Introduction
In his first major work The Birth of Tragedy Friedrich Nietzsche relates the intoxicant, ecstatic Dionysiac with the self-controlled, rational Apolline. The history of western thought, according to Nietzsche, becomes a dialectical history of opposition and heterogeneity between these two primal ways of knowing. And while Tragedy relates these two “deities” to the growth and development of Grecian culture and therefore Western culture, and perhaps even culture in general, at the core, Nietzsche’s work seeks to expose the Enlightenment and modern “scientism” as fraudulently fearful of the primeval madness of pure humanity. Nietzsche declares science a neurosis of optimism and “the modern man[i]” as the ultimate victim and thus “a [further] symptom of waning power, of approaching senescence, of physiological fatigue” (7). It is precisely the well measured proportion of this dualism of Dionysiac and Apolline, of madness and logic, of feeling and thinking that builds greatness and allows a culture to truly flourish. Otherwise, we are lost to either the encroaching flood of un-reason or the rigid artlessness “scientism”. To frame this in less literary terms: Does the scientific process, the logic and reason of the Apolline, truly get at knowledge qua knowledge in an objective or exhaustive sense? Or is science, by its very nature as the Apolline de rigor, dependent upon self-control, logic, and reason, excluded from the epistemic totality by its very nature as rational limitation?
The Apolline deception.
Nietzsche calls the overly optimistic Apolline moment of modern scientism the “illustrious antagonist” to the epistemic totality of the tragic. Someone or something we need take seriously, not just a petty villain or a minor figure but rather an illustrious or Olympic villain, bright and prominent as the sun, just as Apollo was the god of the sun and tender of the means of luminous conveyance. There is a certain militarized regimentation to Apolline knowledge wherein “well-trained” man, through observation, both rigorous and meticulous, comes to know “absolute truth” in the form of universal scientific laws. This is “Theoretical Man” who sees human progress through empirical, measured rigor and treats art and the sublime as “nothing more than an entertaining irrelevance” (13). Art becomes less than the tinkle of bells, a harmless remedial bauble, removed from the true nature of things, something we contrast with the supposed finery of reality itself (41). Nietzsche draws the line here. He can’t help but be appalled. Why does science and the theoretical take precedence over the artistic? Why can’t science be held accountable to the lens of aesthetics? The order, according to Nietzsche, must be reversed. Science should be accountable to art. Science without art becomes a lie, masquerading itself as the sole epistemic reality, a mask with a single face. Science is not a constant quest for new and radical knowledge, there is no end beyond the means, no ultimate answer to the questions posed, it is more Sisyphean. It is only toil, akin to digging into the depths of earth. No matter the time spent digging, even the span of your entire life, your hole becomes the “smallest fraction of that immense depth” (72). Science is a futile toil. This is fundamental illusion of science: despite the optimism of the “Theoretical Man” and his unwavering faith in reason, rationality and method there comes a time when this Apolline “scientism” comes face to face with the ineffable (75). A singularity where epistemic existence ceases becoming categorifiable, where the intelligible and measurable become chaotic and horrific; where the rigors of “science” break down into the monster ridden abyss of myth (24). Science, then, is an illusion that helps short circuit the mythic core of our own epistemic being. Knowledge, our knowledge, is always-already in a state of becoming. It is never “there” in the sense science construes it. Knowledge is always a process and toil, with no true reward but the toil itself. And deep within the core of scientist certainty are the dragons, demons and other ne’er-do-wells of the mythic state of being—always a monstrous core of Being.
The Apolline seeks to delude Being into thinking the abyss is fordable that we can cover it, or at least refrain from looking, while we travel to reach the other side. This is the true myth by Nietzsche’s reckoning: the Apolline deception. Even science has a tragic need to explain the unknowable, the ineffable, but it cannot, it lacks the epistemic tools. There is a certain amount of irony here. When the illusion dissolves and the abyss re-emerges, the optimism of science is transformed into a desire for the sublime, namely a desire for art. Accordingly, “only after the scientific spirit has been taken to its limits, and has been forced by the demonstrations of those limits to renounce its claim to universal validity” will we find the tragic nature of things (82).
