ABSTRACT
Apollo and Dionysus were sons of Zeus. Apollo was the god of the sun, or dreams, and of reason, while Dionysus was the god of wine, ecstasy, and intoxication. The great German philosophers and historians of the nineteenth century (e.g., Nietzsche, 2008; Spengler, 1991) used the terms Apollonian and Dionysian to refer to two modes of thinking, one rational and analytic, and the other intuitive, emotional, and chaotic, and they argued that entire civilizations and epochs of history could be characterized in similar terms. Nietzsche (2008) claimed that the highest forms of art (Greek tragedy, in particular) required a synthesis of both the Apollonian and Dionysian mindsets.
