Abstract

The author probes the "Tower of Babel" effect surrounding Western civilization's long-standing fascination with the Greek god Apollo. He clarifies the reason-emotion dichotomy and shows the Classical-Romantic opposition of Apollo and Dionysus, as adopted by Ayn Rand and (supposedly) Friedrich Nietzsche, to be an inaccurate way to characterize either Apollo (god of reason) or Dionysus (god of emotion). Temperament theorist David Keirsey's linkage of Apollo with emotion is found similarly wanting, and an argument based on insights of personality type theorist Janet Germane is offered that Apollo instead is most fundamentally the god of intuition