1. What is dualism and what is it not?
If people ask me `What is dualism’, my standard answer is: it is about unsolvable oppositions. Do they ask me for an example, I say: `Hitler and the Jews’. This is the place to mention the first misunderstanding. This is necessary, because sticking to it would destroy the essential meaning of what dualism is. Many people would dub every opposition `dualistic’. This ignores the fact that most oppositions are not unsolvable at all.
People try to comprehend the world. They do this in a double sense, for they want to interpret it and to summarize it. They feel compelled to summarize it, since the world presents itself to them as a multitude of phenomena and events, which are often confused and obscure. To create some order, they use ideas and concepts, and with the help of these they bring together what is scattered and multitudinous. Such concepts and ideas are, for instance, `town, Hamburg, family, bread, table, school, agriculture, religion, liberalism, journalism, patriotism’; there are thousands and again thousands of them. Often people have a preference for some all-embracing concept, like world or mankind or cosmos. But however much we exert ourselves, there never is a complete unity, never a perfect homogeneity; the multifarious elements can never be included in some final whole in which they amalgate harmoniously. Such an amalgam would, indeed, produce an illusion.
Thus we find ourselves saddled with a primordial and fundamental opposition, that of the One and the Many. This is the mother of all oppositions. It is clear that we need this opposition, and all those that follow from it, in order to understand the world, since we want many kinds of groupings and sets like series and categories, which we tend to oppose and contrast, of ten very strongly, to each other. It is not of high philosophy that I am speaking, but of very common things, of concepts that everyone employs each day innumerable times: day and night, summer and winter, love and hate, life and death, man and woman. It would make no sense to write a book on them: they are innumerable, they are diverse, and they mostly are of very minor significance.
A great number of such oppositions are only relative; they have a tendency to merge into each other. We should not call them `dualistic’; if we want a term, it has to be `dualities’ . The value of a direct opposite depends on the point of view of the observer. A man who, coming out of the polar cold of a winter night, enters an unheated room, may find it comfortable; somebody being in it already somewhat longer may protest that it is `very cold in here’. The fact that we say that people become old at a later age than formerly, only goes to prove that the frontiers between old and young are shifting. According to modern medical science the distance between health and sickness is so narrow that nearly everybody may be said to be the victim of some disease. Summer and winter are opposed and different seasons, but there are intermediate periods between them, the spring and the autumn, during which the one almost imperceptibly changes into the other. It is the same with day and night, separated from each other by the morning twilight and the evening dusk. And who can say when a person is no longer young but should be called old?
Yet it may happen that oppositions such as these grow more virulent; in that case they become harsh, bitter and irreconcilable. Love and hate are solid oppositions, but, nevertheless, we speak sometimes of a `love-hate relationship’. War and peace do not belong together but for more than forty years we have been living in a situation that was neither a real peace nor a state of war. Still more inexorable is the opposition of life and death. The person who is dead does not live any more, and yet there exists the common human desire to conquer death with life. Such deep oppositions could be termed `polarities’.
Yet the gap may become still deeper and broader, till it is finally unbridgeable. Or must we say that people, or rather certain people, feel the need to push an opposition to extremes? If an opposition is, or has become, unsolvable, we must speak of `dualism’. It is no longer possible then to reduce the terms of the opposition more or less to each other or see them merge into each other; there are no longer intermediate terms or connecting links; there no longer is any relationship or connection at all. In that case the terms of the opposition easily acquire the character of principles, and they tend to grow into systems with a complete ideology; behind these ideologies may stand organized groups or sects. Dualistic oppositions of this kind may be those between body and soul, between the One and the Many, between seeming and being, and many others. The most forceful dualistic opposition, however – the one that has been the most productive -, is that between good and evil.
It is now possible to present a definition of dualism. We are justified to speak of dualism, if there are two systems or concepts or principles or groups of people or even worlds that are utterly opposed and cannot be reduced to each other. They exist alongside each other; in some cases they are not even dependent on each other, without any intermediate terms. One of the two is always thought to be of a much higher quality than the other, so much so that one pole is always seen as distinctly inferior, fit to be neglected, repudiated, or even destroyed. Throughout all the volumes of my series The Light and the Dark I always started from this definition.
