November 21, 2006
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Apollo vs. Dionysus -Socrate_Cafe's latest
One of the discussions on Socrates_Cafe this week is: Is it better to know, or to feel emotions?
This is a basic philosophical debate that has existed since before the time of Socrates and is still current today.
To the ancient Greeks, Apollo represented the epitome of Order, Rational thinking, and balance; while Dionysus represented Passion, ecstasy, rapture, impulsiveness, and destruction. Other religions have similar representatives: The Hindu God Bhraman, called the god of philosophers and the God Shiva, representing change, destruction and rebirth are examples. Christianity appears to lean toward passion and ecstasy though Order and balance are also mentioned.
While most of us might say, with Nietzsche, that some kind of fusion represents the highest state of a society, we seldom live up to this ideal and tend to lean more toward passion than rationality. Perhaps this is because Rationality offers scant comfort during troubling times while the release of our passionate feelings - "letting it all hang out"- is very satisfying. Many times this has been carried to anti-intellectual heights, as during the Middle Ages when reading and writing were restricted to a very few religious individuals and Carnival with all its excesses was encouraged.
I think here in America we have made a sort of religion of Dionysian excess. We tend to distrust public leaders who appear too rational and admire the passionately involved leader.
While an argument can be made for the merits of ecstasy, a rational consideration of consequences might be a good idea. A balance of knowledge and emotions should probably lean more toward knowledge, shouldn't it?
Comments (16)
Yes, basically, there should be a balance, yet this question asks us to identify which is "better." I also think knowledge is the most important of the two. However what is true knowledge...does it not mean to feel and beleive and consequenty "know" or have "know-ledge" in the true anf full sense of the word? Can knowledge be separate from feeling?
Maybe if you're passionate about knowledge that's enough of a balance
I think most people, if offered the choice, would choose passion over knowledge.
It's hard to reach Dionysian ecstasy over a book. Well, most books.
Abraham Maslow talked about "Peak Experiences" as being the pinnacle of self actualization. I think he was talking about emotional experience and I tend to agree with him.
On the other hand, what do you suppose a completely Dionysian world would be like?
Calligula's vision of Rome.
Knowledge can include emotions, don't you think?
Mmmh... i think i never thought as Emotions as the opposite of Knowledge. I think the meaning of the contraposition of the two Greek gods was not between the knowledge and the emotions, but instead between the action taken only by emotivity and the ones that demand more rational evaluation.
There is an intersection between the two sets of motivations for an act, which I (and i believe everybody) hope is the biggest possible.
Just to make an example, few months ago it made a lot of noise a news in Italy about the population of wild roe deers in the Gran Paradiso National Park. It looks that the population grew too much and the ecosystem was kind of endangered for that. So the authorities of the National Park decided to suppress some bamby deers.
At that news, people, touched by the emotional feeling that such a thing obviously induce, made so much of a noise that the Park authorities had to change their mind. Some stupid people also offered to adopt one bamby to keep in their apartment. I am still sometime surprised how stupid people can be.
Some hunters instead, offered to go to kill those bambies, just to enjoy to go hunting (out of the season) and have their young and tender meat for free.
Those are the opposite points of view, one stupid but emotional, the other practical and un-emotional.
I don't see why not to consider a position in the middle, which is an acquainted action in which emotions are still involved.
I mean, i am stupid if i get a deer as a pet, i am cruel if i kill a bamby deer with no emotions. But if i do the best acquainted thing (which looks like to kill the deers - the experts say), knowing that that action must be done although it is very painful, i don't see any contraddiction.
Dick, i think that if we are speaking about politics emotions must stay outside the decisions, because the truth is what has to be followed. That doesn't mean that who participate to politics shouldn't feel any emotion. That means that any decision has to be evaluated through knowledge. The right thing usually is the one that finds justification on both sides: knowledge and emotion.
By the way i believe that an action which is driven by an emotion is really very dangerous if the emotion is itself driven by an un-acquainted understanding.
I believe that it is the main problem of democracy, actually. The right to vote has a meaning only if one does really know what he is voting for
ciao
dario
PS: you have an answer on my blog, if you are still interested in continuing that discussion.
We used to live in Southern Indiana. There is a large state park there (Brown County State Park) which was famous for its deer population. the deer became so numerous that they chewed the vegetation and trees as far up as they could reach (About 1.5 meters - our deer are larger than roe deer) and were all underweight. They were quite obvious, begging beside the road and at picnic areas until the State Park service decided to winnow the herd. They sold licenses on a lottery process to almost 500 hunters over a three day period (as I remember). each was assigned a certain area of the park and in the hunt almost 300 deer were shot. All were underweight. The planning for the hunt and the controversy surrounding it really brought out the passion and feelings of the people of the area. The town on the edge of the park (Nashville, IN) was sure the loss of visible deer would mean loss of town revenue (Nashville is one of those slickly quaint tourist traps with lots of antique and gift shoppes and not much else). Environmentalists were torn between pro-hunt and let's supply birth control to the deer.
All sides of the argument became quite Dionysian but the hunt did take place, the deer are not nearly as evident (there is still a large herd), the park environment doesn't look chewed over any more. and Nashville had no decline in merchant's revenue.
