For Plato the Apollonian madness as I remember it from the Phaedrus is the mania which the Oracle of Delphi has when she is possessed by the God.
As such it is still a Mania, one where the divine power of a God overcomes the rational soul. Which would seem at odds with Nietzsche’s very 19th Century conceptions of a solar God of rationality and harmony.
Nietzsche was a Classicist and Philologist before he was a philosopher though, so he would have been familiar with the myths and references in Plutarch to differences in art and music between Apollo and Dionysus. But this was more of a thematic contrast than the binary dichotomy of opposites which Nietzsche paints in the Apollonian/Dionysian.
Eg, in Greek Polytheistic Religion, when Apollo vacates Delphi for the winter months, it is Dionysus who takes over the role as Patron God. The two Gods, both sons of Zeus are individually quite different, but also complementary, and Platonically speaking as Gods their providence can descend downwards to the world of appearances and share their providence in the form of a divine mania. The Mania of Prophecy from Apollo and the Mania of Ecstasy and the Mysteries of Dionysus are still both manias, and therefore not really as binary opposites as Nietzsche has the Naturwahrheit, the truth of Nature of Dionysus and the Kulturluge , the lie of culture of Apollo portrays.
So I think Plato is in the background for Nietzsche here. Classicist Richard Seaford in his book Dionysos writes that Nietzche was likely influenced by 18th and 19th Century German intellectuals like Winckelmann, Schelling and Bachofen in creating this kind of ahistorical view of Dionysus, which causes him to ignore the democratic elements to Dionysus worship.
As the God most widely worshipped in the Mediterranean world of antiquity, but who is rarely mentioned in the Homeric epics written for the Aristocratic warrior class, and whose worship was associated with slaves, including feast days where slaves were liberated and women, and in Rome as Liber was part of the Aventine Triad of the Plebian Class (Liber, Libera/Proserpina, and Ceres the agricultural Gods of the working class), Dionysus has democratic aspects which are at odds with the kind of aristocratic tendencies of Nietzsche.
I asked this question early into my investigation of it. Just in case. In retrospect, mid-journey, I don’t think it’s a very good question. Divine mania seems to much more limited in scope than I had initially thought. At best, maybe it’s tangential to concepts within Apollonian and Dionysian aspects.
I’ve had a little trouble believing there are 4 sources, given prophetic and ecstatic were both likely drug induced, ethylene gas poisoning and drunkenness.
Your comment has a lot to unpack. I’ll see if I can get my hands on a copy of Seaford’s book. Find out where in Plutarch you were talking about. I’ve also got to see if I can get more clarity on divine mania from an ancient Greek perspective; surely it isn’t Plato’s invention. Then reread Birth of Tragedy armed with the new information.
I may be back.
E: For a book published in 2006, it has retained its value quite well. For a book published in 2006 that has retained its value quite well, it has been quite the challenge to track down a library copy.
Divine mania seems to much more limited in scope than I had initially thought. At best, maybe it’s tangential to concepts within Apollonian and Dionysian aspects.
From a Platonic perspective I’d say it’s the other way around,that Nietzsche’s absolute distinction between the Apollonian and Dionysian is tangential to the providence of the Gods.
As I mentioned there’s something of a false dichotomy that’s to my mind somewhat ahistoric when looking at Nietzsche’s Apollonian vs Dionysian. For Plato and the Platonists that follow him up to the 7th Century CE the Gods are not symbols that can be reduced into frameworks but instead are the causes of all things.
For Plato, Apollo and Dionysus aren’t frameworks to look at life but particular Gods, worthy of piety and devotion. There’s actually a lot of Dionysian themes in Plato but not in our modern Nietzschian framework eg but from Plato’s context as a devout Polytheist influenced by the religion around him and Orphic Mysteries. As Plato himself says in the Phaedo
“The thrysus bearers are many; the mystics few”.
I’ve had a little trouble believing there are 4 sources, given prophetic and ecstatic were both likely drug induced, ethylene gas poisoning and drunkenness.
There are 4 sources types of Mania that were mentioned, but remember in the Phaedrus the main theme is how Erotic Mania (specifically a kind of homoerotic mania at that) elevates the Soul to its leader God and the banquet of the Gods.
So for Plato, as an Idealist and Polytheist wouldn’t accept the physical causes of these things you mention but instead find the causes in the Gods (see Timaeus).
This is something the later Platonists continue. Proclus, in the Platonic Theology (Book I, Chapter 24), writes that
As therefore through the first goodness all the Gods are boniform, and through intelligible wisdom they have a knowledge ineffable, and established above intellect, thus also, I think, through the summit of beauty, every thing divine is lovely. For from thence all the Gods derive beauty, and being filled with it, fill the natures posterior to themselves, exciting all things, agitating them with Bacchic fury about the love of themselves, and pouring supernally on all things the divine effluxion of beauty.
So here the Dionysian mania, the Bacchic fury, is the Providence of the Gods which overflows into all of reality and fills us with a love of the Gods through the Goodness and beauty of the Gods, an overflowing providence which causes reality to exist. In this light the 4 manias specifically mentioned become the providence of 4 particular Gods emanating their Providence in individual ways - so while these are the four kinds worth mentioning for Plato, as being the most visible examples in Greek Polytheism and culture of how divine mania impacts us, aren’t necessarily the only forms.