Firstly, there is `radical dualism’. In this the two principles or terms are absolutely coeval; they are from eternity, and their origin defies every explanation. A case in point is Manichaeism, in which Good and Evil exist independently of each other as separate and utterly opposed entities. Radical dualism is rare, because most people are incapable of imagining the world as two different and opposed halves. This brand of dualism is also illogical, because, in spite of all, the two poles finally meet each other, namely, in the head of the dualistic thinker, who is not two persons but one.
Far more common is `relative or moderate dualism’. If the second, the lower principle is deduced from the first, the higher one, we encounter this sort of dualism. This is the case in the philosophical system of Parmenides, in which Being and Seeming are opposed. But it all begins with Being, and Seeming is dependent on it. It is the same in the Pythagorean ideology, which is dualistic, full of oppositions, but where everything starts from a principle of Unity, the One.
Dualistic ways of thought can also be distinguished in terms of their attitude regarding the difference in quality between the opposing terms. If in the end the good system triumphs over the bad one, we could call this `eschatological dualism’. We find this in the religion of the Essenes. If the two poles go on existing alongside each other, then `dialectical dualism’ would be the more appropiate term. In European history since the end of Antiquity there has been a running fight between universalism – the wish to unite Europe under one leadership -, and particularism - the tendency of the separate political entities, that is, the states – to go their own way. Everyone can witness nowadays how difficult it is to make European unity into a reality and how hard it is for the states to cede elements of their precious sovereignty, let alone all of it. This practical and actual example also proves that dualism is not something abstract or philosophical.
One might also draw a distinction between procosmical and anticosmical tendencies. In a procosmical view the cosmos is basically good; evil enters it from outside. In an anticosmical one evil is an integral part of the cosmos itself. It will perhaps disappoint many lovers of `Grecity’, but I do not believe that Greek philosophical systems were procosmic. Decidedly anticosmical are Gnostic systems: in these the existing world, the cosmos, is an evil thing that has to be destroyed and will be destroyed. The Jewish and Christian religions are definitely procosmic.
Above I stated that it is fundamental misconception to call every opposition `dualistic’. Sometimes people inquire, `what if there intermediate terms’? I always consequently answer, `then there is no dualism’. If we would call every opposition, however unimportant or innocent, dualistic, the term would lose its significance entirely. Nevertheless, many people keep mixing terms like `dual, duality, dualistic’ as if they were identical.
I must caution the reader against a very common and endlessly repeated misconception, namely, that all dualism is derived from the ideology of the Persian sage Zoroaster (Zarathustra). "Iran is the classical country of dualism"; this categorical statement is the first sentence of a little book by Jacques Duchesne-Guillemin, Ormazd et Ahriman. L`aventure dualiste dans l`Antiquité, Paris, 1953. This surely is the honest conviction of many people, scholars and others, just as `manichaeistic’ is the most popular term for `dualistic’; journalists are very fond of it. In the opinion of many the religion of Iran is the historical origin of all dualisms; from this every later form of (religious and philosophical) dualism is thought to have been derived. Not long ago a friend of mine asked why I had not opened my series on dualism with an account of Iranian dualism. He himself doubtless would have done so, he somewhat disapprovingly remarked. What he, an historian, meant is that a phenomenon like dualism must have an origin in time.
I for one do not believe that dualism has an historical origin. To look for such an origin is an idiosyncrasy of historians and of many others whom they have taught to think like them. What historical scholarship wants to do is to locate persons and events in time as exactly as possible. Fixing an event on the time-line is a kind of verification; it comes near to falsification, when this does not prove possible. From such a chronologically defined point the historian traces long lines of development; for instance, that of democracy since its (supposed) establishment in Athens ca. 500 B.C.
