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Dance First, Think Later
Apollo teaches us distance, while Dionysos teaches us proximity, contact, intimacy with ourselves, nature, and others…
The rather jolly figure of the Roman Bacchus to which we’re accustomed, along with the Rousseauian aspect of humanistic psychology, has made us forget that the expression of “primitive” and “natural” passions is not an innocent process, no more than childhood is innocent. The desire to free oneself from the dictatorship of reason has more than once given birth to the most demoralizing sects and to an anti-intellectualism as alienating as the rationalistic denial of Dionysos. But the solution is not to be found by ignoring Dionysos; a polytheistic psychology allows one to respect Dionysos and Apollo.
— Ginette Paris
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If someone were to ask me, as a philosopher, what one should learn in high school, I would answer: first of all, only “useless” things, ancient Greek, Latin, pure mathematics and philosophy. Everything that is useless in life. The good thing is that, at the age of 18, you have a baggage of useless knowledge with which you can do everything. While with useful knowledge you can only do small things.
— Ágnes Heller
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Dance first.
Think later.
