Heidegger, Plato, Freud, Nietzsche, the soul and the

question of human finitude.1

Bert Olivier
Department of Philosophy, Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University
Bert.Olivier@nmmu.ac.za

Key concepts:
Apollo, Dionysus, ego, Freud, Heidegger, id, mortality, Nietzsche, reason, superego

Abstract
Plato's conception of the human soul as comprising an uneasy union of reason (the
charioteer), spirit (the white horse) and appetite or passion (the black horse), where reason
has to enlist the support of spirit to be able to restrain and control passion, seems, at first
blush, to correspond with Freud's psychoanalytical conception of the psyche. In Freud's
structural model, this comprises the ego, the id and the superego, but while Plato seems to
have trusted the ability of reason to control passion, Freud appears less sanguine about the
egos (reasons) ability to master the id (instinct, passion). This paper therefore addresses
the question of the significance of the differences between the ancient (Platonic) and the
modern (Freudian) conceptions of the soul or psyche/subject. Nietzsche offers the
intellectual means to make sense of this striking difference through his insight into the
triumph of Socratism over Greek tragedys elaboration on the tension between Apollonian
cultural creativity through form, and Dionysian surrender to the obliteration of form and
individuality in favour of ecstatic union with others. According to Nietzsche, this was what
made existence bearable for the Greeks, but the development of philosophical reason
undermined this tragic spirit of a kind of equilibrium between reason and passion. A brief
excursion to the scene of Freuds Eros and Thanatos is undertaken to provide tentative
insight into the similarity between Freud and the early Greek tragedians, and the difference
between Freud and Plato (as well as the rationalist Platonist tradition). The paper concludes
with a consideration of contemporary culture in light of Nietzsches early diagnosis of the
malady of Socratism as that which fatally infects a cultures ability to deal with human
finitude. Brief consideration is also given to Heideggers death analysis, which corroborates
Nietzsches insights concerning tragic ancient Dionysian-Apollonian culture.
1

The financial assistance of the National Research Foundation of South Africa, by way of a research incentive
grant, is hereby gratefully acknowledged.

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In Being and time (1978: 293-311) Martin Heidegger argues that, for Dasein (the individual
human subject) to attain an authentic existence, it has to confront its ownmost possibility of
non-being resolutely, that is, it has to accept its own mortality, the inescapable fact of its
death,2 without running away from it as the they tends to do or being morbidly
fascinated by it, which is equally a way to flee from, or deny its inescapability. Neither of
these latter possibilities would enable Dasein to face death resolutely, that is, in a way that
frees it for life, so to speak. This enables one to anticipate ones death in a liberating
manner. In Heideggers words (1978: 308):

Anticipation...unlike inauthentic Being-towards-death, does not evade the fact that

death is not to be outstripped; instead, anticipation frees itself for accepting this.
When, by anticipation, one becomes free for ones own death, one is liberated from
ones lostness in those possibilities which may accidentally thrust themselves upon
one; and one is liberated in such a way that for the first time one can authentically
understand and choose among the factical possibilities lying ahead of that possibility
which is not to be outstripped. Anticipation discloses to existence that its uttermost
possibility lies in giving itself up, and thus it shatters all ones tenaciousness to
whatever existence one has reached.

What follows here, should be understood against the backdrop furnished by Heideggers
reflections on death. In brief, the reason why Heideggers understanding of human beings
acceptance and anticipation of their inescapable condition of Being-towards-death is
important for the argument of this paper, is that the latter is predicated on the conviction
that Heidegger is crucially right about having to accept ones mortality or finitude to be able
2

On a previous occasion (Olivier 2011) I addressed the issue of contemporary western cultures inclination,
by way of an economic system (capitalism), of breaking up the embrace between what Freud calls Eros and
Thanatos (the life-drives and the death drives). In so doing, through its principle of unlimited economic growth
(in a limited ecological sphere), I argued that capitalism was disturbing the intertwinement of Eros and
Thanatos in favour of Thanatos, with the result that signs pointed to the likelihood that the point would be
reached where the balance or tensional relationship between these two primordial forces would be
disturbed, and Eros would be unable to maintain the equilibrium. What I wish to stress in the present context,
is that here, as well as in this earlier paper, it is the primordial relationship of Eros and Thanatos that is at
stake, and not a romanticisation of the latter, or death. As Freud demonstrated, they are interwoven in a
relation of mutual implication and conditionality: without life, no death (to which all life returns), but without
death (in the sense of the inorganic conditions that preceded the emergence of life), no life either. The present
paper explores this theme further, questioning the consequences, for the human soul or psyche/subjectivity,
of denying the intimate bond between life and death.

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to live a life without illusions, but nevertheless fulfilling. A detour is necessary to

substantiate this claim. It takes one to the ancient Greek philosopher, Plato, in whose work
one finds evidence that he believed reason to be able to exercise control over the passions,
and from there to Sigmund Freud, whose work suggests less optimism in this regard. This
may seem counter-intuitive, considering that one might expect Freud, a modern thinker, to
be more sanguine about rational control than Plato, a thinker of antiquity. The key to
understanding this ostensible discrepancy is found in the young Nietzsches views
concerning the pre-Socratic Greeks, whose distinctive culture must be seen as a precarious
union of two forces represented by the Greek gods, Apollo and Dionysus, respectively,
where the former stands for reason and moderation, and the latter for passion and excess.
The important point is that both were given their due, according to Nietzsche, and this made
Greek culture possible. It is further argued that Freud rediscovered the forces, together with
the tension-filled relations between them unearthed by Nietzsche in the Greek tragedies
this time in the human psyche. This contrasts strikingly with Platos claims, that the struggle
between the forces in question can be resolved in favour of reason. Finally, it is argued that
contemporary culture displays all the signs of being in thrall to reason as conceived by
Plato, except that the quest for control has developed much further in the guise of
technology, or technical reason, to the point where the possibility of overcoming human
finitude is mooted.

