Apollo and Dionysus

Among many gods in ancient Greece, Apollo, the sun god, and Dionysus, the wine god, were both sons of Zeus, but they had two different or even diametrically opposite images. Apollo is the god of the sun, shooting, youth and music. He is in charge of the sun in the sky, like the sun shining on the earth. As the eldest son of Zeus, he has a lofty position and is the god who Prometheus predicted would replace Zeus, so he is a majestic, solemn, warm, rational and quiet image in mythology. In sculpture art, it is a youthful, handsome and happy youth image. Dionysus is the God of Dionysus, the God of fruits and vegetables, and the God of harvest. Contrary to the sun god, although he is also the son of Zeus, he was born from Zeus' thigh, so he was born with grotesque factors. Dionysus's biological mother was persecuted by Hera and died, so Zeus had to entrust him to another woman for adoption. Although Dionysus had a rough life in his early years, he was still famous for bringing joy and love to the world. He is born with strong perceptual ability and maddening drinking power, so he represents ecstasy, impulsiveness, indulgence and liberation. In ancient Greek sculpture, he was a young man, holding a large glass with two handles, wrapped in vines and wearing a wreath of vines.

Nietzsche carefully analyzed Apollo and Dionysus in The Birth of Tragedy, and abstracted a set of dualistic spiritual concepts: Apollo spirit and Dionysus spirit. This group of opposites is to solve the essential problem of life: how to deal with this tragic real life? Nietzsche believes that people take two diametrically opposite approaches to the suffering and absurdity of life: Apollo's restraint and Dionysian indulgence. The sun god weaves a wonderful dream to cover up the ugliness and evil in this world, so that people temporarily forget the pain and unbearable life in the dream shelter; Dionysus, on the other hand, is an intoxicating reality, admitting everything in this world, including happiness and pain, breaking the shackles in intoxication, returning to the true nature, blending with nature and getting rid of the vitality of nature. Sun God usually shows rationality, restraint, planning and obeying rules. They take reason as the master of action and plan the future road. At the end of this road is the perfect world in my dream and the refuge of this world. The sun god also restrained his over-inflated lust with the unique calmness of reason, thus leading to the dream world along the established road. Dionysus forgot the existence of ego, individual consciousness and reason in a state of intoxication. Because the individual is completely destroyed, Dionysus can integrate into the group and even the whole nature, and gain the power beyond the individual. This power enabled Dionysus to break through the usual taboos and indulge his own desires. At this moment, both worldly pain and joy have become insignificant things in the face of absolute natural forces.

Dionysian spirit is obviously irrational, and drunken people give themselves force of nature that they don't actually have to fight against the tragic world. At the same time, after the reason is completely destroyed, with the help of the "endowed" divine power, drunken people can easily fall into excessive and overflowing extremes in drunkenness, resulting in great destructive power. However, the indulgent Sun God at the other extreme is irrational. Apollo's dream is a harmonious, peaceful and beautiful world, but it is a dream after all, which is unreal and false. In the shelter of dreams, people lose their rationality and are in peace and happiness. Therefore, it is irrational to forget the cruelty of the world. Although Apollo and Dionysus were irrational, that doesn't mean they were incorrect. The purpose of being in the state of Apollo and Dionysus is to solve the pain of life. Life is meaningless at first, and then life in the world can't give people real satisfaction. As Nietzsche said, it is a tragedy. In this case, if you always use reason to remind yourself that you are in a tragedy, it is a light life that everyone can't afford. In order to make life worth looking forward to, the sun god constructed an illusory future dream with irrationality under the shell of rationality, and chasing this dream became the meaning of human existence. Dionysus solved the pain of existence by getting rid of the bondage of reason completely and using illusory divinity. As the saying goes: all roads lead to the same goal, but they are worried about the same thing. Apollo and Dionysus chose different paths on the basis of irrationality.

As a set of philosophical concepts, Apollo spirit and Dionysian spirit can be used to explain and analogy many opposing phenomena. For example, from a psychological point of view, the spirits of Apollo and Dionysus can correspond to human consciousness and subconscious respectively. Consciousness dominates most of people's active behaviors and thoughts, while subconscious dominates people's instincts. Traditional schools of thought contend in China can also be roughly divided into two categories according to this standard. Confucianism is a typical representative of Apollo's spirit, and its positive attitude towards joining the WTO, the social system based on ethics and the relationship between honor and inferiority are exactly the dreams advocated by Apollo. The corresponding Taoism can be regarded as Dionysian spirit. Taoism advocates purity and inaction, indifference and inaction, and follows the road. Avenue is the supreme master of the universe and the embodiment of God. To follow the road is to follow God, and those who follow God will gain divinity. The desire for divinity is an important manifestation of Dionysus. Buddhism, which was introduced into China at the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, is the representative of Dionysian spirit, just like Taoism. In the history after Qin dynasty, Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism and the spirit of Apollo and Dionysus behind them decided the rise and fall of dynasties. At the beginning of the establishment of a new dynasty, the rulers, like the sun god, constructed a new social order with a positive attitude. This dream-based order maintained stability for a period of time and promoted the national strength to reach its peak. When the moon is full and eclipsed, it will decline at the peak, the illusion of the sun god will gradually be shattered, and social development will enter the Dionysian state. The instinct of social progress broke through the cage of rational order, destroyed the dynasty by violent means, and history entered a new cycle.