a considerable dilation or contraction of the aesthetic distance we had juste established, & a significant disruption to order in general, in contrast to anarchy being reformed into order, anarchy which is juste a euphemism for the rule of nature's not-readily-visible forces acting upon man, indicates a sudden leap from one extreme into another.
We therefore regard an intellectual pathology characterised as being distinctly Apollonian & illusory as a kind of "tunnel vision" whose truth can be reduced to the common attitude Seeing is believing. Simply, it is juste this postmodern cynicism which overstates the role of vision to the exclusion of all other senses, which is no wonder, as it correlates precisely to this Apollonian hyper-visionary gluttony that depends solely on the production of eye-candy, & we classify as eye-candy any end whose conception & crafting is due in no insignificant manner to the practise of art. What is lost in this pathology is juste this natural neutrality, this natural talent for seeing the world as it presents itself to its own offspring. Death, understood as a total Dionysian withdrawal into nature, which is nothing more than Spirit's withdrawal into itself, is no more considered suicide than as if one had fallen into Spiritless Apollonian petrification.
Originally published on Fri Sep 11 19:12:36 2020, & last updated on Thu Sep 17 13:12:29 2020