Plato

Anyone familiar with the writings of both Plato and Freud would probably have noticed what
appears to be a striking similarity between their respective ways to depict or represent the
soul (psuche) or psyche. Things are not as straightforward as they may seem, though. One
way of understanding the similarities and differences, and more importantly the reasons
for these differences, is to read them through the lens of Nietzsches youthful
characterisation of Greek culture as one caught between two countervailing forces, as I
shall try to show. One of the most compelling images of the soul comes from Platos
Phaedrus (1961: 253d-e), where he depicts it, in a manner commensurate with his more
abstract discussion of the soul (psuche) in the Republic (1991: 261-262), as a chariot,
driven by a charioteer and pulled by two horses, one white and one black (dark), the black
one strong and unruly, the white one less strong, and obedient to the charioteers demands,
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supporting the latter in his attempt to enlist and direct the black horses strength. For Plato
the charioteer represents reason, mind or intellect, the white horse spirit, and the black
horse appetite or passion, and to each corresponds a certain virtue (arte) or excellence,
namely reasonableness, courage and moderation (sophrosune), respectively.
This may seem like a fairly simple composite image representing the human psyche or
soul, but if one considers that even at this early stage of philosophical reflections history,
Plato introduces a tension into his attempt to grasp the complexity of individual human
beings, namely that between reason and appetite, where spirit is assigned an ancillary role
with regard to reasons never-ending struggle to gain mastery over the wayward passions,
then the impression of simplicity quickly vanishes. Platos discussion of this tripartite
structure of the soul in the Republic (Plato 1991: 261), considered below, testifies to the
problematic nature of arriving at a conception that not only adequately represents the
countervailing tendencies in human behaviour, but in addition points to possible ways in
which these inclinations could be negotiated or creatively configured (if each is to be given
its due), or, on the other hand, be hierarchically arranged so that some be (forcibly)
subordinated to those which are valorised.
One should therefore ask the question, precisely what the nature of the relationship
between reason and the other two components of the soul is do they have equal status,
or are the power-relations asymmetrical? In Platos case there is no doubt that it is the
latter, with reason, or the charioteer, striving to gain control over the two forces, spirit and
appetite ...it is a pair of steeds that the charioteer controls (Plato 1961: 246a-b). Spirit, or
the white horse, needs no whip, being driven by the word of command alone, but appetite,
the strong, black horse, is said to be hard to control with whip and goad (Plato 1961:
253d-e).
It is true, however, as Melchert (1991: 130) argues, that one can see this relationship
as one where the rational part of the soul (the charioteer) guides the other two. Against
this, my interpretation, that it is control that is at stake, can be supported by another
metaphorical depiction of the soul in the Republic. Here he (Plato 1991: 270-272) uses the
composite image of a multiform beast, combined with a lion and a man into one creature,
to illustrate his conception of the human soul. All three of these, combined into one, appear
on the outside as a man, but inside this composite creature very different relationships of
power depicted by Plato as internal justice or injustice (harmony or disharmony),
respectively are possible. If the many-headed or multiform beast and the lion are strong
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and well-fed, while the interior man is kept weak, injustice or disharmony prevails in the
individual soul, as the three parts continually fight one another, and the man, or reason, is
dragged everywhere by the other two, powerless to control them. On the other hand, if the
interior man (reason) is strengthened (with words and deeds), the many-headed beast will
be cared for judiciously by him, encouraging the gentle heads and discouraging the fierce
ones from growing, and making the lion his ally in the process. In this way, although
arguably not through brute force but rather via persuasion, a condition of command or
control (that is, internal justice) will be attained, according to Plato a state of affairs
where every component of the soul will come into its own, thus contributing to harmonious
co-existence.
In Blooms felicitous translation of Platos Republic, the passage where Socrates
explains to Glaucon the tripartite structure of the human soul which corresponds to the
threefold division of citizens, and similarly to three kinds of pleasures is illuminating in this
regard (Plato 1991: 261):

One part, we say, was that with which a human being learns, and another that with
which he becomes spirited; as for the third, because of its many forms, we had no
peculiar name to call it by, but we named it by what was biggest and strongest in it.
For we called it the desiring part on account of the intensity of the desires concerned
with eating, drinking, sex, and all their followers; and so, we also called it the moneyloving part, because such desires are most fulfilled by means of money.

Plato (1991: 262) further characterises the latter part (desire, or passion) as gain-loving,
the spirited part as wholly set on mastery [and] victory, and the (rational) part, by means of
which one learns, as wisdom-loving. Although reason, in Platos view, gains pleasure in
wisdom, it exercises control over the appetitive part with the assistance of the spirited part
of the soul, whose pleasure is in mastery. In Blooms discussion of this (in the Interpretive
Essay included in his translation of the Republic; 1991: 303 and further), he alerts one to
the complexities of Platos philosophical anthropology. In particular, he draws attention to
the difficulties that Socrates and Glaucon encounter in determining the place and function
of spiritedness (Plato 1991: 118-120), after easily agreeing on the distinction between
reason and desire or appetite (also referred to as the irrational (1991: 118). While Glaucon
is convinced that spirit is essentially part of desire, Socrates does not simply adduce an
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example (the one of Leontius being angry at himself for being unable to resist the desire to
look at the abjection of corpses, discussed below; 1991: 119) to show that spirit sometimes
opposes desire. He depicts spirit as an ally of reason, which he here (chillingly evoking
what the Frankfurt School would later term technical reason) calls the calculating part
(1991: 120) the way that soldiers are called upon to act as auxiliaries to rulers in the city.
Here one is afforded a clear instance of Platos conception of reason, in its relation with
spirit: the latter forces the passions to obey reasons commands. Small wonder he says
that (1991: 120) ...there [is] in the soul too this third, the spirited, by nature an auxiliary to
the calculating part, if its not corrupted by bad rearing...
Freud

