Cristo vs. Dioniso, Freud vs. Nietzsche

Resumen

This paper deals with the very different ways in which Friedrich Nietzsche and Sigmund Freud deal with the subject of violence. Both start from its recognition as a basic magnitude of the human being and of an eminently pulsional nature. But while the former sees it as an essential manifestation of its central category –the will to power, the latter sees it as the greatest threat to culture, and thus emphasises the essential function of the law as its support and the condition of its possibility. This different approach finds its expression in the choice of two equally differentiated mythological figures as the motif of their respective reflections. Dionysus is the Nietzschean figure, and Christ aims to be the Freudian one, although their final confirmation cannot be attested, only deduced by way of the theoretical contradictions that hinder their crystallisation. Clarifying this difficulty is the final aim of this work. Both mythological figures are then considered in their relationship with wine, establishing the different tuals in which one and the other guide their use. In contrast to the Dionysian bacchanal and the Dionysian forest, the Christian wedding and the Christian temple. And above all: against the Dionysian dissolution of the individual, the affirmation of the individual as the subject of the word in its sacrificial dimension. Joker by Todd Phillips, 1919 and Gran Torino by Clint Eastwood, 2008 constitute the visual background of this work, together with Raphael, Michelangelo, Leonardo, Titian, El Greco, Goya, Leveque, Ribalta, Vos, Van Gogh...