t/s:dionysian vs. apollonian

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― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Sunday, 30 April 2006 08:11 (twenty years ago)

aka robbers vs. cops

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Sunday, 30 April 2006 08:12 (twenty years ago)

You think cops are apollonian?

― Tuomas (Tuomas), Sunday, 30 April 2006 08:26 (twenty years ago)

i think apollonians are cops.

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Sunday, 30 April 2006 08:41 (twenty years ago)

TS: morris day vs prince

― jinx hijinks (sanskrit), Sunday, 30 April 2006 10:47 (twenty years ago)

― Austin Still (Austin, Still), Sunday, 30 April 2006 11:48 (twenty years ago)

both are maya - the distinction is illusory

― Thomas Tallis (Tommy), Sunday, 30 April 2006 11:50 (twenty years ago)

Dionysus sits in the throne of Apollo.

― Momus (Momus), Sunday, 30 April 2006 14:13 (twenty years ago)

the binary was bogus then and it's bogus now - the most Apollonian thing a person can do is to declare himself on either of the two sides

― Thomas Tallis (Tommy), Sunday, 30 April 2006 14:27 (twenty years ago)

There's 10 kinds of people in this world - the ones who know binary notation and the ones who don't.

― Austin Still (Austin, Still), Sunday, 30 April 2006 14:28 (twenty years ago)

the binary was bogus then and it's bogus now - the most Apollonian thing a person can do is to declare himself on either of the two sides

You can't have your cake and eat it. If you reject the binary, you can't then call choosing one side of it "Apollonian".

― Momus (Momus), Sunday, 30 April 2006 14:30 (twenty years ago)

I love how dear Momus, dedicated Dionysiac, is always "these are the rigid boundaries regarding the Dionysus/Apollo question, & that's that - hail Bacchus!" reject a binary doesn't render its terms meaningless, it just means that placing them in consant, boring opposition to one another is unproductive

― Thomas Tallis (Tommy), Sunday, 30 April 2006 14:59 (twenty years ago)

rejecting, sorry

― Thomas Tallis (Tommy), Sunday, 30 April 2006 15:00 (twenty years ago)

partial list of other Greek gods with tendencies worth discussing and contrasting instead of rehashing Dionysus vs. Apollo again as if those two represented the whole of human nature:

Aphrodite
Artemis
Poseidon
Ouranos
Kronos
Demeter
Hephaestos
Ares
Hades
Hera
Tartaros

― Thomas Tallis (Tommy), Sunday, 30 April 2006 15:05 (twenty years ago)

But... but... in rejecting the fructifying opposition of Dionysius v. Apollo, you seem to be rejecting the superiority of 19th century Teutonic philosophizing!

― Aimless (Aimless), Sunday, 30 April 2006 15:52 (twenty years ago)

BINGO

― Thomas Tallis (Tommy), Sunday, 30 April 2006 16:04 (twenty years ago)

fructifying is a good word.

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Sunday, 30 April 2006 16:46 (twenty years ago)

rejecting a binary doesn't render its terms meaningless, it just means that placing them in consant, boring opposition to one another is unproductive

B-but what understanding of "a binary" do you have that somehow slips out of the "constant, opposition" bit? Being bored doesn't give you carte blanche to define a binary any old way you like, you know.

― Momus (Momus), Sunday, 30 April 2006 17:09 (twenty years ago)

Surely 'there is such a thing as a dionysian tendency, and there is such a thing as an apollonian tendency' is not the same as 'there is such a thing as an apollonian tendency which is the opposite of the dionysian tendency'? Can't things exist without being in a binary?

(also what do these words mean?)

― permanent revolution (cis), Sunday, 30 April 2006 17:18 (twenty years ago)

(oh christ it's nietzsche isn't it forget i said anything :( )

― permanent revolution (cis), Sunday, 30 April 2006 17:19 (twenty years ago)

it's interesting isn't it how much those 19th century frameworks still structure our formal ideas about politics, culture, philsophy, economics. (like arguing about "capitalism," e.g.)

they persist even though our actual experience and knowledge have greatly outgrown them. it's like grownups still squeezing into the shoes of a 10-year-old.

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Sunday, 30 April 2006 18:59 (twenty years ago)

we have not outgrown nietzsche. i dont think we've caught up to him yet!

― ryan (ryan), Sunday, 30 April 2006 19:04 (twenty years ago)

B-but what understanding of "a binary" do you have that somehow slips out of the "constant, opposition" bit? Being bored doesn't give you carte blanche to define a binary any old way you like, you know.

It's remarkable how conservative you get on this question. For one thing, as binary oppositions go, Dionysus/Apollo is misleading - the two come from a long list of gods: a pantheon, not a collection-of-binariestheon. That some German philosophers a century or so ago were infatuated with playing Rock-'Em Sock-'Em robots with rather more complex ideas (Dionysus nature! Apollo society! FITE!) doesn't obligate us embrace these ideas - as philologists, you gotta give the Germans their propers, but as interpreters of Greek ideas, well, they made great Germans. For another thing, as Derrida & De Man have shown persuasively, there are a fucking LOT of things you can do with any binary you posit besides say "this one good! that one bad!" and so on. A binary relationship is one of mutual reliance, not good-guys-and-bad-guys; if you're madly in love with the Dionysiac impulse, then you might, as Oedipus put it, "be mindful also of me, and of Apollo," since Dionysus 1) doesn't exist without an Apollo by which to define himself, and, which is more important, 2) also doesn't exist outside of the pantheon, which isn't actually a dull cluster of binary oppositions but a multiplicity of impulses: more organic cell than battlefield. So, what understanding of binary can one have without "constant opposition"? Plenty! Sun/moon, earth/sky, air/water: not to be a big old hippie about it, but all are most compelling exactly at the points where they meet.

― Thomas Tallis (Tommy), Sunday, 30 April 2006 20:10 (twenty years ago)

Tommy dont take that out on nietzsche (not that you are, but it's implied in the thread), i think he does pretty much exactly what you describe there.

― ryan (ryan), Sunday, 30 April 2006 20:19 (twenty years ago)

So, what understanding of binary can one have without "constant opposition"? Plenty! Sun/moon, earth/sky, air/water: not to be a big old hippie about it, but all are most compelling exactly at the points where they meet.

paul mccartney and stevie wonder to thread!

― flea market economy (Jody Beth Rosen), Sunday, 30 April 2006 20:22 (twenty years ago)

Poseidon!

http://www.movieactors.com/freezeframes5/Posidean56.jpeg

― tokyo nursery school: afternoon session (rosemary), Sunday, 30 April 2006 20:32 (twenty years ago)

very hard not to take it out on Nietzsche, you're right he doesn't deserve it (you'll go some distance to find a more exacting philologist) but he does get pretty intense on the "nature vs. culture, body vs. mind" etc etc blah blah that's been distracting people from more interesting currents in Greek thought for over a century now

― Thomas Tallis (Tommy), Sunday, 30 April 2006 20:35 (twenty years ago)

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