Turning to the father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, we find a conception of the soul
(which derives from the Greek psuche), or the human subject3 (as psychoanalysis calls it),
that displays similarities as well as differences compared to its counterpart in Platos work,
succinctly discussed above. In The subject of semiotics (1983: 130), Silverman sums it up
succinctly:

The Freudian subject is above all a partitioned subject, incapable of exhaustive selfknowledge. Its parts do not exist harmoniously; they speak different languages and
operate on the basis of conflicting imperatives. The analyst functions as a kind of
interpreter, establishing communication between the various sectors, although his
loyalties are always engaged more fully by one than the others...

In the work of the early Freud (particularly The interpretation of dreams of 1900) the subject
(or psyche, as counterpart of the soul) is divided into three compartments, two of which
are

so

closely

connected

that

one

may

treat

them

as

one,

namely

the

It is doubtful whether one could justifiably talk of the subject in the context of ancient Greek thought,
because the subject-object relationship was only introduced in modern philosophy, namely in the work of
Descartes in the 17th century, and as such comprises a crucial part of the landscape of anthropocentric
western philosophy. For Plato the tripartite soul comprises something fundamentally different from
Descartess thing that thinks, or res cogitans, which stands opposed to the physical world, including the
th
body. In Descartess 17 -century dualistic metaphysics of mind (soul) and matter (body), the world which, for
the ancient Greeks and the medieval period, was a unitary one, was fundamentally torn asunder into two
domains of irreconcilable (created) substances, one of which (body, object or res extensa) was accessible to
the other (mind, subject or res cogitans), as representation (Heidegger 2009).

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preconscious/conscious, as distinct from the unconscious. These two psychic systems

operate differently as far as meaning-generation goes, the latter functioning in a kind of
timeless space (Silverman 1983: 52-71; Olivier 2000) something that will prove relevant
later where everyday temporal sequentiality and spatial distinctness are suspended.
Considering in particular Freuds mature way of modelling the human psyche (Freud
1953; Silverman 1983: 130-133), it strikes one immediately that it, too, has a tripartite
structure, namely that of the id4 (which is unconscious), the ego and the superego, where
the id (which is unconscious) corresponds, broadly, to Platos passion or appetite, the
ego to the Greek thinkers reason, while the psychoanalytical notion of the superego
which one might expect to resonate with Platos spirit seems to lack a counterpart. The
reason for this mismatch is not hard to understand for Plato spirit functions as a helper
or auxiliary of sorts to reason, which has the strenuous task of mastering and subjugating
the passions. It will be recalled that, unlike passion (pictured as the strong, black horse in
the Phaedrus by Plato), spirit (the less strong, but obedient, white horse) is subservient,
however, and responds to reasons (the charioteers) imperatives. For Freud, by contrast,
the superego plays the role of a police officer, that is, conscience (or internalised
parental/societal authority in individuals) who instead of being subservient to reason, as
spirit is for Plato keeps the ego (reason) in check when it errs morally, such as when it
succumbs too much to the ids [passions] demands. Silverman (1983: 132) characterises
the superego as follows:
...the male subject5 internalizes along with the image of the father an image of his
own distance from the father. That distance is expressed through the creation of a
psychic construct which stands to one side of the ego, as a kind of ideal version of it.

As Silverman (1983: 131) points out, the id always obeys the dictates of the pleasure principle [avoiding
pain and maximising pleasure], no matter what the consequences. In this respect it resembles the irrational
Schopenhauerian will, which drives human actions regardless of the consequences, and of the attempts of
reason to supervene. It is striking that Schopenhauer, too, uses a metaphor of carrying or bearing; that of a
strong, blind man (irrational will) carrying a weak, paralysed, but clear-sighted man (reason) on his shoulders.
The blind man goes wherever he wants to, even if he hurts himself in the process, ignoring the warnings of
the paralysed man (Schopenhauer 1969, II: 209; Olivier 1998). Schopenhauer would therefore appear to be in
agreement with the pre-Socratic Greek tragedians and with Freud, rather than with Plato and the Socratism of
the western philosophical tradition.
5

This points, conspicuously, to a weakness in Freuds theory of the subject, namely a neglect concerning the
female subject, which he acknowledged. For an insightful discussion of this neglect and its implications, on
the part of Freud, see Silverman (1983: 137).

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This ego ideal or superego functions throughout the history of the subject as the
mirror in which the ego sees what it should be, but never can be.

