Apollo & Dionysus VI: Left Brain vs. Right Brain

In Iain McGilchrist’s The Master and His Emissary, McGilchrist uses an analogy, borrowed from Nietzsche, to describe the relationship between the brain’s left and right hemisphere. The analogy concerns a benevolent emperor who is betrayed by one of his most-talented administrators:

I hold that, like the Master and his emissary in the story, though the cerebral hemispheres should co-operate, they have for some time been in a state of conflict. The subsequent battles between them are recorded in the history of philosophy, and played out in the seismic shifts that characterise the history of Western culture. At present the domain– our civilisation– finds itself in the hands of the vizier, who, however gifted, is effectively an ambitious regional bureaucrat with his own interests at heart. Meanwhile the Master, the one whose wisdom gave the people peace and security, is led away in chains. The Master is betrayed by his emissary

Among the many metaphors he uses to describe this conflict, is another analogy popularised by Nietzsche: that of the Apollonian and the Dionysian. According to McGilchrist:

what were anciently seen as the Apollonian, more rationalistic, and Dionysian, more intuitive, aspects of our being have become grossly unbalanced. Nietzsche claimed that the constant opposition between these two very…