Often dualism is seen as the opposite of monism. I believe it is invariably the `holistics’ who contend that monism is the exact opposite of dualism. This is a constantly recurring theme of western thought. Holistics are philosophers who feel that the whole world with all its phenomena can be brought under one heading and is thought to have one single origin, so that there is in the phenomenal world no room for unsolvable oppositions. Those who relish this idea – and they are not rare - do not realize that the opposition monism-dualism is dualistic in itself, for in their eyes it is a case of either-or: since the phenomenal world necessarily is a whole, it is impossible that there are unsolvable oppositions. The existence of oppositions of this kind would destroy the notion of monism.
In my books I have repeatedly argued that monism and dualism come from the same stock. Monism can easily generate dualism. It is simply not feasible to bring all metaphysical, cosmic, and human phenomena under one heading; there will always remain an intractable remnant. This remnant will `rebel’ against the monistic monopoly, which will lead to a dualistic situation. In fact, monism and dualism belong in the same category, that of forcing all kinds of reality into one single straightjacket.
The only philosopher, as far as I know, who understood that monism and dualism really are chips of the same block, is Ludwig Stein. In his book Dualismus oder Monismus. Eine Untersuchung über die doppelte Wahrheit. Berlin, 1909, p. 14, he wrote "Monism and dualism are two types of thought that both have their foundation in man. But in the antithesis `monism-dualism’ the issue is not that they are contradictorily opposed but rather that they are a contrasted pair of concepts connected with each other in the manner of correlations."
Equally popular is the notion that dualism is only to be found in the fields of religion and philosophy, more in particular in that the history of religions, in which the opposition of Good and Evil is thought to play, to have always played, a paramount role. The cause of this idea is that it is mainly historians of religion who occupy themselves with dualism. A famous professor of the history of religions, Ugo Bianchi, expresses himself in the following words (in his essay Il dualismo come categoria storico-religiosa [i.e. as a category of the history of religions], in Selected Essays on Gnosticism, Dualism and Mysteriosophy. Studies in the History of Religions (Supplements to Numen). XXXVIII. Leiden, 1978, p. 8 : "Dualistic are religions and views of life according to which two principles [i.e. Good and Evil] – both of them having been there, it seems, from all eternity – are the foundation, really or apparently so, of everything that exists or presents itself in the world".
Yet, if dualism is about unsolvable oppositions, there is really no reason to find them only in the fields of religion and philosophy. As a common human phenomenon dualism may be found in every field of thought, in every kind of human activity, and in all walks of life. The volumes of my series The Light and the Dark contain abundant examples of this omnipresence. Samuel Laeuchli, in his essay `Mithraic Dualism’ in Mithraism in Ostia. Mystery Religion and Christianity in the ancient port of Rome (ed. Samuel Laeuchli), pp. 61/62, makes the following apt remark : "The dualistic problem has been confused by two rigid assertions. The first limits dualism to an extreme of an Iranian type of two gods, one good and evil. The second limits dualism to only the metaphysical, religious, or philosophical aspects of such duality. This narrow definition of dualism prevents the observer from grasping the dualistic problem in the ancient world." And I may add, in later historical periods also.
Dualism is often portrayed as a system or a concept, but this too is a misconception. How can it be a system or a concept, if it is about irreconcilable oppositions? If it is disturbing and destructive? Since the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century rationalism dominates our way of thinking. We have come to love all-comprising concepts and ideas of an intellectual character; -isms proliferate: liberalism, Marxism, protestantism, and nowadays even consumerism. Even the phenomenon of irreconcilable oppositions has fallen victim to it, since it has been baptized `dualism’, thus turning it into something, which it definitely not is.
Dualism is not so much an historical phenomenon but rather an anthropological one. It occurs in every conceivable field of life, in religion and philosophy, in history and politics, in literature and art, in social relationships and in personal life. Wherever we are looking, we see people grappling with or suffering from or trying to accommodate themselves to unbridgeable oppositions. We are in presence of a general human phenomenon; since it fundamentally forms part of our human make-up, we are entitled to call it anthropological. The origin of dualism is not to be found in history or mythology, in philosophy or religion (not even in the dualistic Iranian religion), but in the human condition.
