What is Enantiodromia? Jung and Heraclitus on Married Opposites
What is Enantiodromia? Jung and Heraclitus on Married Opposites
What is enantiodromia? In this episode we explore what Jung and Herclitus have to say about this marriage of the opposites. Essentially, enantiodromia is the closeness of opposite forces and how the tension of going to one end will catapult into the other. Those who are most good can fall fastest into evil. It is the tension in the bow that makes the arrow shoot furthest and it is this tension which drives enantiodromia. Carl Jung makes much of this concept as he finds it in the writings of Heraclitus and for him this is Heraclitus’s big insight – the marriage of the opposites.
Jordan Peterson also talks about this a lot and how the yin and yang symbol can transform at any moment and break into its opposite.
Your exposition of enantiodromia is excellent! The way you related it to a variety of practical examples in politics, economics and also the personal life of the individual made the theory very tangible. I have been preoccupied with the concept of enantiodromia for a while now. I have been trying to forecast how and which parts of our society will transform into their opposite in the coming future. Do you have any ideas? For example, I hypothesise that many corporations operate by de-individualizing their work force. And I wonder for how long the individual psyche of an employee can sustain such pressure, and what consequences this will bring? (If you understand what I mean?)
Really enjoyed your video. Loved the example of the opposing power of a bow string. I spent the best part of eight years traveling around the world skydiving and living on dropzones in a tent. I’m totally with you on how it feels to get a little taste of civilisation. For me, after months of having to walk across a muddy field to take a shower; I just remember the absolutely delight I took when I stayed in a hotel one night and got to have a shower and then walk barefoot on carpet. OMG, that was amazing! I’m currently studying Jungian therapy , so learned about enantiodromia on the course I’m doing. However, your video made it much easier for me to get my head around it. I live in Japan and so I’m studying eastern philosophy; in particular I’m interested in kintsugi – which of course has the philosophy of celebrating the broken, for the bowl cannot become beautiful and strong without first being broken 🙂
Such are dialectics, I lov thinking in the realm of opposites even if I’m more of a panentheist than a dualist, definitely not a pantheist
This is such a great shorthand for day-to-day psychology as well as broader metaphysics. I find it useful in helping understand people’s personalities to listen to their criticisms of others as it’s inevitably a description of their own faults. Or maybe that’s conflating the concept with projection?
I am writing a paper on Nietzsche. I have the Preface of Beyond Good and Evil open before me. I wanted a reference for Heraclitus’ notion of opposites, which was so important to Nietzsche. I was watching your video where you talked about the word bio meaning bow and life in Greek. I thought, wow, that is probably what Nietzsche was referring to in the Preface when he said "with so tense a bow we can now shoot for the most distant goals." And then you mentioned Nietzsche.
wonderful
Excellent
Great video
Cracking point about the teenage years
Not to mention that Amazon’s so-called "earnings" are nothing more than the revenues generated by its workers – the Wealth Creators – siphoned preemptively into Bezos’s coffers (minus the pittance paid to each employee, that he or she may survive another day and stagger back to work the next morning, resuming the endless shoveling of "profits" into the boss’s bank account). Bezos and others of his ilk are well aware of the fate of Louis XVI, which is why ensuring that the government remains captured by Big Business has always been an existential priority of the Masters.