One might say that the superego goads the ego to moral perfection, with the consequence
that, just as the ego has to contend with the powerful libidinal (sexual) or aggressive
impulses coming from the id, it has to, equally, resist the demands of the superego which is,
after all, the internalised representative of societal normativity. If it yields too readily to
either of these (sets of) demands which come from within the psyche itself the ego risks
becoming pathological in the sense of being either at the mercy of id-drives, or of superegoimperatives, either of which would weaken the egos autonomy to the point where it can no
longer maintain a kind of equilibrium between the two psyche-components which, together
with itself, comprise the human psyche.
Add to this the fact that the ego also, in addition, faces the necessity of confronting
pressures, demands and dangers from the outside world the relation to which is captured
by Freud with the so-called reality-principle then it becomes apparent that the ego has
no easy task, for its actions are orchestrated by the reality principle. In fact, unlike Platos
rational charioteer who, with the assistance of the spirited white horse, is depicted as being
able to restrain and control the passionate, untamed black horse, the ego is assured of no
such ability to control or overpower the other two psychic agencies in relation to either their
demand, or the exigencies of the external world. The situation with Freud, then, seems to
be crucially different from that of Plato when it comes to reasons justified confidence in its
ability to master countervailing forces either within the psyche or outside of it. It could be
argued, however, that I am overemphasising the differences between Plato and Freud here,
given passages like the following in Freud (1953: 25), which resonate with Platos horsemetaphors:

...in its [the egos] relation to the id it is like a man on horseback, who has to hold in
check the superior strength of the horse; with this difference, that the rider tries to do
so with his own strength while the ego uses borrowed forces. The analogy may be
carried a little further. Often a rider, if he is not to be parted from his horse, is obliged
to guide it where it wants to go; so in the same way the ego is in the habit of
transforming the ids will into action as if it were its own.

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I would argue, however, that although control of the horse is at stake here, as it is in
Platos depiction of the charioteer in his struggle to overpower and control especially the
headstrong one of the two horses in Freuds metaphor it should be clear that, at least
sometimes, the rider has to submit to the horse, guiding it where it (German es,
translated as id) wants to go. What is also strikingly different from Plato, is the fact that the
rider/ego analogy breaks down where, for Freud (unlike for Plato, where the white horse
supports the charioteers attempts) the rider has nothing to call on except his (or her) own
strength, while the ego can draw upon borrowed forces (such as the superego or
conscience) in its attempt to restrain and guide the id, which is clearly not controllable,
and has to be recognised as a force in its own right. As I shall argue below, this is
consonant with the fact that the forces of the uneasy union between reason and the
irrational, or between life and death, in the guise of Dionysus, was acknowledged as such
by the pre-Socratic Greeks. The upshot of this is that Freud, like his pre-Socratic
counterparts, puts paid to the Platonic idea that reason, in the hypertrophied guise of
Socratism, can overpower the chthonic Dionysian forces once and for all.
To corroborate this, consider Baumers (1977: 425-426) striking description of the
relationship between Freuds assessment of the prospects of reason (in therapy) in the face
of the primacy of the drives (here referred to as instincts):

...Freud was also a good pre-Freudian rationalist, who believed in the possibility of a
science of man and in healing. All the same, his anatomy of the mental personality
was hardly flattering to man nor did he expect therapy to achieve happiness. His
emphasis was on mans instinctual endowment. Though Freud changed his mind
several times about the nature of the instincts, he always regarded them as basic
and in conflict. Ultimately he came to see life in Empedoclean terms, as an eternal
struggle between the instincts of Eros and Thanatos, love and death, the latter being
manifested in mans destructiveness toward both himself and others...For Freud, as
for Plato, reason was the rider of the horse. But Freuds rider, far from being in firm
command, all too often takes orders from his more powerful mount and is forced to
guide it the way it wants to go. The horse, of course, was the id, described by Freud
as the great reservoir of instinctual energy, a chaos, a cauldron of seething
excitement; in popular language, standing for the untamed passions, primitive and
irrational, demanding outlet. Man was more than half animal, and what is more, a
sick animal who did not really want to get well. Mitigating this biological-psychological

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image somewhat is the role played in Freuds system by the analyst, who can help
individuals understand their hidden self and thus gain a measure of honesty and
insight.

Baumers highlighting of the almost uncanny similarity between Freuds anthropology and
that of the pre-Socratic Greeks (also encountered in Nietzsches work, as I shall presently
show) as far as the understanding of human beings is concerned, cannot be ignored.
Baumer even alludes to the pre-Socratic philosopher, Empedocles who depicted the
world as forever caught between cosmic Love (philia) and Hatred (neikos) a cosmic vision
that is consonant with what Nietzsche, in The birth of tragedy, depicts as the struggle
between Dionysian excess and Apollonian restraint in pre-Socratic tragedy.
Nietzsche

So what is the significance of these differences between Plato and Freuds respective
notions of the soul or psyche? What changed between Platos time and Freuds? As hinted
above, it seems to me that Friedrich Nietzsche, an older near-contemporary of Freud, may
provide an illuminating perspective on this question, given his thorough knowledge of
ancient Greek culture as a prodigy philologist. Especially his early book, The birth of
tragedy out of the spirit of music (of 1871), represents startling insights into the way that the
ancient Greeks negotiated the terrifying truth about human mortality and suffering, and
casts light on the absence of a notion of the unconscious in Plato and Platos Socrates.
This involves what one might call a developmental understanding of Greek self-reflection,
from the Greek tragedians to Plato and beyond, notably what Nietzsche (in The birth of
tragedy) depicts as a kind of cultural deterioration. The latter assumes the form of a
retrogressive movement from a healthy acceptance of, and aesthetic elaboration on, the
inescapability of suffering and death in Greek drama and art generally, to what Nietzsche
calls the victory of Socratism, a metonymy for hegemonic reason in all its expressions,
including philosophy and science. Such a victory entails the increasingly successful
repression of the (Dionysian) knowledge and acceptance of suffering and death (in the
hypertrophy of reason), which was previously represented in, and transmuted through, the
characters and action in tragic drama.