A misunderstanding may arise here. To vary a word of Karl Marx, I am not of the opinion that the history of mankind is the history of dualism. In my view dualism is not an all-pervading and omnipresent phenomenon. Seen from a purely anthropological viewpoint dualism is something secondary. What people long for is first and foremost harmony, togetherness, a perfectly smooth and unruffled existence, `Meeresstille und glückliche Fahrt’. At the same time, however, they often prove incapable of attaining this ideal.
As I explained above, we try to comprehend the world not only by combining phenomena but also by opposing them, by creating pairs of contrasts. However, this habit of opposing phenomena can lead to the general proposition that, although harmony is our ideal, `opposedness’ ( I do not say dualism), nevertheless, is the rule and, in consequence, an essential part of the world-order (I am still speaking of `order’). Or should we say , perhaps, something that makes the world-order somewhat less orderly, something that makes it harder for us to understand the world as order?
Now, this notion of `general opposedness’, if we look at it from an anthropological angle, must have a concrete cause. I do not know whether it is possible to present a definite answer to the question of which is this cause - if such a cause really exists -, but I tend to believe that it is to be found in the man-woman-structure. If man’s philosophy of life begins with the consideration of man himself, then his basic starting-point would obviously be the fact that human beings are anatomically different and that this distinction leads to deeply differing functions in life. Hence he would tend to draw the conclusion that the whole order of the world must, in consequence, be twofold (once again, I do not say dualistic), and, furthermore, that there are higher and lower orders of existence, which are difficult to reconcile with one another.
Since this sentiment of being anatomically and sexually, and, therefore, anthropologically distinct is so deeply ingrained in mankind, and, unconsciously, makes itself constantly felt in our habits of life, it is easily carried over into other fields of human existence, with the consequence that we may experience `opposedness’ nearly always and everywhere. And as I argued above, opposedness may grow into dualism.
Although dualism in itself is not a concept or a system, there are systems or perhaps rather complexes of thought and action in which dualistic elements have pride of place, so much so that they are characterized by the paramount occurrence of these elements. Such systems or complexes are neither numerous nor widespread. They are the following:
| - | the Pythagorean fraternity | Vol. I, Ch. I, § 15 |
| - | the Orphic religion | Vol.I, Ch. IV, § 10 |
| - | the philosophies of Empedocles, Heraclitus, and in particular Parmenides | Vol. I, Ch. II, §§ 6, 8, and 9) |
| - | those elements in Plato’s philosophy that show a strong tendency towards dualism | Vol. III, Ch. III, §§ 20, 21, and 22 |
| - | all the Gnostic systems | Vols. VII, VIII, and IX |
| - | Zoroastarianism | Vol. IV, Ch. IV, §§ 8 and 9 |
| - | and still more Iranian Zervanism | Vol.V, Ch. I, § 4 |
| - | in India in particular Yoga | Vol. V, Ch. II, § 22 |
| - | Chinese Daoism | Vol.V, Ch. III, § 25 |
| - | and in the Islamic world, Sufism | Vol. XVII, Ch. II, Part I |
| - | the more extreme forms of Shi`ism | Vol. XVII, Ch. II., Part II |
| - | Yazidism | Vol. XVII, Ch. II, Part III |
| - | the Nizariyya | Vol. XVII, Ch. II, Part IV |
| - | and in general the Islamic Gnosis | Vol. XVII, Ch. II, Part V |
8. Are there dualistic societies?
Asking the question is answering it. If there really existed societies or civilizations based on irreconcilable oppositions, there would then not be one but two societies. This is impossible. Let me first of all state that there are no societies without dualistic tares. If this would be the case, such a society would be perfect, but perfect societies are only to be found in Utopia. Yet there are societies or civilizations with strongly marked dualistic characteristics. In Antiquity the society with the least dualistic elements was ancient Israel, closely followed by Pharaonic Egypt. A society riddled with dualistic oppositions was ancient India. It will once again sadden lovers of Greek culture than ancient Greece cuts a bad figure in this respect. Rome does not perform much better, but ancient China does not come far behind Egypt.
