1. Why occupy oneself with dualism?
Since I am the author of a serial work on dualism, the question is justified whether I am a dualist myself. Being a dualist would be a good reason for a scholar to occupy him- or herself with this phenomenon. Yet the answer to this question is a categorical no. I am not a dualist. Neither am I a monist. If I must define my mental stance, I would describe myself as a Thomistic realist. Once a former student of mine asked me (and he was not the only one to do so) why I occupied myself with dualism. He flattered me by telling me that he had come to know me as an harmonious person, and, therefore, wondered why I was so constantly busy with unbridgeable oppositions.
Perhaps there are deep psychological reasons for my preoccupation with dualism, but having neither time nor fancy to stretch myself on the psychiatrist’s couch, the reader must be content with the answer Edmund Hilery gave when asked why he had climbed the highest top of Mount Everest: `because it is there’. Dualism is a thing that exists, that, furthermore, is far from rare in human history. Yet until now, nobody has bothered to write a history of it, although Ugo Bianchi once declared that a Weltgeschichte of it would be possible. (Ugo Bianchi, Le dualisme en histoire des religions (1961), in Selected essays on Gnosticism, Dualism and Mysteriosophy. Studies in the History of Religions. (Supplements to Numen XXXVIII), p. 3. Perhaps historians and other scholars shrink back from this undertaking, because a `history’of dualism in the strictly traditional sense of the presentation of a coherent story is impossible.
2. The long march towards this series
In 1955 a well-known Dutch publisher, specialized in textbooks for schools, L.C.G. Malmberg at Bois-le-Duc, commissioned me to write a new history textbook for secondary schools. I accepted this and wrote a textbook in five volumes, which appeared in the years 1957-1961 and which I gave the name of Van oermens tot wereldburger (From Primeval Man to the Cosmopolitan). With regard to the programs of the schools, a new volume had to necessarily appear each year. Although I checked a lot of dates, I did not have the time to study every subject in depth, but I made an exception for the Reformation, which found a place in Vol. III. When I was writing this volume, Vatican II was about to be opened; ecumenism was much more in the air than it is now. I was also dissatisfied with the usual notion, endlessly repeated, that Martin Luther rebelled against the Church because of the then existing disgraceful state of affairs in ecclesiastical life. In my opinion Brother Martin was a far too deeply religious person to be moved solely by this; he must have had other and more constringent motives.
In the books I consulted I found that such deeper motives really existed. There were two main streams in the theology of the fifteenth and early sixteenth century, the via antiqua and the via moderna. With the first Thomistic theology is meant, that of theological realism, with the second nominalism. The spiritual father of this branch of philosophy and theology was William of Ockham (1290-1350), a Franciscan Minorite, who taught at the University of Oxford. The kernel of Ockham’s thought is that human beings can have no sure, reliable knowledge of things supernatural; this is where human reason fails. Words like `God, grace, redemption’ are no more than names for us, names of which we do not know the real meaning. The Latin word for `name’ is nomen; hence the term for this kind of philosophy: nominalism.
Luther was taught the philosophy and theology of the via moderna, which left him deeply dissatisfied. This man, whom we may characterize as a religious genius, could never be content with the thesis that we say `God’ and then have no idea who he really is. It was his wrestling with nominalism that led him to the Reformation. We need not follow him on this road. Having become acquainted with the phenomenon of nominalism and with late medieval philosophy and theology, I concluded that this way of thinking could not have originated out of nothing; there must have been stages leading to it. So I wound my way back through medieval thought. It may seem that it was a regular study, but this was not the case. I had a full job as a teacher, later also an additional job at Amsterdam University, which made that I could turn to this subject only from time to time.
Although I did not yet myself use this term `dualism’, I already concluded that there was an unbridgeable distance between the idea that our words denote real concepts or beings (Thomistic realism) or that we do not know what they mean (nominalism). From the subject of nominalism I traced my way back, looking for origins. In doing this, I arrived at Catharism, the great heresy of the time around 1200. By studying it, I became better acquainted with the phenomenon of dualism, because this ideology is based on the radical opposition of Good and Evil; the world in which we live is absolutely bad and has to be totally rejected.