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Nietzsche cast his interpretation of Greek drama as a tension-filled marriage but one
where each is given its due between the ancient Greek gods, Apollo and Dionysus, with
the former (the god of the plastic visual arts) instantiating form, semblance, dream and
illusion, and the latter (the god of music, abandonment and excess) standing for
unmitigated, chaotic passion and ecstasy, the intoxicating celebration of life in the face of
looming death, and the absence or obliteration of individual form in favour of merging with
all others. Dionysian revelry, occurring in tandem with ecstatic, dithyrambic music directed
to the deity, was the assertion of the unity of all being, from which one comes at birth, and
where you return to at death6, while, in contrast, Apollo, the god of the plastic, visual arts,
stood for individuation, illusion, beauty, equilibrium and self-control. In Nietzsches words
(Birth of tragedy, 1909: section 8):

Thus we have come to interpret Greek tragedy as a Dionysian chorus which again
and again discharges itself in Apollinian [sic] images. Those choric portions with
which the tragedy is interlaced constitute, as it were, the matrix of the dialogue...This
substratum of tragedy irradiates, in several consecutive discharges, the vision of the
drama a vision on the one hand completely of the nature of Apollinian dreamillusion...but on the other hand, as the objectification of a Dionysian condition, tending
toward the shattering of the individual and his fusion with the original Oneness.
Tragedy is an Apollinian embodiment of Dionysian insights and powers...7

I would therefore take my cue from Nietzsche, by using the opposing pair of principles
denoted by Apollo and Dionysus, to address what one might call the growth in denialism,8
accompanying the emergence of Socratism (the victory of logical reason over passion),
6

As will become evident later, Freud articulated the same insight in Beyond the pleasure principle in an
attempt to grasp the irresolvable tension between Eros and Thanatos (life-drives and death-drives).
7

I am tempted to see in this creative tension between two irreducible powers, Apollo and Dionysus, a
precursor of what Heidegger would later, in The origin of the work of art (1971) depict as a life-giving
struggle between world and earth, where the former corresponds with the Apollonian, and the latter with
the Dionysian principles, respectively. World, for Heidegger, represents the principle of openness or
interpretability of the artwork, while earth stands for that which obstinately resists interpretation by
withdrawing from all attempts to subject it to hermeneutic scrutiny. Instead, it merely is, like the texture of
marble, or the iridescence of pigments in an oil painting. Similarly, Nietzsches Apollonian principle manifests
itself in recognisable images, while the Dionysian power shatters all forms, and as such seems to belong to
what the ancient Greeks thought of as inscrutable chthonic forces of the earth.
8

Arguably the thinker who most strenuously and clearly put paid to such denialism in the history of western
philosophy, is Arthur Schopenhauer, as his main work (1969) confirms unambiguously. In this respect he
anticipated the work of Freud.

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perceived in ancient Greek culture by Nietzsche, when it comes to acknowledging the

inescapable suffering and pain in life, which is what, according to Nietzsche, the Greeks
were able to acknowledge, and simultaneously elaborate on, or accept, by the marriage
between Dionysus and Apollo.
The way in which Nietzsche reconstructs and interprets ancient Greek history in The
Birth of Tragedy construes it in terms of a kind of truce between these ancient enemies. In
other words, while, in the case of barbarian nations surrounding ancient Greek, or Doric,
culture, Dionysus reigned supreme, with its pessimistic affirmation of suffering, death and
the loss of individuality, among the Greeks this was mitigated by the operation of both
principles in ancient Greek tragedy. In essence, according to Nietzsche (1909: Section 15),
tragic insight...merely to be endured, needs art as a protection and remedy.
Apollo was present in tragic drama in the guise of the characters engaging in dramatic
action which reflected a kind of veil of illusion, cast over the terrible Dionysian truth of
suffering and chthonic oneness with the primal forces of the earth. This, for Nietzsche, was
a creative solution, on the part of the Greeks, for dealing creatively with the co-existence of
the impulses represented by these two gods impulses which are found in all cultures, but
which are addressed very differently from one to the other. In the process admitting the
reality of pain and suffering in tragic drama (think of Oedipus Rex, Iphigenia at Aulis,
Antigone), but casting this in Apollonian dream-images the Greeks were able to create a
healthy culture: healthy because, unlike later, transformed cultures, even among the
ancient Greeks, they did not shrink away from staring suffering in the face, but drew an
Apollonian veil over it. Earlier I mentioned that the generation of meaning in the
unconscious (for example in dreams) according to Freud happens in a timeless space of
sorts. This appears to correspond to the temporal difference between events in the
Apollonian sphere of distinct individual action and what appears, from Nietzsches
description, to be something akin to the suspension of normal temporal relations in the
realm of Dionysian ecstasy (Nietzsche 1909: Section 16):

I see Apollo as the transfiguring genius of the principium individuationis through

which alone the redemption in illusion is truly to be obtained; while by the mystical
triumphant cry of Dionysus the spell of individuation is broken, and the way lies open
to the Mothers of Being, to the innermost heart of things.

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Within the sphere of individual existence, temporal relations cannot be suspended, but
analogous to the curious timelessness of the domain of the unconscious Nietzsche
intimates that, in ancient Greek culture (and presumably in any culture which counter poses
to the Apollonian an equivalent of the mystical Dionysian principle of ecstatic
transcendence of individual bounds) the conditions existed where such a suspension,
however temporary, was possible, and was sometimes actualised. Needless to emphasise,
the juxtaposition of these two, equally valued, modes of being among the Greeks of
antiquity facilitated, according to Nietzsche, their acceptance of their finitude or mortality,
instead of which the subsequent history of western culture saw the increasing denial and
suppression of the Dionysian in favour of the Apollonian in the guise of so-called Socratism
(rationalism).

