Dualism
dualism
(Latin: duo, two)
(1) The system accounting for the universe as caused by two conflicting principles, good and evil.
(2) The existence in the world of two kinds of being or substance, matter and mind, produced by one and the same cause. Between these two beings there is a substantial union, so that they act together as one. Through the matter of the body, the senses, comes to the soul the knowledge of external objects. It was Descartes ‘ failure to grasp the fact of this union which led to the many false philosophical theories of our day assuming that there is an impassable breach between mind and matter and, as a consequence, that knowledge is subjective with no element of external reality.
Fuente: New Catholic Dictionary
Dualism
(From Lat. duo, two).
Like most other philosophical terms, has been employed in different meanings by different schools.
First, the name has been used to denote the religious or theological system which would explain the universe as the outcome of two eternally opposed and coexisting principles, conceived as good and evil, light and darkness, or some other form of conflicting powers. We find this theory widely prevalent in the East, and especially in Persia, for several centuries before the Christian Era. The Zend-Avesta, ascribed to Zoroaster, who probably lived in the sixth century B.C. and is supposed to be the founder or reformer of the Medo-Persian religion, explains the world as the outcome of the struggle between Ormuzd and Ahriman. Ormuzd is infinite light, supreme wisdom, and the author of all good; Ahriman is the principle of darkness and of all evil. In the third century after Christ, Manes, for a time a convert to Christianity, developed a form of Gnosticism, subsequently styled Manichaeism, in which he sought to fuse some of the elements of the Christian religion with the dualistic creed of Zoroastrianism (see MANICHAEISM and ZOROASTER). Christian philosophy, expounded with minor differences by theologians and philosophers from St. Augustine downwards, holds generally that physical evil is the result of the necessary limitations of finite created beings, and that moral evil, which alone is evil in the true sense, is a consequence of the creation of beings possessed of free wills and is tolerated by God. Both physical and moral evil are to be conceived as some form of privation or defect of being, not as positive entity. Their existence is thus not irreconcilable with the doctrine of theistic monism.
Second, the term dualism is employed in opposition to monism, to signify the ordinary view that the existing universe contains two radically distinct kinds of being or substance — matter and spirit, body and mind. This is the most frequent use of the name in modern philosophy, where it is commonly contrasted with monism. But it should not be forgotten that dualism in this sense is quite reconcilable with a monistic origin of all things. The theistic doctrine of creation gives a monistic account of the universe in this sense. Dualism is thus opposed to both materialism and idealism. Idealism, however, of the Berkeleyan type, which maintains the existence of a multitude of distinct substantial minds, may along with dualism, be described as pluralism.
Historically, in Greek philosophy as early as 500 B.C. we find the Eleatic School with Parmenides as their chief, teaching a universal unity of being, thus exhibiting a certain affinity with modern German monism. Being alone exists. It is absolutely one, eternal, and unchangeable. There is no real becoming or beginning of being. Seeming changes and plurality of beings are mere appearances. To this unity of being, Plato opposed an original duality–God and unproduced matter, existing side by side from all eternity. This matter, however, was conceived as indeterminate, chaotic, fluctuating, and governed by a blind necessity, in contrast with mind which acts according to plan. The order and arrangement are due to God. Evil and disorder in the world have their source in the resistance of matter which God has not altogether vanquished. Here we seem to have a trace of the Oriental speculation. Again there is another dualism in man. The rational soul is a spiritual substance distinct from the body within which it dwells, somewhat as the charioteer in the chariot. Aristotle is dualistic on sundry important topics. The contrast between the fundamental conceptions of matter and form–a potential and an actualizing principle–runs through all branches of his system. Necessarily coeternal with God, Who is pure actuality, there has existed the passive principle of matter, which in this sense, however, is mere potentiality. But further, along with God Who is the Prime Mover, there must also have existed from all eternity the World moved by God. In his treatment of cognition Aristotle adopts the ordinary common-sense view of the existence of individual objects distinct from our perceptions and ideas of them. Man is an individual substantial being resulting from the coalescence of the two principles–form (the soul) and matter.
Christianity rejected all forms of a dual origin of the world which erected matter, or evil, or any other principle into a second eternal being coexistent with God, and it taught the monistic origin of the universe from one, infinite, self-existing spiritual Being who freely created all things. The unfamiliar conception of free creation, however, met with considerable opposition in the schools of philosophy and was abandoned by several of the earlier heresies. The neo-Platonists sought to lessen the difficulty by emanastic forms of pantheism, and also by inserting intermediate beings between God and the world. But the former method implied a materialistic conception of God, while the latter only postponed the difficulty. From the thirteenth century, through the influence of Albertus Magnus and still more of St. Thomas Aquinas, the philosophy of Aristotle, though subjected to some important modifications, became the accredited philosophy of the Church. The dualistic hypothesis of an eternal world existing side by side with God was of course rejected. But the conception of spiritual beings as opposed to matter received fuller definition and development. The distinction between the human soul and the body which it animates was made clearer and their separability emphasized; but the ultra-dualism of Plato was avoided by insisting on the intimate union of soul and body to constitute one substantial being under the conception of form and matter.