Emotional doesn't necessarily automatically mean stupid or unthinking as Dario has suggested; but it does mean that rationality may a back seat to feelings in determining what action is taken.
Nietzsche claimed that the best of Ancient Greece was when the Apollonian and Dionysian were in perfect balance. Later thinkers have suggested that lack of this is what causes world tension and strife. A look at present day Iraq seems to show what happens when Dionysian attitudes take over completely.
On a personal level, I think being excessively one or the other would be very unpleasant.
Many successful political advisors recommend catering to the voters' emotions rather than their intellect. I wonder why?
Its easier! Many voters are lacking intellectual understanding of the issues, so they appeal to the emotions. This makes for emotional voters, not rational ones.
Philosophy and rational thought carry power, but human emotion transcends and tramples rationality.Emotion carries a lot of power; it is important to understand emotion, and the best way to do that is to carry emotion. Personally, in the words of the fabled Slartibartfast, I'd rather be happy than right. As a professed agnostic tending towards atheism, I don't think there's anything more important than our experience, because there is nothing before or after, so it's important to enjoy oneself in the present. Also, I just tried to spell "important" with an "e."
~Sol
Dick, i think that you are simplifying too much (maybe to cater your readers' emotions, as Socrates_Cafe suggests? Mmmh...
You say the war in Iraq shows that emotions take over? Well.... that means that you believe that who is deciding about this war (Bush in first) is following too much his emotions despite his intellect? Well... that can be possible, since there's not a big lot to follow if he decides to follow his brains, but i can think to a more elegant explaination of it. That the war is wanted by who can control American politics (the big companies), for a lot of reasons but emotions.
Actions like that have the support of American common citizens thanks to propaganda, as Socrates_Cafe says.
I also agree with sandstorms in saying that probably i see emotions pushing the citizens' will more than intellect because i would define "intellect" only those ideas which are well supported by knowledge. I see there is still a lot of people that believe that Iraq is connected to international terrorism or that in Iraq there are (were) weapons of mass destruction. An "Apollonian" decision based on facts like that is really very weak, don't you think?
I read now the comment i just posted, and i have to apologize if it is hardly understandable.
I have to learn to read back carefully my comments BEFORE posting them
Dario, I think part of your charm is the way you seem to organize your thoughts as you write them - please don't change.
Personally I don't think the American Army in Iraq is relevant any more. Yesterday's mass bombing and the Shiite response are pure Dionysus in action.
We Americans might like to think we have some say or control left in Iraq, but clearly the government sees us as a cash cow to be milked dry. I'm pretty sure they are by now quite cynical about our good intentions.
It seems that here in America Apollonian rationality is taking over. Our involvement is getting a long hard look and a change in our policy is inevitable.
"Dick, i think that if we are speaking about politics emotions must stay outside the decisions, because the truth is what has to be followed. That doesn't mean that who participate to politics shouldn't feel any emotion. "
I partly want to second this statement, but I also want to add a little bit more. One philosopher who advocated rationality above all, especially putting emotion outside of political decisions, was Machiavelli. Rationally speaking, Machiavelli is very hard to contradict. One read-through of some of the things he advocated, however, and most people would say it's a terrible (even immoral) way to go about things, and they will do so because their human feeling (or emotions) recoils at the thought of cold, inhumane, but rational action. I find that impulse to be helpful in many situations--for example, there may be no rational reason to do something charitable, and for that many people rely on their emotions or empathy. I wouldn't want to live in an Apollonian world if that meant perpetually looking to logic first, because it seems to me it might get pretty chilly.
"Other religions have similar representatives: The Hindu God Bhraman, called the god of philosophers and the God Shiva, representing change, destruction and rebirth are examples."
I think it's a little problematic to say that there's always or even usually a logic vs. ecstasy set-up in religious feeling--and especially to imply (which i'm not sure you intended to) that ecstasy and destruction are mythically linked. Shiva was the paradigmatic yogi--the one who spurns attachment to the world (including emotional attachment) for enlightenment. Krishna is a god who often goes the opposite direction, into ecstatic emotional feeling--interestingly enough, he is also someone who restores order and balance rather than destroying it.
If a balance between logic and emotion is the preferable option, how does one go about acheiving that balance?
I am convinced that the necessary balance between logic and emotion is taught at a very early age. Very young children are pretty much creatures of emotion and whim and most parents see their role as training/guiding the child into acceptable social behavior with all its rules and constraints.
These rules and constraints are pretty much determined by their culture - which dictates acceptable social behavior for both children and how far the parents are allowed to go in their training and guiding.
In a swiftly-changing culture such as ours, the goals and messages are often confused, unclear, or in opposition to one another. Also the time parents can spend training their children has been drastically reduced and often this training is deferred until school; and schools are NOT set up to impart this kind of training - the kids are supposed to arrive with it already. All teachers have horror stories of students who have never been brought into Appolonian/Dionysian balance - at least as they conceived it - and as a teacher of 16-20 year-old students I had more than a few.
Some "over-emotional" behavior can be controlled by drugs. Ask some teacher friends how many of their students are now on behavior-controlling drugs.
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