Interweaving Plato, Freud and Nietzsche

With the advent of the Socratic philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, however, this healthy
state of affairs gave way to an increasing denial of Dionysian reality in favour of the onesided triumph of Apollo, but this time in the shape of the victory of reason, which Nietzsche
(1909: Sections 12-13) construes as Socratism, or the victory of logical reason over
tragedy. It is expressed in images such as Platos in the Phaedrus, where, as pointed out
before, the soul or psyche is depicted as a chariot being pulled by two horses, with the
charioteer representing reason, the white horse spirit, and the black horse appetite or
passion. With the help of the white horse the charioteer is able to subdue and control the
black horse, but unlike the case of tragedy, there is no equal status of reason and irrational
appetite here where appetite or passion is the closest that Plato comes to the Dionysian
principle. One might add that Platos (see for example 1991: 101) conception of music
deemed appropriate for the education of the youth is a far cry from the wild, impassioned
dithyrambic choral hymns of Dionysus Plato favours the kind of music that instils a
rational predilection for order and self-control in individuals, and strenuously opposes music
that would lead to lawlessness.
It must be admitted, however, that in some passages, Plato may give the impression
that his way of thinking is compatible with Nietzsches characterisation of Greek culture as
being held in creative tension between the Dionysian and Apollonian principles which
would mean that it is also reconcilable with earlier Greek tragic drama. Melchert (1991:131)
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reminds one, for instance, that Plato was quite aware of conflicts that may arise in the soul,
as illustrated by his allusion, in the Republic, to a certain Leontius who could not, despite
his best efforts, resist the desire to look at the corpses of newly executed individuals
outside of the city walls. I would agree that this morbid desire to behold the abject sight of
dead human bodies resonates with the Dionysian principle, but instead of indicating a kind
of equilibrium between this and the Apollonian principle, it seems to me that, as with the
charioteer and the two very different horses, rational control is the issue:

Leontius felt a strong desire to look at them, but at the same time he was disgusted
and turned away. For a time he struggled with himself and covered his face, but then,
overcome by his desire, pushing his eyes wide open and rushing toward the corpses:
Look for yourselves, he said, you evil things, get your fill of the beautiful sight!
(Plato 1974: 439e-440a; 1991: 119).

Moreover, according to Nietzsche (1909: Sections 15-16), writing in the second half of the
19th century, the culture of his own time was even more in the grip of an unmitigated
Socratism, that is, an optimistic scientific rationalism that denied and attempted to erase
any sign of Dionysus, and therefore opposed tragic art. Instead, it is increasingly predicated
on the sole importance of reason Apollo without Dionysus. Here Nietzsche writes of
those struggles, which...are being waged in the highest spheres of our contemporary world
between insatiable optimistic knowledge and the tragic need of art, and raises the (perhaps
surprising) question: Will the net of art, even if it is called religion or science, that is spread
over existence be woven even more tightly and delicately...? In other words, for Nietzsche
art, science and religion have something in common, namely to save humanity from the
unbearable, tragic truth in their own respective ways an aestheticist motif in Nietzsches
thought, according to Megill (1985: 38-47; see also Olivier 1994), in so far as it is predicated
on the assumption that there is no fundamental difference among these three cultural
practices: all of them cast a fictional web of illusion over the tragic void of death-in-life, but
only in art is the illusion self-consciously created. In the Elizabethan era western culture
could still produce art in the form of tragedies like those of Shakespeare which
instantiated a kind of equilibrium between Apollo and Dionysus, but by the 19th century, let
alone the 20th and 21st, this healthy appearance of the tragic union between these two
principles was all but gone.
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It is worth mentioning that, in choosing to represent ancient Greek culture in this way
a way which, at the same time, represented the hallmarks of what he saw as a healthy
culture Nietzsche took a stand against the pessimistic philosophy of his older
contemporary, Arthur Schopenhauer (1969, I: 312), who famously depicted life as a
perpetual swinging of times pendulum between pain and boredom (six days of suffering
and one of boredom his dig at Christianity). For Nietzsche, who was no stranger to pain
(he suffered endlessly from unbearable migraines), Schopenhauer correctly saw the
inescapable suffering of life, but instead of nevertheless affirming life, the way the Greeks
did in tragedy, he negated it. By contrast Nietzsche, despite his awareness of suffering,
chose to affirm life. What he later called the great health (in The gay science, 1910:
Section 382) was not as seen in contemporary magazine-culture epitomized by Longevity
magazine the denial of suffering, but the joyful affirmation of health as the will and ability
to recover from all illnesses or setbacks, affirming life in Dionysian-Apollonian terms,
despite suffering, as among the ancient Greeks, the shining ones.
Nietzsche therefore helps one understand what Freud (1920: 148-149) acknowledges,
namely that the Greek tragedians understood the workings of the unconscious as a
repressive psychic function that, by banishing the disturbing knowledge of human
suffering and mortality to a domain of forgetfulness while simultaneously acknowledging it
in the Dionysian, musical or choral aspect of tragedy enabled the Greeks to live in the
shining light of Apollo. It also helps explain why, in Plato as the representative of reason,
this understanding made way for a kind of self-censoring in the guise of double
repression: first, that suffering and death are inextricably part of human life, and second, a
repression of the cultural memory, that Greek tragic drama did acknowledge this terrible
Dionysian truth (that we live to die), and dealt with it in an Apollonian manner.
It is striking that Freud, in Beyond the pleasure principle, uses a formulation which
irresistibly reminds one of the terrible truth of Silenus, recounted by Nietzsche in The birth
of tragedy, regarding the inescapable fate of humankind (namely, death), in this way
signalling in unmistakable fashion the resurrection of Greek tragedys genius in
psychoanalysis. Here Freud observes (2006: 166):

If we may reasonably suppose, on the basis of all our experience without exception,
that every living thing dies reverts to the inorganic for intrinsic reasons, then we

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can only say that the goal of all life is death, or to express it retrospectively: the
inanimate existed before the animate.