9. Problems with writing about dualism
Dualism is a subject that is neither easy to write about nor popular. Historiographers use to discuss continuums, phenomena wich have a beginning, follow a line of development, and have an end. Such continuums are, for instance, the history of agriculture, the history of liberalism, the history of the United States, or the history of the man-woman-relation. My home town, Amsterdam, began in the late thirteenth century as a tiny group of houses along the river Amstel, grew bigger and bigger, as can be seen on the great mosaic in the floor of the Amsterdam Historical Museum, and became the city of 732.000 inhabitants it is now. Historians only have to follow the thread of Ariadne, the chronological line; it will invariably bring them somewhere.
Dualism is, by contrast, a disturbing and confusing phenomenon. It cannot, by definition, be a concept; if it were one, if dualism would be the ordinary condition of the world, there would be no world, because it is disruptive and distructive thing. It occurs irregularly, sometimes unexpectedly, at odd moments. Dualistic phenomena do not form a continuum. Sometimes they present themselves in a spectacular form, often they have to be hunted down. This makes the task of the historian of dualism a hard one. A person standing before a tapestry will see something beautiful, something orderly and harmonious. But let him or her look at the backside: he or she will see nothing but a confused mass of loosely hanging threads. Dualism makes us look at the backside of the `tapestry’.
Now history, although not a tapestry but a thing in movement, has its own loose threads. The `backside’of history displays disconnectedness, where dualism occurs. Large segments of society may be `holistic’, but here and there some cracks, some fissures appear. However, these do not form hang together nor do they offer a coherent picture of a dualistic contra-society. As I wrote above, a `dualistic society’ would be a contradiction in terms.
The study of dualism does not come naturally to us. This is what Hayden White wrote: historiography "is well suited to the notions of continuity, wholeness, closure, and individuality that every `civilized’ society wishes itself to see as incarnating against a merely `natural’ way of life." (Droysen’s Historik. Historical writing as a bourgeois science. In The Content of Form. Narrative Discourse and Historical Interpretation. The John Hopkins University Press. Baltimore and London (1987), p. 87. The discourse on dualism is not about the `natural’ way of life.
In my study I am not presenting an harmonious picture of continuity and wholeness. Quite the contrary! I consciously take the risk that my work, voluminous though it is, will, to some extent, fall on the blind spot of scholars. This is what Mary Douglas wrote: "It is part of our human condition to long for hard lines and clear concepts. When we have them, we have to either face the fact that some realities elude them [i.e. our concepts], or else blinding ourselves to the inadequacy of the concept." (Purity and Danger. An Analysis of the Concept of Pollution and Taboo. Ark Paperback. London, 1984 (19661), p. 162).
The task of the researcher is facilitated by the existence of symptoms which bring us into the vicinity of dualism. They can be used as a divining-rod. Especially when we encounter several of such symptoms in one context, we may quarry for dualism. Such symptoms are: a predilection for the number three – the role of fate – the significance of a special sort of knowledge – the existence of closed or secret societies – elitism – the denigration of women – vegetarianism – a tragic or pessimistic view of life. I call these symptoms `parameters’ and use them as a heuristic means.
10. Precursors of the study of dualism
Although the terms `dualism, dualist’ and `dualistic’ do not occur before the year 1700, this does not mean that scholars did never occupy themselves with the phenomenon before that specific year. Even in Antiquity this was the case. The famous Greek author Plutarch lived from ca. 45/50 to ca. 125 A.D. As a priest of the sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi he was interested in religious phenomena. He travelled widely and spent much time in Egypt, where he was struck by the antagonistic elements in Egyptian mythology and religion. To assess now what Plutarch posited in this very first theory of dualism, we must start from the statement that in his days the great majority, and in particular the more intelligent thought along dualistic lines.
