The Metaphysics of Dancing

For centuries, from Plato to Kant, Music had been regarded as the least philosophically significant Art. This is primarily because both Art was conceived as a form of Mimesis, and what Music was taken to represent, e. g. feelings, sounds, etc. are among the least meaningful phenomena. Schopenhauer revolutionized the appreciation of Music by contesting both those premises. For him, first, the essence of the world is Will, and second, Music is the expression of Will. Nietzsche developed these insights further, by introducing the notions 'Dionysian' and 'Apollinian' to distinguish expressive and representative Art, and, more generally, Motion and Form, and by according priority to the former. He later elaborated on his concept of Music, by explaining that it is special instance of Dance, i. e., it is the movement of some of the body, communicating in the specific medium of sound to an audience. Now, while the early Nietzsche seems intent on systematically relating the Dionysian and the Apollinian, the latter concept seems to disappear as an explicit theme in his later writings. But, their unity is easy to see in dancing, which is in itself the synthesis of motion and form, even prior to its serving some other representative purpose. The philosophical significance of this synthesis is that it is a union of Body and Mind, a problem which is the focus of much theorizing in Metaphysics. Consequently, for example, on the basis of the paradigm of Dancing, an activity such as Pure Reflection, which is exemplary for many systems that accord priority to Mind over Body, is merely one in which Body is relatively immobile, and not, as those systems often take it to be, Metaphysically superfluous.