[MD] The Birth of Tragedy/CH2 and the MOQ

[Arlo Bensinger]

Hi All,

Just some more thoughts on Nietzsche Apollonian/Dionysian dialectic, 
these will get shorter as I'm not really laying out any sort of exact 
mapping here. My working map begins something like Apollonian equates 
with the static intellectual level and Dionysian with Pirsig's 
"pre-intellectual awareness".

"We have considered  the Apollonian and its antithesis, the Dionsysian, 
as artistic energies which burst forth from nature herself, without the 
mediation of the human artist..." (Nietzsche)

I note here that both the "tendency towards form" and the "tendency 
towards dissolution" are both "artistic energies" in Nietzsche's 
telling, and that, like the MOQ's levels emerge directly from Quality.

"... energies in which nature's art-impulses are satisfied in the most 
immediate and direct way: first, on the one hand, in the pictorial world 
of dreams, whose completeness is not dependent upon the intellectual 
attitude or the artistic culture of any single being; and... as a 
drunken reality, which likewise does not heed the single unit, but even 
seeks to destroy the individual and redeem him by a mystic feeling of 
Oneness." (Nietzsche)

I will map from this point on (I think) Nietzsche's "nature" onto 
Pirsig's Quality. Given that, I think Nietzsche is saying here that the 
"tendency towards form" is not a unique tendency for any individual or 
culture, and is not something that exists in Culture A (or Person A) but 
not Culture B (or Person B). Likewise for the "tendency towards 
dissolution". This ubiquitous dialectic derives from Quality, and is 
part of the fabric of experience.

Here I think a strong argument could be made that while Nietzsche's 
Apollonian often specifically refers to the tendency among humans to 
seek form within unformed, that the Apollonian impulse generally is the 
"tendency towards static quality". That is, Nietzsche lacks Pirsig's 
categories of the MOQ, and isn't specifically interested in the way 
atoms or dogs are also "form from unformed", but the general 
"art-impulse of nature" towards "form" is certainly very similar with 
the emergence of stable patterns within Pirsig's MOQ.

At this point Nietzsche goes back into Ancient Greek culture to 
illuminate how these tendencies were evidenced, and in the case of 
Dionysian to contrast the Greek Dionysian impulse from other barbaric 
accounts of this art-energy.

In this telling, Nietzsche is, in effect, making the same caution as 
Pirsig made regarding Hippies who confused "biological quality" with 
"following DQ". For Nietzsche, the Greek Dionysian was not simply 
biological "licentiousness, whose waves overwhelmed all family life and 
its venerable traditions" (Nietzsche).

Earlier Greek culture, according to Nietzsche, was dominated by the 
Apollonian impulse, and is evidenced best in the Homeric tradition. 
Alongside this sat the Dionysian impulses, evidenced as folk-revelry and 
festivals. As these impulses synthesized in Greek culture, the Tragedy 
was born, and we saw for a moment in time what Pirsig saw in the early 
Hippie movement.

"This reconciliation is the most important moment in the history of the  
Greek cult: wherever we turn we note the revolutions resulting from this 
event... If we observe how, under the pressure of this treaty of peace, 
the Dionysian power revealed itself, we shall now recognize... the 
significance of festivals of world-redemption and transfiguration." 
(Nietzsche)

I'll nod again to Dionysian being equatable with pre-intellectual 
awareness, expressed as the "tendency towards dissolution" in the 
following, "In the Dionysian dithyramb man is incited to the greatest 
exaltation of all his symbolic features; something never before 
experienced struggles for utterance - the annihilation of the the veil 
of Maya, Oneness as the soul of the race, and of nature itself." (Nietzsche)

If the Apollonian tendency can indeed be mapped onto the entirety of 
"static quality" (with the recognition that Nietzsche is only 
immediately concerned with what would directly correspond to 
'intellectual quality'), it certainly seems here that the Dionysian is 
perhaps equatable to Dynamic Quality itself. I've thought about this for 
a while, and I think its better to think of these as Nietzsche does, as 
"impulses" or tendencies, and to see one as the "tendency towards static 
quality" and the other as the "tendency towards Dynamic Quality". So we 
are not really talking directly about "static quality" but as the 
impulse that pulls these patterns out of the unpatterned landscape, and 
we are not talking directly about "Dynamic Quality", but about the 
impulse that shatters these stable patterns and pulls us towards the 
immediate moment of experience. This is perhaps a subtle, if not 
marginal, distinction, but I think a valuable one in considering 
Nietzsche's view that "the continuous development of art" emerges from 
this duality, as it tries to look, at least peripherally, as to how 
DQ/SQ interrelate or the point/s of contact between the two.

Thanks for reading.