Dionysian Principle and Individuation

Because some of the main features of Nietzsche's System are based on his interpretation of sexual processes, a significant abstraction from the latter has important implications for the former. Following Schopenhauer, he conceives reproductive activity as primarily a propogation of the species, so, he interprets the process as entailing a sacrifice of the individuality of the participants for the good of the whole. Likewise, the Dionysian Principle consists fundamentally in the destruction of Individuality, thereby casting it as antithetical to the Principle of Individuation. But reproduction does not merely continue the species--it does so by producing new members. So, if Nietzsche had not abstracted from this latter detail in his conceiving of the Dionysian process, he might have come to the realization that the Dionysian Principle, far from being the antithesis of the Principle of Individuation, is that very Principle itself. He might, furthermore, have arrived at a concept of it that anticipates Whiteheadian 'Concrescence', i. e. in which an individual gets absorbed into a process that is ultimately the production of a novel individual. Indeed, some of Nietzsche's later efforts to define Individuality, e. g. complementary man, synthetic man, cumulative man, ontogeny reproducing phylogeny, are all approximations of Whitehead's concept of novel Individuality being the product of a Concrescence of all hitherto existents. But, regardless of whether or not Nietzsche might have gone more definitively in this Whiteheadian direction, his realization that the Dionysian Principle is a Principle of Individuation might itself have had significant ramifications for, e. g. his concept of Will to Power, and of the function of Morality as a mediation between Individual and Species. And, at minimum, it would have presented him with an immediate, though undramatic, repudiation of Schopenhauer.