How can we know if the Apollonian and Dionysian really exist?

Question

I'm currently in the summer between my freshman and sophomore years. During the fall, I had a class on Oedipus Tyrannus and we read it with Aristotle, Freud, and Nietzche. I found many of the discussions interesting, especially The Birth of Tragedy's engagement with impulses towards emotional and rational forms of art.

However, I'm still wondering if these categories are actually real... They seem kind of arbitrary: you could probably talk about a million dichotomies-- determinism vs free will, individuality vs community, whatever. It just seems like these are really fuzzy, vague terms that don't have any empirical basis.

Is there any way to tell if these categories are "true" or "real"? If there isn't, can they still be valuable?

Answer 1

Colorless green ideas sleep furiously
Noam Chomsky

Chomsky should be treated as a koan -- a theme of meditatation. What does it mean? What could it mean? How many layers of armor does it present you before you can give it a meaning?

You ask:

Is there any way to tell if the Dionysian and Apollonian categories are "true" or "real"?
If there isn't, can they still be valuable?

Mythology being true is a category error; whether it is valuable is the question.

Is your cup of steaming coffee compassionate?
Are your thoughts tasty?

If there is one single factor that shot Freud into eminence it is this: he hitched his logos — his research and studies with patients — to the mythos of Sophocles. Nobody asks whether Oedipus really killed his father and fathered children with his mother. Yet if you read Sophocles it is as gripping NOW as the Greek choruses that watched and wept two thousand years ago.

If you and your spouse are discussing whether to buy your ten year old son a toy gun or lego bricks (many ten year olds prefer the former!!), the question of the bricks building real houses or the gun killing real people doesnt arise. The mythology (or better mythos) of the alternatives very much does.

Truth is cheap; relevance is hard. That is why I suggest the verb 'relevate'
Wholeness and the Implicate Order by David Bohm (heavily paraphrased)

The western Christian world post the Nicene council switched off the mythos mode. This has been most unfortunate for westernity, Christianity and the larger world. Early Christianity was more diverse than what followed Nicene because the different sects chose different mythoses.

Post Nicene, there was only the logos mode, whether you're Christian or secular, the Christian identifying Logos with the Word, with God, with the Word of God; the secular identifying Logos with logic.

The Mythos-Logos dichotomy is listed here in multiple forms. Some of the rows may appeal to you if many others don't.

Answer 2

Welcome to PhilSE. Are the categories emotional and rational "real", and do they have an empirical basis?

What Is Reality Anyway?

The first part is a very broad question, because reality itself may be an essentially contested concept. From WP:

Walter Bryce Gallie (1912–1998) introduced the term essentially contested concept to facilitate an understanding of the different applications or interpretations of the sorts of abstract, qualitative, and evaluative notions2—such as "art", "philanthropy",3 "power",4 and "social justice"—used in the domains of aesthetics, sustainable development, political philosophy, philosophy of history, and philosophy of religion.

When one talks of what reality is, one can see the idea thoroughly tied up in the politics of being and thinking to such an extent, that detached from reality might even serve as a legal basis for committing someone to an institution. Reality is often, therefore, a function of one's worldview. Of course, one popular worldview is that there is only one fundamental reality and that "science" determines it. This is a mild form of scientism. In this sense, one can easily clarify by using terms as "personal reality" and "physical reality" to observe that reality can only be perceived through a subjective lens ultimately.

But for most people who don't split hairs, the categories of "emotions" and "reason" are intuitive and sensible categories. In fact, it's a very common theme in any subject material that resembles philosophy. One of my favorite quotation comes from Kahlil Gibran on the subject:

Your reason and your passion are the rudder and the sails of your seafaring soul. If either your sails or your rudder be broken, you can but toss and drift, or else be held at a standstill in mid-seas. For reason, ruling alone, is a force confining and passion, unattended, is a flame that burns to its own destruction. Therefore let your soul exalt your reason to the height of passion, that it may sing; And let it direct your passion with reason, that your passion may live through its own daily resurrection and like the phoenix rise above its own ashes.

Do the Categories of Emotions and Reason Have an Empirical Basis?

In modern science, absolutely, and the empirical basis can be understood through neural correlates of conscious experience. Without getting too much into neural anatomy and physiology, it should be understood that there are definite regions of the brain that can be ascribed to, though contestable language in philosophy, "producing" emotions. The amygdala for instance is highly correlated to the experience of fear. From WP:

The amygdala has a primary role in the processing of memory, decision-making, and emotional responses (including fear, anxiety, and aggression). The amygdala was first identified and named by Karl Friedrich Burdach in 1822.5

That means, in real time, using fMRIs and other tools, we can see the brain change in empirically consistent ways with the experience of key emotions. That's the equivalent of watching data flow through a microprocessor when a computer system is controlling equipment. If you really want to get empirical in your exploration, consider reviewing Damasio's somatic marker hypothesis. There is a preliminary scientific basis for claiming not only are emotions and logic different, but that it is the emotions that determine the decision executed in logical thinking.