ABSTRACT
Nietzsche regarded life and its experiences as a dynamic interplay of opposites in which thesis and antithesis are drawn together in energy-creating conflict. This fundamental condition is a reflection of ‘the primordial contradiction that is concealed in things’ (BT, 9). Nietzsche says that all reality – that is ‘our empirical existence, and that of the world in general’ – is a ‘representation of the primary unity’ (BT, 4).1 This primal unity is a dynamic interplay of the separation and reunification of opposites, which reflects the Heraclitean notion of polarity, where ‘polarity [is] the diverging of a force into two qualitatively different opposed activities that seek to reunite’ (PTAG, 5). According to Nietzsche, opposites have an equal inherent value, so that one polar element cannot dominate and annihilate its counterpart. Nietzsche does not regard opposites as static values that remain antagonistic and incapable of equilibrium. They are, rather, experienced as relative and complementary to one another:
Everlastingly, a given quality contends against itself and separates into opposites; everlastingly these opposites seek to reunite. Ordinary people fancy they see something rigid, complete and permanent; in truth, however, light and dark, bitter and sweet are attached to each other and interlocked at any given moment like wrestlers of whom sometimes the one, sometimes the other is on top.