A notable point is that Plutarch did not trace back dualism to the Zoroastrian religion of Iran. It is important to note this, since it is a fable reçue, even among scholars, that it all began with the doctrine of Zoroaster. On the contrary, he literally states that "it can be traced to no source" and explains it as a generally human, so to speak anthropological, phenomenon, occurring in many places, "among barbarians and the Greeks alike", that is everywhere. Not does he, as almost all scholars do, restrict it to the fields of religion or philosophy, but says that we find it "in story and tradition but also in rites and sacrifices", which seems to make religious dualism into a somewhat secondary phenomenon . There is no mention of philosophy in this passage. Dualism, in this Greek author’s opinion, is not something exclusively religious or philosophical but definitely somehting of a truly universal nature. It causes "this terrestrial universe …" to be "irregular and variable and subject to all manner of changes." This means that every existing opposition may become dualistic.
I found this same opinion expressed in a novel by a modern writer, namely in Karen Blixen’s Out of Africa (1937), in which magnificent book this phrase occurs which may serve as the Leitmotiv for this whole series: "The world, after all, is not a regular or calculable place." Plutarch gives his own opinion in the following terms. "The fact is that the creation of the world is complex, resulting as it does, from opposing influences, which, however, are not of equal strength, but the predominance rests with the better. Yet it is impossible for the bad to be entirely eradicated, since it is innate, in the body and likewise in the soul of the Universe." It seems to me that this ancient Greek scholar presents a far more comprehensive definition of dualism than present-day scholars do who, with depressing monotony, keep repeating that it is either a philosophical or a religious concept or both at once. (Source: Plutarch, De Iside et Osiride. Isis and Osiris. Translated by Frank C. Babbitt. Moralia VI. Loeb Classical Library 306. 4th Impression. London/Cambridge (Mass), 19361).
The second precursor of the study of dualism is Xenophon, a Greek author who lived from ca. 428 to ca. 354 B.C. He was a general, who became famous by conducting the `March of the Ten Thousand’which he described in his book Anabasis. He was, however, also a scholar, interested in philosophy and science, since he had been a disciple of Socrates in his younger years. During his retirement he wrote quite a number of books on a variety of subjects. One of these is the Cyropaedia, biography of the Persian emperor Cyrus. A certain Araspas is the emperor’s great friend and confidant. He complains that he is incapable of restraining his erotic impulses, although he very hard strives to do so, since he wants to possess control of himself. This is what he said: "I have evidently two souls … For if the soul is one, it is not good and bad at the same time, neither can it at the same time desire the right and the wrong, nor at the same time will and will not to do the same things. But it is obvious that there are two souls, and when the good one prevails, what is right is done; but when the bad gets the ascendancy, what is wrong is attempted."
This reminds us of Goethe’s Faust who complained of the two souls in his breast, or of of the apostle Paul who confessed that he felt caught between two opposed impulses. "What I do is not what I wish to do, but something which I hate" (Rom. 7:15). Both Xenophon and Paul, being eminently practical men, did not look for the origin of dualism in religion, philosophy, or cosmology, but in human nature, in the human psyche. To them dualism, to use a modern term they did not know, is something definitely anthropological.
11. The origin of the terms `dualism’ and `dualist’
After Plutarch sixteen hundred years had to go by before the term `dualism’, or rather `dualist’, was coined. We find it in a work by Thomas Hyde, a professor of Hebrew in Oxford University; his book, published in 1700, described the religion of the ancient Persians. He stated that the Persians acknowledged two principles, one eternal, one created, which Zoroaster dubbed the Light and the Dark. The first principle worked the Good, the other Evil. Hyde called the Persian Magi, and later adherents of this doctrine `dualists’; this was the first time this word was used.
It is highly deplorable that the term began its career in the context of the Iranian (Zoroastrian) religion. For this gave rise to the ineradicable myth that dualism had an historical origin, and that Zoroaster was its father. (Source: Thomas Hyde, Historia religionis veterum Persarum, eorumque Magorum. Oxonii, MDCC.)
12. The subsequent history of the term
Perhaps Hyde’s opinion might have gone unnoticed but for the fact that his book fell into the hands of that voracious reader, Pierre Bayle, who inserted an entry `Zoroaster’into the second edition (1702) of his dictionary; in this article he quoted Hyde at length and mentioned the word `dualist’. Bayle’s dictionary was an authoritative work that was widely consulted and went through numerous editions. Thus the word `dualist’ began its career. (Source: Pierre Bayle, Dictionnaire historique et critique. Paris, 1702²).
