The Oblivion of the Political in Light of the Ancient Greek Drama

Abstract

Through analysing the dramatic poetry of Ancient Greece, we shed light onto the issue of the rise and fall of the shared world of the polis. The theoretical framework is the Nietzschean analysis of the relationship between the Dionysian and the Apollonian principle, which according to our analysis corresponds to the relationship between Politics and Order. We show the shared world comes about through forging an alliance between Politics and Order, and survives while these two warring brothers (frères ennemis) are united under great tension. The Greek tragedians teach us that doing away with this tension poses a dire threat to the survival of the shared world. Following the Ancient Greek artistic roadmap, we show how the rational striving to remove the dis-order and potential chaos from the foundations of Order leads to the ultimate separation of the Apollonian and the Dionysian, whose nature, once they have been disjointed, start changing. The Apollonian becomes an empty husk that fails to tame the awakened, chaotic life of the society, while the political descends either into unhinged beastliness or dull listlessness, devoid of meaning and measure. The conclusions this analysis leads us to are used to shed new light onto the misguided post-WW2 attempts of European politicians to build an Apollonian supranational Order of reason and measure, from whose foundations will the political, the unpredictable, the elusive, and the potentially destructive, be banished forever.