This may seem like a truism accepted by all people, and yet, one can simply point to the
continued widespread adherence to monotheistic religions as demonstration of the contrary
belief in (or at least hope for) life after death itself arguably the religious counterpart to
what Nietzsche labelled Socratism (which would banish the Dionysian truth concerning
death). In Freuds case things are more complex. To begin with, his conception of the
drives indicates a complex understanding of their interrelationship (Freud 2006: 130):

...the innate tendencies within the living substance to re-establish an earlier state,
historically conditioned and conservative in nature and...the expression of an organic
inertia...Both kinds of drive, the Eros and the death-drive, work together and come
into conflict with one another from the very beginning of life [own italics; B.O.].

Do these words of Freud, italicised by the author, not succinctly express what, according to
Nietzsches interpretation, constituted ancient Greek tragedy, namely the polar opposites of
the Apollonian and the Dionysian principles or forces? Recall that Nietzsche saw the copresence of their dramatic representatives in Greek tragedy as sign of their equal, if
different, status. And here, more than 2500 years after the zenith of Greek tragedy,
Nietzsches younger contemporary and founder of psychoanalysis, Freud, reiterates this
fundamental insight, in the process dealing the prevailing Socratism of the time a blow from
which it will never recover, even if it has repressed its truth.9
It is important to note that, in proclaiming the goal of life to be death, Freud is not
denying the indissoluble intertwinement of the life- and death-drives. In fact, he makes it
abundantly clear that (2006: 130, 151-195), while the death drives must be accorded a
certain primacy all life came from what was previously inanimate matter, after all they
cannot be separated from Eros or the life-drives. One might say that the one is the
9

Baumer (1977: 425) puts the series of blows suffered by hegemonic reason since the end of the middle ages
as follows: Freud...thought of himself as a realist destroying mans illusions about himself. Copernicus had
destroyed the cosmological illusion that man stood at the center of the universe. Darwin destroyed the
biological illusion that man was a being essentially different from, and superior to, animals. Finally,
psychoanalysis delivered the blow that is probably the most wounding of all, namely that man was not even
master in his own house, that the ego (reason) did not, as had been commonly assumed, direct the will and all
the minds working.

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condition of the possibility and of the impossibility of the other, that is, that their interrelation is a quasi-transcendental one. This is another way of saying that, while processes
of dissolution, or of returning to an inanimate state are impossible without living organisms,
and vice versa, the conditionality of the one upon the other is not pure, because living
organisms are always subject to the operation of death-drives in the course of life, and
similarly, death-drives (such as aggression) are intimately conjoined with life-drives serving
the reinforcement and protection of life. Again one witnesses the consonance between
Freuds thinking and the cultural practices (specifically Dionysian/Apollonian tragedy) of the
Greeks, as interpreted by Nietzsche.
Contemporary culture

It requires no genius to tell that our culture is even more in the suffocating grip of Socratism
everywhere people shy away from the pain (and death) that visits the homes of every
individual sooner or later. Even our cemeteries are located in contrast to earlier ages
outside of cities and towns; the family graveyard, which is still sometimes seen on farms,
is virtually unknown as is the deathbed, where friends and family used to gather around a
dying family member. Today the ethos is one of deny or anaesthetise all pain, suffering
and death something which, I believe, partly explains why people cannot deal with
anything traumatic, except through the generous ingestion of tranquillisers and psychiatric
or psychological treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder. From a future perspective
the present era might be labelled the Prozac-era.
A different, and interesting symptom of this denial of mortality which Heidegger
labels inauthentic, as indicated earlier is encountered in the astonishing growth of
literature on MBS, or Mind-Body-Spirit adherence, since the late 20th century. Ridiculed
and deprecated by mainstream religious institutions, this manifestation of a search, on a
large scale, for alternatives to traditional religions, is another surprising symptom, I believe,
of Socratism surprising, because while it shares Socratisms attempt to suppress the
salutary Dionysian acceptance of our mortality by turning to spirituality, wellness, and
self-help, it does not valorise reason, as Socratism does,10 but retreats into spirituality
and techniques of wellness as an antidote to the pressures of a technocratic world.
10

The astonishing growth of MBS literature was pointed out to me by Belinda du Plooy, to whom I am
indebted for this. See especially Puttick 2005 in this regard. It is a moot question whether, or to what extent,

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In light of these considerations, it would appear that, today, it would make no sense to
orient education around the acceptance of human finitude, mortality, vulnerability and
fallibility (regardless of the urgent need for it) everywhere we see either the rise of
alternative spiritualities, or the symptoms of a valorisation of (technical) reason which
excludes or represses all acknowledgement of this. The rapid development of robotics is
another symptom of the (in-)human dream of becoming immortal, or at least having such
beings as companions even lovers (Turkle 2010: 8-9). A leading exponent of
technophiliac optimism,11 Raymond Kurzweil (Grossman 2011: 21-27) believes that, a few
decades from now, by 2045, what he terms the singularity will occur, when technological
change reaches the point where computers and robots surpass the brainpower of all
human brains combined, having already supposedly surpassed the brainpower of a human
brain by 2023. This means that computers will become self-aware and will surpass humans
in functional terms at every level, opening the way for the fusion of robots and humans a
displaced projection of the dream or illusion of immortality. In Grossmans words (2011: 22):