The next one to take it up was Leibniz in his `Theodicy’ of 1710. He was still more famous than Bayle and was considered the most learned man of his time, sometimes called the last homo universalis. He took his cue from Hyde and Bayle. He, therefore, only spoke of Zoroaster’s opposed principles and called the Iranian prophet `the first author of duality’. In this way the fable convenue of the Persian origin of dualism, and the idea that it had originated in the religious sphere, became firmly underscored. (Source: Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz, Theodicee. Essais sur la bonté de Dieu, la liberté de l’homme, et l’origine du mal. 1710.)
In this period we do not yet find the term `dualism’. The very first time that it occurred happened a quarter of a century after Leibniz’s `Theodicy’. In a work, published in 1734, Christian Wolff spoke not only of `dualists’but also of `dualism’. This meant that he turned the phenomenon into an –ism. It is of still greater importance that he broadened the notion of dualism beyond the meaning that was given to it by Hyde. So far it had been used to denote a religious doctrine of Iranian origin. But Wolff transferred it to the realm of philosophy by stating that the spiritual and the corporeal, the material and the immaterial, are substantially different. From then on the study of dualism followed two lines, one in the history of religions, the other in philosophy, sometimes separately, sometimes in one context. (Source: Christian Wolff, Pyschologia rationalis. 1734.)
13. Why the term `dualism’ was introduced
Why was it that a phenomenon which has existed since the dawn of times and that was well-known to ancient authors, only got its name in the early eighteenth century? As a result of the Reformation Europe had become roughly divided into two spheres, one mainly protestant, the other predominantly Roman Catholic. The difference between these two denominations was felt to be more radical than it is nowadays. The Wars of Religion of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries gave this difference a still more absolute and even highly aggressive character. As a consequence the field became prepared for an upsurge of dualism. This found a vigorous and highly expression in the way Descartes opposed body and soul.
It was yet another consequence of the Wars of Religion that theology became discredited as being a source of strife and an incentive to civil and interstate war. Its place as the leading discipline was taken by philosophy with its corrolary, mathematics. So the era of rationalism was ushered in. Philosophical ideas got pride of place and were considered to have practical, mainly political consequences. This was especially the case with the thinkers of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. `Ideologies’ were born (let me characterize an ideology as a philosophical idea that is worked out in practice). The age of –isms had begun. It will not surprise the reader that one of the very first –isms to appear was dualism.
14. The progress of the term ‘dualism’ during the eighteenth century
The progress of the term `dualism’during the eighteenth century was slow but sure. Samuel Johnson (1755) and David Hume (1757) do not mention it, neither does the dictionary of the Académie française (1765 and 1778). We find it, however, in the first edition (1755) of the more famous encyclopaedia of Diderot (Encyclopédie, ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, Tome V). Since this work was widely used and considered supremely authoritative, I shall quote what it said, s.v. `dualisme ou dithéisme’, verbally. Dualism is "a theological opinion that opposes two principles, two gods, two beings that are independent [of each other] and not created, of which one is considered the principle of Good and the other the principle of Evil … The first origin of this system results from the difficulty of explaining the existence of Evil in the world." This statement presents the history of religions as the field of origin of dualism.
In 1781 Kant gave yet another turn to the meaning of dualism. He introduced the opposistion of the real objects and the perceptions we have of them, or in technical terms, the phenomenon and the noumenon. He believed that real objects cannot be perceived directly. We have only a notion of them, and, starting from this notion, we conclude that objects are the cause of our observations. "In consequence, the existence of all objects is dubious." The current idea that objects exists outside ourselves, independenly of our thoughts, was called `transcendent dualism’ by Kant. He rejected this meaning of dualism and said he wanted to enlarge the concept by making it into that of phenomenon and noumenon, of things in themselves and our perceptions of them. As far as I know, Kant did not speak of religious dualism. (Immanuel Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 1781. A367).