The irony of Socrates
This leads us to Socrates. To Socrates only the intelligible can be beautiful. The grit of the observable world is but a mere shadow realm for the great unfathomable beauty of the ideal forms. Without reason and rational method, we cannot approach true beauty. The mimetic quality of art is not valued, as images are mere representations of a greater form. In Socrates, philosophic thought, a form of the Apolline, seeks to replace art. Socrates becomes the prototypical “Theoretical Man”. Socrates’ unshakeable belief in rational thought opposed the creative drive of artistic exhibitionism for a more internal, contemplative aesthetic. In order to become a pupil of Socrates, Plato burned his poetry and dramatic writings. There is a two-fold irony of this image of Socrates. First, we come to know Socrates only through the dramatic. Plato may have burned his early poetic life, but Plato could only bring Socrates “back to life” through the literary artifice of the dialogs. Art is repudiated in the Socratic narratives of Plato. We come to know Socrates the “Theoretical Man” through Plato “the tragic poet”. And the second, despite the rationalist goal, Socrates could never remove the myth from his rational justifications of reality. There is always a sense of “something else”, something foreign to the process itself, something never fully grasped apart from the abyssal trenches of mythic language. The rational Socrates only reinforces his own un-knowledge. Myth is ultimately the Socratic deus ex machina. If reason is insufficient to the task at hand, Socrates is more than happy to invoke the artifice of mythpoeic language. Socrates becomes not only the prototypical “Theoretical Man” but also an instance of Apolline deception, when the subject-who-is-supposed-to-know fails to find logic and reason capable of explaining the essence of things.
Science as the demon’s bargain
The central delusion of the Apolline is the idea a “single image of the world exits” (102). That the orgiastic self-annihilation of the Dionysiac moment is something to be avoided, to be removed altogether, animalistic and detached the Apolline seeks to make man “more human than human”. But this is a devil’s bargain; to become “more human” we must sell our soul, become scientist-as-demonologist and trade the Dionysiac and the “eternal delight of existence” for the Apolline security and satisfaction of logic and reason.
But here lies the ironic, once again, as our demoniac-scientist is rendered less than human or something other-than-human. Irony seems to be the Mercurial symbol of the Apolline delusion. The voice of Irony should queue us in, cause us to pause, and perhaps reevaluate the nature of our daimonion. The truth of gambling with devils is that Hell always wins. Irony always warns of this fools bargain. It is a dragon-slayer, or rather a demon-slayer, someone who turns their back on “weaklings’ doctrines that lie within the optimism” of Apolline scientism (88).
For Nietzsche, “everything that comes to being must be prepared to make a sorrowful end” (80). The optimism of the demonological science, the restless inquiry of science, the cheerful theoretical man, all must face the reality-at-hand, the abyss on the periphery where logic, reason and knowledge become mere dust and the eye of the demoniac peers into the horrors of the night with naught but a delusion, an illusion of knowledge, to pass them through the stygian depths.
The bonfire of epistemologies: The gay science
What then are we left? The specter of infallibility of science is but an ephemeral illusion brought about by our mad attempt to bring meaning or rather to remove meaning from the existential crisis of facing reality-as-abyss (88). The “Theoretical Man” has been made tenuous, unable to grasp his own Dionysiac core, he sells himself to an artless world, condemned by his demonic gamble to dig in futile toil, grasping for mere roots, forever to remain unsatisfied, “a starving man’s greedy grasping for food…unsatisfied with everything it devours” (110).
Nietzsche wants to remove scientism from its pedestal and while Tragedy is about the radical becoming of the Grecian moment where Apolline and Dionysiac are made one, it becomes obvious though, any such synthesis can only occur through the re-awakening of the Dionysiac. Science has overly “Apollined” the modern man. The “glorious mixture” of tragic philosophy and tragic man awakens the “aesthetic game” with irony the core signifier, and perhaps critic, of our epistemic positionality. The rational scientist, under Nietzsche, becomes the aesthetic listener: science through the lens of art, what Nietzsche would come to call The Gay Science. This gaiety of science becomes science through music, through dance and orgy and not through the futile toil grasping at shallow roots and the digging mere holes. Only then can we begin to unravel the duality of art and people, myth and morality, tragedy and the state (111). It is the gay scientist who is the true dragon-slayer. Who faces the abyss and delights in the shear absurdity of it all. Tragedy is a call to open up the windows of epistemology, to challenge the singularity of “positive science” and oppose it. “Let each man answer the question as he sees fit: his answer will demonstrate his understanding…as long as he attempts to answer the question at all and has not been struck dumb with astonishment” (108).
References
Nietzsche, F. W. (1993). The birth of tragedy out of the spirit of music. (S. Whiteside, Trans.).
London: Penguin Books. (Original work published 1872)
[i] I am aware of the masculine language used throughout this paper. I have decided, after much thought, to retain the gendered specificity of Nietzsche’s own language. For a discussion of gender and femininity in the context of Nietzsche I heartily recommend reading Part 3 of Avital Ronell’s The Test Drive.
Burlesque Philosophe 