I think you’re right to say Plato didn’t invent these manias, 100%.
Instead Plato is describing things he sees around him which he thinks are caused by the Gods. The Oracles of the Gods and the impact of initiation into the Mysteries and the power of poetry and Eros are well known by Plato to be a) not rational but also b) facts of reality for him which c) are of divine origin.
For Plato the Apollonian madness as I remember it from the Phaedrus is the mania which the Oracle of Delphi has when she is possessed by the God.
As such it is still a Mania, one where the divine power of a God overcomes the rational soul. Which would seem at odds with Nietzsche’s very 19th Century conceptions of a solar God of rationality and harmony.
Nietzsche was a Classicist and Philologist before he was a philosopher though, so he would have been familiar with the myths and references in Plutarch to differences in art and music between Apollo and Dionysus. But this was more of a thematic contrast than the binary dichotomy of opposites which Nietzsche paints in the Apollonian/Dionysian.
Eg, in Greek Polytheistic Religion, when Apollo vacates Delphi for the winter months, it is Dionysus who takes over the role as Patron God. The two Gods, both sons of Zeus are individually quite different, but also complementary, and Platonically speaking as Gods their providence can descend downwards to the world of appearances and share their providence in the form of a divine mania. The Mania of Prophecy from Apollo and the Mania of Ecstasy and the Mysteries of Dionysus are still both manias, and therefore not really as binary opposites as Nietzsche has the Naturwahrheit, the truth of Nature of Dionysus and the Kulturluge , the lie of culture of Apollo portrays.
So I think Plato is in the background for Nietzsche here. Classicist Richard Seaford in his book Dionysos writes that Nietzche was likely influenced by 18th and 19th Century German intellectuals like Winckelmann, Schelling and Bachofen in creating this kind of ahistorical view of Dionysus, which causes him to ignore the democratic elements to Dionysus worship.
As the God most widely worshipped in the Mediterranean world of antiquity, but who is rarely mentioned in the Homeric epics written for the Aristocratic warrior class, and whose worship was associated with slaves, including feast days where slaves were liberated and women, and in Rome as Liber was part of the Aventine Triad of the Plebian Class (Liber, Libera/Proserpina, and Ceres the agricultural Gods of the working class), Dionysus has democratic aspects which are at odds with the kind of aristocratic tendencies of Nietzsche.
I asked this question early into my investigation of it. Just in case. In retrospect, mid-journey, I don’t think it’s a very good question. Divine mania seems to much more limited in scope than I had initially thought. At best, maybe it’s tangential to concepts within Apollonian and Dionysian aspects.
I’ve had a little trouble believing there are 4 sources, given prophetic and ecstatic were both likely drug induced, ethylene gas poisoning and drunkenness.
Your comment has a lot to unpack. I’ll see if I can get my hands on a copy of Seaford’s book. Find out where in Plutarch you were talking about. I’ve also got to see if I can get more clarity on divine mania from an ancient Greek perspective; surely it isn’t Plato’s invention. Then reread Birth of Tragedy armed with the new information.
I may be back.
E: For a book published in 2006, it has retained its value quite well. For a book published in 2006 that has retained its value quite well, it has been quite the challenge to track down a library copy.
From a Platonic perspective I’d say it’s the other way around,that Nietzsche’s absolute distinction between the Apollonian and Dionysian is tangential to the providence of the Gods.
As I mentioned there’s something of a false dichotomy that’s to my mind somewhat ahistoric when looking at Nietzsche’s Apollonian vs Dionysian. For Plato and the Platonists that follow him up to the 7th Century CE the Gods are not symbols that can be reduced into frameworks but instead are the causes of all things.
For Plato, Apollo and Dionysus aren’t frameworks to look at life but particular Gods, worthy of piety and devotion. There’s actually a lot of Dionysian themes in Plato but not in our modern Nietzschian framework eg but from Plato’s context as a devout Polytheist influenced by the religion around him and Orphic Mysteries. As Plato himself says in the Phaedo
“The thrysus bearers are many; the mystics few”.
There are 4 sources types of Mania that were mentioned, but remember in the Phaedrus the main theme is how Erotic Mania (specifically a kind of homoerotic mania at that) elevates the Soul to its leader God and the banquet of the Gods.
So for Plato, as an Idealist and Polytheist wouldn’t accept the physical causes of these things you mention but instead find the causes in the Gods (see Timaeus).
This is something the later Platonists continue. Proclus, in the Platonic Theology (Book I, Chapter 24), writes that
So here the Dionysian mania, the Bacchic fury, is the Providence of the Gods which overflows into all of reality and fills us with a love of the Gods through the Goodness and beauty of the Gods, an overflowing providence which causes reality to exist. In this light the 4 manias specifically mentioned become the providence of 4 particular Gods emanating their Providence in individual ways - so while these are the four kinds worth mentioning for Plato, as being the most visible examples in Greek Polytheism and culture of how divine mania impacts us, aren’t necessarily the only forms.
I think you’re right to say Plato didn’t invent these manias, 100%.
Instead Plato is describing things he sees around him which he thinks are caused by the Gods. The Oracles of the Gods and the impact of initiation into the Mysteries and the power of poetry and Eros are well known by Plato to be a) not rational but also b) facts of reality for him which c) are of divine origin.