Once again I supposed that such a radical and widespread movement cannot have born out of nothing; therefore, I followed the line further back. I then hit on the Gnosis, a great complex of theological systems, which flourished in the first centuries of our era. I found my way into this intriguing but also confusing subject by means of Hans Jonas’ still magnificent book The Gnostic Religion. The Message of the Alien God and the Beginnings of Christianity. (1958, 1963², with Beacon Press, Boston, the second edition republished by Routledge, London, 1992). Much later I learned to distinguish a Gnostic system from a non-Gnostic one by means of the yardstick of the double dualism: in a Gnostic system there always occur two dualisms, two unbridgeable oppositions, one between the upper and the nether (our) world, and one between those who `know’ and those who do not `know’. I am fairly sure that at that time I knew what dualism is and that my interest in it was roused.
In that period I considered to write a `world history of the Gnosis’, but I soon discovered that several eminent scholars had already done something of this kind. Consequently, I decided to choose dualism as my subject, also because I knew that nobody had gone before me; I would have the field for myself. Still wandering in the opposite direction along the time line, I finally arrived at the Pythagorean movement, which demonstrates clearly dualistic characteristics. Since this movement is not the source of all dualisms, I might have chosen other subjects as a starting-point for my study. But, as a former grammar-school pupil, I had a natural preference to begin with Greece. Furthermore, the Pythagorean fraternity displays enough dualistic traits to make the reader acquainted with the principal elements of dualism right from the start.
I made my first notes about the subject in May 1976. I wrote the first words of Chapter I of Volume I on Wednesday, January 16, 1980; I obviously found it a somewhat solemn moment, although it was by no means my first book, for I see in my notebook that the time was 10.31. The last words of that volume were written on Saterday, March 26, 1983. Progress had been slow, since in those years I had a full-time job at the State University of Utrecht. I did not steal the time of the boss (he frequently stole mine), so that I had to do this work in the evenings and weekends. At that moment I had already decided to a somewhat earlier retirement, which became a fact on July 1, 1983.
I wrote that first volume in Dutch, in the innocent supposition that I would easily find a publisher for a good scholarly work. But there I was hopelessly wrong! Not that the publishers whom I approached found it a bad work. No, it was lavishly praised, but at the same time I was told that the Dutch bookmarket was too small for a work like this. My troubles were suddenly over, when I addressed the umpteenth publisher, mr. J.C. Gieben in Amsterdam. He immediately accepted the book, but on one condition, namely that it should be in English. It took up the challenge and bravely began to translate it into English. I began the translation in January 1986, and the book saw the light in the following August. Since my English is not that of a native speaker, I needed a corrector, who was a native English speaker. Through the good services of a former colleague I found an excellent one in the person of Dr. John R. Dove, until his retirement in 1988 associate professor of English literature in the University of Oulu in Finland. Professor Dove died in August 1997, deeply deplored by me, for he had become a great friend. I found an equally excellent new corrector in Dr. Jo Swabe, an anthropologist, who is London born.
3. The conception of The Light and the Dark
I feel the main title does not need an explanation. This is different with the subtitle: A cultural history of dualism. In my website article `On dualism’ I extensively explained that I will not restrict myself to the obligatory fields of religion and philosophy. My theme encompasses the whole of human culture in all its aspects, religious, philosophical, social, political, historical, and what not. Therefore, I speak of a cultural history.
Strictly speaking, a history of dualism is not possible, since dualism betokens disconnected subjects and elements. Yet, what I do is placing these elements in a context, which is chronological and by the same token historical. Therefore, it is justified to speak of a history of dualism. However, the reader should realize that it is a history of dualism alone and not of whatever else. He or she wants to have, say, a complete history of Greece should turn to the relevant works on that subject.
4. All volumes of The Light and the Dark
In the period of 1986 to 2000 the first fifteen volumes of my work were published by J.C. Gieben, Publisher. Although he closed his business in 2000, all these volumes are and remain available.
Volumes XVI, XVII and XVIII are published by Gopher Publishers.
Volume XIX is in preparation!
Piet Fontaine