Its impossible to predict the behavior [sic] of these smarter-than-human intelligences

with which (with whom?) we might one day share the planet, because if you could,
youd be as smart as they would be. But there are a lot of theories about it. Maybe
well merge with them to become superintelligent cyborgs, using computers to extend
our intellectual abilities the same way that cars and planes extend our physical
abilities. Maybe the artificial intelligences will help us treat the effects of old age and
prolong our life spans indefinitely. Maybe well scan our consciousness into
computers and live inside them as software, forever, virtually. Maybe the computers
will turn on humanity and annihilate us. [This is the scenario depicted in the
Terminator films.] The one thing all these theories have in common is the
Christianity has been complicit with Socratism throughout its long history. On the one hand, one could argue
that, as a representative example, given Augustines conspicuous hatred of the (inescapable needs of the)
body, his Christian metaphysics contributed substantially to the alienation between Dionysian acceptance of
the joys as well as the sufferings of a bodily existence, but on the other hand, it could equally be pointed out
that Christianity, far from denying suffering and death, accentuates them by exhorting the faithful to believe in
a saviour and in the possibility of an afterlife what Nietzsche would label the aesthetic or mythic-fictional
aspect of religion. This very notion of an afterlife, again, may be seen precisely as a symptom of the denial
of death and suffering, in as far as it promises compensation for these earthly burdens. With regard to
Augustines attitude towards pleasures of the body, see Olivier 2012.
11

It is interesting to note that Nietzsche, in The Birth of tragedy (1909: Section 15), calls Socrates the
prototype of the theoretical optimist who valorises knowledge above all else. Ray Kurzweil would no doubt
concur, but Nietzsche, in contrast, speaks here of science, spurred by its powerful illusion, [which] speeds
irresistibly towards its limits where its optimism, concealed in the essence of logic, suffers shipwreck.

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transformation of our species into something that is no longer recognizable as such

to humanity circa 2011. This transformation has a name: the Singularity. [Own
comment; B.O.].

In a world where the exponential growth of computer intelligence gives rise to the
anticipation of crossing a boundary to a world unrecognisable to mortal or perhaps wouldbe immortal humans, the Dionysian would have no place; nor would Heideggers notion
of freedom-towards-death. Is it still possible to write a tragedy today? Maybe Arthur
Millers Death of a Salesman (1976) a parody of tragedy, in which the protagonist is
tellingly named Loman was born of a realisation that, in our time of the superficial,
anaesthetising belief that suffering and death can be finally overcome, people cannot
really grasp the forces at play (the Dionysian and the Apollonian). There is hope, however,
in that there are examples of tragicomedy around the films of David Lynch, for example
Wild at Heart, can be interpreted in these terms (Olivier 1996: 72-88), although the
phenomena of the absurd and the grotesque also lend themselves readily to these films as
an interpretive framework. Perhaps tragicomedy is the most appropriate genre for our era,
except that it probably presupposes too much comprehension on the part of television
sitcom addicts. On reflection, however, it is the sitcom and the soapy with ridiculous
titles like The Bold and the Beautiful which really capture the kitsch tenor of the present
(Olivier 2003) better than anything else; like the turn to alternative spiritualities, it is an
anaesthetic that is in widespread use.

Conclusion: Heideggers relevance

As indicated at the outset in this paper, in the work of Heidegger who, by all accounts,
took

Nietzsche

very

seriously

one

finds

one

of

the

most

far-reaching

Auseinandersetzungen of the implications of his compatriots castigation of western

cultures denialism regarding death, namely in the death-analysis encountered in Being and
time (1978: 307-311). This analysis, situated in the context of the question concerning
Daseins authenticity its latent ability to answer the silent call of conscience in the midst
of the suffocating everydayness of the they pertains to the singularising confronting of
Daseins ownmost possibility of non-being (that is, ones death), resolutely, without
flinching and (especially) without running away from it in multiple ways. The upshot of
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Heideggers analysis which is, in my view, entirely compatible with Nietzsches

interpretation of the Greeks creative Apollonian ability to face the prospect and finality of
(Dionysian) death is that facing ones death resolutely is a prerequisite for creative
living: paradoxically, it frees you for life.
In conclusion, one can therefore return to Heidegger (1978: 311), where he sums up
the link between authentic existence and being-towards-death:

We may now summarize our characterization of authentic Being-towards-death as

we have projected it existentially: anticipation reveals to Dasein its lostness in the
they-self, and brings it face to face with the possibility of being itself, primarily
unsupported by concernful solicitude, but of being itself, rather, in an impassioned
freedom towards death a freedom which has been released from the Illusions of
the they, and which is factical, certain of itself, and anxious.

That is to say if this strikes anyone who is unfamiliar with Heideggers work as being
nonsensical for Heidegger only those individuals who have experienced their own finitude
in the condition of anxiety, that is, the realisation that our existence is inescapably
accompanied by the constant, and certain, possibility of our non-existence, can be free
towards death, which is also free to live productively. Such individuals can therefore be said
to anticipate their own non-existence, and are able to overcome being-lost to their own
true selves in the midst of the everydayness of what he calls the they, or the anonymous
mass of people who shape our beliefs and fears (they say; they would not allow that;
theyve discovered; they expect one to). In the present time, more than ever before for
one has reason to believe that, for Heidegger, the they has always exercised its
anaesthetising effect on people the specific character of technocratic Socratism,
combined with those other forms of anaesthetising influences referred to, stands massively
in the way of a culture which could potentially liberate people for living by enabling their
discovery of their freedom-towards-death. Our society is increasingly in denial about human
mortality lest they reach a point of no return in the ongoing process of alienation from their
own finite humanity, people need to rediscover the Dionysian alongside of the present
incarnation of the Apollonian.

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