Rethinking Dionysus and Apollo

Redrawing Today’s Philosophical Chessboard

Bibliographic Data

ID13123741
AuthorsCarlos A Segovia (Division of Humanities and Social Sciences, Saint Louis University , Madrid Campus, 28003 Madrid , Spain), Carlos Segovia (0000-0003-2708-7268, Saint Louis University, corresponding author)
Year2022
Volume5
Issue1
Pages360-380
Publication date2022-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueOpen Philosophy (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2543-8875 • E-ISSN: 2543-8875
PublisherDe Gruyter (PUBLISHER • DE)
DOI10.1515/opphil-2022-0209
OpenAlexW4285237340
LanguageEN
References cited50

This essay pursues Gilbert Durand’s plea for a new anthropological spirit that would overcome the bureaucracy-or-madness dichotomy which has since Nietzsche left its imprint upon contemporary thought, forcing it to choose between an “Apollonian” ontology established upon some kind of first principle and a “Dionysian” ontology consisting in the erasure of any founding norm. It does so by reclaiming Dionysus and Apollo’s original twin-ness and dual affirmation in dialogue with contemporary anthropological theory, especially Roy Wagner’s thesis on the interplay of “elicitation” and “containment” in sociocultural life. What would happen then, I ask, if we were to reimagine today’s philosophical game – which after Heidegger Deleuze, and Derrida turns variously and increasingly around subtraction – otherwise: as a chiastic board on which Apollo would cut Dionysus’s continuum, which Dionysus would in turn restore despite Apollo’s cuts, and on which the obliteration of any of the two gods would entail the inevitable dismemberment of the other? Accordingly, I offer a full reassessment of Dionysus’s and Apollo’s complementary roles in ancient-Greek culture in discussion not only with Nietzsche’s Dionysian philosophy but also with Ihab Hassan’s postmodern critique of Orpheus. All of it less with the purpose of putting forward a new metaphysics than with the intent of restating the translucent-ness that keeps together reality and thought against any claim that they are either transparent or opaque to one another

Plea · Classical Antiquity Studies · Classical Philosophy and Thought · Religious Studies and Spiritual Practices