Nietzsche examines the Dionysian “Hellenic instinct” in his
The Birth of Tragedy. The book explores how classical Athenian tragedy transcends life’s meaninglessness. With the Greek tragic form as a starting point, Nietzsche examines an intellectual binary between the Dionysian and the Apollonian forces (Dionysian represents abstract forces while Apollonian represents ordered forces). In the context of
Twilight of the Idols, the Dionysian force represents natural, unordered human instinct. This is why Nietzsche thinks that the “Hellenic instinct” (Greek culture prior to Socrates) captures a “will to life” that the culture has since lost (and which modern Christianity rejects).