15. Dualism in modern lexicography
Since the days of Kant and Hegel dualism has become a current in our discourse, often inappropriately used. Nearly all modern dictionaries and encyclopaedias, whether specialized or not, in whichever language, carry an entry on it. In going over those numerous articles, long and short, two things catch the eye.
Very often monism and dualism are seen as contrasted concepts; the Grand Larousse, Vol. 4 (1983), states that "the whole of western philosophy appears to be continously varying between dualism and monism." I refer the reader to what I wrote about the relation monism-dualism above.
A second element is that dualism most of the time is seen as a philosophical concept and/or as a religious. In the Dictionary of the History of Ideas, Vol.II (1973), Simone Pétrement categorically states that the word `dualism’has two different meanings: 1. religious; 2. philosophical. In the Phiolosophisches Wörterbuch, Bd. 1 (1974) Manfred Buhr states that "philosophical dualism essentially is a secularized form of religious dualism, in particular the bipartition of the world into a natural and supernatural one by the Christian religion." Instances out of many.
A third element that will cause no surprise after the foregoing is that dualism is usually indicated as a doctrine, a philosophical poition, an opposition of principles, a category of thought, a theory, a system, a concept, or an idea. This terminology lends force to the (mistaken) opinion that dualism predominantly occurs in the realm of thought, as an abstract idea, from which it tacitly was thought to follow that it occurs nowhere else, above all not in the sphere in the concrete. I must say that the view of dualism taken by almost everyone is rather narrow.
There are, however, some scholars who come closer to the much wider conception of Plutarch. Olof Gigon, writing in the Lexikon der alten Welt (1965), makes the notable remark that "dualism originated from the experience of contradiction in the structure of the human self and from the observation between constructive and destructive [forces] in the universe, secondarily from the ontological thesis that the [process of] becoming is only triggered of by an opposition that is found below the one that is sufficient to itself." For Gigon the ontological (=metaphysical, philosophical) sphere is secondary, whereas the cosmological (I would have preferred `nature’ to `universe’) and still more psychological, or anthropological, factors get pride of place.
A similar view is taken by Giovanni Semprini in the Enciclopedia filosofica, Vol. 2 (1967). Dualism, he writes, "in a large sense, is every doctrine that, not only in the universality of reality, but also in the more specific fields of reality, and not only in metaphysical questions but also in whatever question, has recourse, as to an explicative principle, to two entities that between themselves are irreducible." Although taking exception to his term `doctrine’, I agree with what Semprini is saying.
16. Why people become dualists
It will be evident by now that one does not need to be a philosopher in order to become a dualist. Was Hitler’s dualistic attitude with regard to the Jews a philosophical position? Very human factors play their role. Dualism is a psychological urge, an anthropological tendency, and as such a part of the human condition. It is for this reason that some form of dualism may develop everywhere, at any time, in every person, in every social group. Contrasts come naturally to us and help us to explain and categorize the world around us. However, given specific, personal or historical circumstances, these contrasts may be sharpened and deepened into unbridgeable oppositions. Most of the time this does not happen, because of that other and far stronger urge we all feel, that towards harmony and wholeness, an urge which usually triumphs over the opposite tendency. Yet It believe that the proclivity to emphasize contrasts is more obviously present in some people (a minority) than in others. The urge to intensify contrasts to the extreme may, indeed, be innate in some beings; given the circumstances, it can get a fair chance to develop into some form of downright dualism.
It must never be forgotten that dualism is not an automatism nor is it on an equal footing with the urge to wholeness. While this is always given pride of place as being the most natural and self-evident of things, there must, on the other hand, be special impulses for the development of dualism. These impulses are found in the life of individual persons or in the mode of existence of certain nations or groups. A case in point is Plato, who developed a philosophy with strong dualistic elements, that of the opposition of body and soul for instance. Probably he was an innate proclivity towards dualism. As a young man he was twice frustrated in his desires. Firstly, he realized that he was not talented enough to become a great tragedian; secondly, there was the shock of Socrates’ execution, which closed the normal road to a political career to him. He then turned towards philosophy, which naturally assumed dualistic aspects.