Dionysian vs. Apollonian & embracing all the paradoxes
The greatest class I have ever taken was a course I took in grad school five years ago, called “The Rhetoric and Aesthetics of Everyday Life.” The major premise of the course was simple: Does life imitate art? Or does art imitate life?
Let me guess your follow-up to that: “Why does it matter?” Fair enough question.
IT MATTERS BECAUSE SPORT IS ART.
Let that marinade in your mind and we’ll come back to it.
I left EVERY SINGLE CLASS of “The Rhetoric and Aesthetics of Everyday Life” feeling like I had the runner’s high. No, we were never actually running in class, just blowing up our minds analyzing some of the most thought-provoking books I’ve ever read. I’m going to go ahead and share some of those texts:
The Poetics & The Rhetoric -Aristotle
The Birth of Tragedy -Nietzsche
Pedagogy of the Oppressed -Paulo Freire
Theatre of the Oppressed -Augusto Boal
Sexual Personae -Camille Paglia
Reader-Response Criticism -edited by Jane P. Tompkins
Stigma -Erving Goffman
This list is missing a couple books and no I’m not going to provide a lit review (at least not at this time…) but these were my favorites. At the end of the semester, we had to choose a philosopher and write a paper on how they would have interpreted all the perspectives we addressed throughout the semester. I chose Maurice Merleau-Ponty. He studied the phenomenology of perception and conceptualized the experience of the body as the forefront to understanding perception. (Go ahead, google him now! You know you’re intrigued!!)
My favorite concept from that class was Nietzsche’s Dionysian vs. Apollonian concept. This blog is NOT grad class, and I promise I’m not trying to include any unnecessary jargon or share anything in an overly complex way. BUT, the construct is seriously one of my favorite lenses to analyze life through, so forgive me if I nerd out for a second. Dionysian vs. Apollonian reminds me to look at everything from two sides. It reminds me to not necessarily call one “right” or “wrong” – but acknowledge that both exist and both are important.
Here is a quote from Camille Paglia that demonstrates how she theorizes the concept governs life and art. Again, keep in mind that “art” can be applied very broadly here, and this dichotomy is something that you can apply to ANYTHING(!), including sport.
“Dionysus is identification, Apollo objectification. Dionysus is the empathic, the sympathetic emotion transporting us into other people, other places, other times. Apollo is the hard, cold separatism of western personality and categorical thought… The quarrel between Apollo and Dionysus is the quarrel between the higher cortex and the older limbic and reptilian brains. Art reflects on and resolves the eternal human dilemma of order versus energy.”
In other words…
Dionysian = passion, impulsive, nature, raw, the sublime
Apollonian = reason, truth, rationality, control, order
I share my love for this class, some of the books I read in it, the Apollonian and the Dionysian, and the philosopher I chose for my final paper for two reasons:
- To be very specific about some of the concepts and texts that have been most influential in broadening my perspective on literally EVERYTHING.
- To highlight that this class was THE catalyst that massively shifted my perspective and appreciation for being an athlete, for the better.
(Fun fact: I actually started CrossFit during the same semester as this class. In hindsight, NO WAY do I think that it was a coincidence. :) My 5-year CrossFit-versary is coming up soon, and of course that will be a future post!)
Connecting back to my last post, I have found that the more I learn and expand my knowledge and perception, the more I recognize, appreciate, and FEEL everything in my life. I know it’s not for everyone, but for me it has been powerful.
To wrap things up, I think it would only be fitting to end with a few paradoxical concepts in sport that I’d really like to share. Both are from the book “Bounce” by Matthew Syed, which I would HIGHLY RECOMMEND to anyone.
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On irrational optimism:
“The great irony of performance psychology is that it teaches each sportsman to believe, as far as he is able, that he will win. No man doubts. No man indulges his inner skepticism. That is the logic of sports psychology. But only one man can win. That is the logic of sport.”
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Sport as a zero-sum game:
“It is only in sport that the benefits of purposeful practice are accrued by individuals at the expense of other individuals, and never by society as a whole. But this is precisely the area in which purposeful practice is pursued with a vengeance, while it is all but neglected in the areas where we all stand to benefit.”
Anyone have chills yet?
From one perspective, there is a futility in competition in sport. But from another perspective, couldn’t you equally argue that competition in sport has the power to drive you to become a better version of yourself? And in turn, that adds to the greater society?
Or what about… if sport is art, then isn’t there so much more beauty to be appreciated within it – win, lose, or struggle? Just some food for thought :)
In the meantime, please read “Bounce” or one of those books above and let me know what you think!!!