Music and Dionysian

There are at least three ways that Music can be classified as a "Dionysian art", as Nietzsche characterizes it at the outset of Birth of Tragedy.  First, it can sonically represent the ecstatic emotions of the Dionysian festivals, just as the tragic chorus symbolizes Dionysian revelers, in his concept of Tragedy.  Second, it can be an actual part of those celebrations, an example which he briefly cites.  But, third, and more radically, Music can itself be the cause of Dionysian activities, not only of the St. Vitus dance, but of the orgies that literally unite separate individuals.  However, to function in this manner, Music does not require some eternal set of characteristics.  Rather, a "change to a new type of music" can unsettle "the most fundamental political and social conventions . . .till it finally overthrows all things public and private", as Plato warns in the Republic, IV 424.  In other words, it suffices for Music to change in some fundamental way to effect the kind of dissolution of individuality that Nietzsche recognizes in sections 1 and 21.  Hence, the Dionysian power of Music is historically conditioned, and does not consists in some eternal set of metaphysical characteristics, as Schopenhauer's legacy requires, i. e. Dithyramb is no more 'Dionysian' sub specie aeternitas than is Wagnerian opera.  Conversely, Music can also serve to reinforce a status quo, as both Plato and Nietzsche recognize, and, so, is not inherently Dionysian for that reason, as well.

Music and Apollinian

Nietzsche's 'Apollinian' is the principle of both Form and Illusion, perhaps reflecting more its derivation from Schopenhauer's concept of Representation, than from classical sources.  However, there is no clear systematic connection between Form and Illusion, e. g. a drawn geometrical figure and a sculpture both possess form, but are not so obviously illusory.  Likewise, Form is what distinguishes Music from random noise, Dithyramb from incoherent shouting, and Dancing from spasmodic lurching.  Furthermore, research of Synaesthesia includes well-documented cases of the 'seeing' of Music.  So, Nietzsche's exclusion of Apollinian influence from Music is equivocal, if not erroneous.

Music and Sculpture

With the introduction, in recent decades, of amplification into Music, there has been the emergence of specialized interest in the shaping of sounds.  This development is not radically unprecedented, just a magnification of and focus upon a process that musical performance has always incorporated, only less attentively so.  This rise has thus brought into greater relief an intimate relation between Music and Sculpture that is typically ignored in traditional Aesthetic Theory classifications, e. g. Nietzsche sharply distinguishes them as 'Dionysian' and 'Apollinian', respectively.  So, since it seems difficult to deny that Sculpture is Apollinian, it seems difficult to maintain, despite Nietzsche's effort, the thesis that Music is an exclusively Dionysian Art.

Dionysian, Art, Communication

In Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche shows that all Art is genetically Dionysian, i. e. that dithyrambic Music inspires Dancing, which releases all the symbolic powers, including the Apollinian ones.  At the same, that demonstration implies that all Art is categorially Dionysian, as well.  For, to characterize anything as 'symbolic' is to classify it as a 'language', and, hence, as a medium of Communication.  Now, Communication unites discrete individuals, and, so, is a Dionysian activity in Nietzsche's system.  Thus, if all the Arts are symbolic, they are all media of Communication, and, hence, are all species of Dionysian activity.

Space, Time, Individuation

According to Schopenhauer, Space and Time are each a "Principle of Individuation', because each effects a separation in representations, i. e. 'there' from 'here', and 'then' from 'now', respectively.  However, his claim of Kantian heritage for these concepts is questionable, since for Kant, they are 'Forms of Intuition', and, in his system, a 'Form' unifies a manifold, not generates one.  Furthermore, Schopenhauer takes  no account of Kant's distinction between 'Outer' and 'Inner', to which Space and Time, respectively, correspond.  Now, as has been previously discussed here, 'individuation' is equivocal, failing to distinguish Outer Individuation, i. e. separation, from Inner Individuation, i. e. integration.  Thus, 'space' clearly connotes 'separation', and, hence, its Individuation is Outer.  In contrast, Time is essentially 'inner' because, as has been detailed here earlier, it is the product of the process of Temporalization, in which every new moment is integrated with experience that has already occurred, as its culmination.  In other words, the entire past of every moment is already part of the moment prior to any subsequent analysis into the separate moments 'now' and 'then'.  So, Time can be classified as a Principle of Individuation, but not in Schopenhauer's sense of the term.

Individuation, Apollinian, Proprioception

'Individual' has two non-equivalent meanings: the literal one, 'undivided', and the common one, 'separated'.  Correspondingly, two varieties of 'individuation' are inner and outer, respectively.  Now, Schopenhauer's Principle of Individuation is of the latter type, as is much Nietzsche's version of it, his Apollinan principle.  However, Nietzsche diverges from his predecessor by discerning a Dionysian process of outer individuation as well, i. e. Rupture, dismemberment, birth, etc., which the outer Apollinian principle serves to refine.  But, he also recognizes an inner Apollinain principle, the source of the "beautiful illusion of the inner world", "measured restraint", and the "calm of the sculptor" (BT, #1).  What he does not recognize is that the ground of these inner characteristics is Proprioception, which, as the organic independent complement of Motility, produces the original body image from which all illusion is derived, and as fundamentally homeostatic, is the basis of all measured restraint and calm.  Proprioception functions thus to unify Motility, i.e . to 'individuate' it, in the inner sense, even during dancing, so, therein, the Apollinain principle is coeval with the Dionysian principle, and is not subsequent to, and derived from, the latter, as Nietzsche proposes.

Tragedy and Philosophy

Nietzsche's ambition in Birth of Tragedy is more than to propose a new theory of Tragedy, or an innovative general Aesthetic Theory.  Rather, his introduction of 'Socrates' as a detached observer of Tragedy implies a definition of 'Reason' as a species of Apollinian Art, and, hence, as born out of Music.  Furthermore, it casts the entire Socratic tradition as originating in Tragedy, a thesis sometimes misinterpreted as a nostalgia for the pre-Socratic era, rather than as a constructive element in any current philosophical self-understanding.  However, by accepting the fictionalized Platonist character as his 'Socrates', he misses an opportunity to cast the trial of the historical man as a 'tragedy', with the actual Socrates as its 'tragic hero'.  With Philosophy born from Tragedy in this way, the 'Philosopher' is established as a person of action, of which the Rational Arts--Thinking, Arguing, etc.--are special cases.