The problem of dualism, however, was lifted into quite a new position in modern philosophy by Descartes (q.v.). Indeed, since his time it has been a topic of central interest in philosophical speculation. His handling of two distinct questions, the one epistemological, the other metaphysical, brought this about. The mind stands in a cognitional relation to the external world, and in a causal relation to the changes within the body. What is the precise nature of each of these relations? According to Descartes the soul is res cogitans. Its essence is thought. It is simple and unextended. It has nothing in common with the body, but is connected with it in a single point, the pineal gland in the centre of the brain. In contrast with this, the essence of matter lies in extension. So the two forms of being are utterly disparate. Consequently the union between them is of an accidental or extrinsic character. Descartes thus approximates to the Platonic conception of charioteer and chariot. Soul and body are really two merely allied beings. How then do they interact? Real reciprocal influence or causal interaction seems impossible between two such disparate things. Geulincx and other disciples of Descartes were driven to invent the hypothesis of occasionalism and Divine assistance, according to which it is God Himself who effects the appropriate change in either body or mind on the occasion of the corresponding change in the other. For this system of miraculous interferences Leibniz substituted the theory of pre-established harmony according to which God has coupled pairs of bodies and souls which are destined to run in parallel series of changes like two clocks started together. The same insoluble difficulty of psycho-physical parallelism remains on the hands of those psychologists and philosophers at the present day who reject the doctrine of the soul as a real being capable of acting on the body which it informs. The ultra-dualism of Descartes was immediately followed on the Continent by the pantheistic monism of Spinoza, which identified mind and matter in one infinite substance of which they are merely “modes.”
The cognitional question Descartes solves by a theory of knowledge according to which the mind immediately perceives only its own ideas or modifications. The belief in an external world corresponding to these ideas is of the nature of an inference, and the guaranteeing of this inference or the construction of a reliable bridge from the subjective world of thought to the objective world of material being, was thenceforth the main problem of modern philosophy. Locke similarly taught that the mind immediately apprehends only its own ideas, but he assumed a real external world which corresponds to these ideas, at least as regards the primary qualities of matter. Berkeley, accepting Locke’s assumption that the mind immediately cognizes only its own ideas, raised the question: What grounds have we for believing in the existence of a material world corresponding to those ideas? He concludes that there are none. The external cause of these ideas is God Who awakens them in our minds by regular laws. The dualistic opposition between mind and matter is thus got rid of by denying an independent material world. But Berkeley still postulates multitude of real substantial minds distinct from each other and apparently from God. We have thus idealistic pluralism. Hume carried Berkeley’s scepticism a step farther and denied the existence of permanent spiritual substances, or minds, for grounds similar to those on which Berkeley rejected material substances. All we know to exist are ideas of greater or less vividness. Kant repudiates this more extreme scepticism and adopts, at least in the second edition of his chief work, a form of dualism based on the distinction of phenomena and noumena. The mind immediately perceives only its own representations. These are modified by innate mental forms. They present to us only phenomena. But the noumena, the things-in-themselves, the external causes of these phenomenal representations, are beyond our power of cognition. Fichte rejected things-in-themselves outside the mind, and reduced the Kantian dualism to idealistic monism. The strongest and most consistent defenders of dualism in modern philosophy have been the Scotch School, including Reid, Stuart, and Hamilton. Among English writers in more recent times Martineau, McCosh, Mivart, and Case have carried on the same tradition on similar lines.
The problem of dualism, as its history suggests, involves two main questions: Does there exist a material world outside of our minds and independent of our thought? Supposing such a world to exist, how does the mind attain to the cognition of it? The former question belongs to epistemology, material logic, or general philosophy; the latter to psychology. It is true that dualism is ultimately rejected by the materialist who reduces conscious states to functions, or “aspects” of the brain; but objections from this standpoint will be more suitably dealt with under materialism and monism. The idealist theory since Berkeley, in all its forms, maintains that the mind can only know its own states or representations, and that what we suppose to be an independent, material world is, in the last analysis, only a series of ideas and sensations plus belief in the possibility of other sensations. Our conviction of the objective reality of a vivid consistent dream is analogous to our conviction of the validity of our waking experience. Dualism affirms, in opposition to all forms of idealism, the independent, extramental reality of the material world. Among its chief arguments are the following: Our belief in the existence of other minds is an inference from their bodies. Consequently the denial of an external material world involves the rejection of all evidence for the existence of other minds, and lands the idealist in the position of “Solipsism”. Physical science assumes the existence of a material world, existing when unperceived, possessing various properties, and exerting various powers according to definite constant laws. Thus astronomy describes the movements of heavenly bodies moving in space of three dimensions, attracting each other with forces inversely proportioned to the square of the distance. It postulates the movement and action of such bodies when they are invisible as well as when they are visible through long periods of time and over vast areas of space. From these assumptions it deduces future positions and foretells eclipses and transits many years ahead. Observations carried out by subsequent generations verify the predictions. Were there not an extramental world whose parts exist and act in a space and time truly mirrored by our cognitions and ideas, such a result would be impossible. The branches of science dealing with sound, light, heat, and electricity are equally irreconcilable with idealism. The teachings of physiology and psycho-physics become peculiarly absurd in the idealist theory. What, for instance, is meant by saying that memory is dependent on modifications in the nervous substance of the brain, if all the material world, including the brain, is but a collection of mental states? Psychology similarly assumes the extramental reality of the human body in its account of the growth of the senses and the development of perception. Were the idealist hypothesis true its language would be meaningless. All branches of science thus presuppose and confirm the dualistic view of common sense. Granted, then, the truth of dualism, the psychological question emerges: How does the mind come to know the material world? Broadly speaking there are two answers. According to one the mind immediately perceives only its own representations or ideas and from these it infers external material objects as the cause of these ideas. According to the other, in some of its acts it immediately perceives extended objects or part of the material world. As Hamilton says: “What we directly apprehend is the Non-ego, not some modification of the Ego”. The theory which maintains an immediate perception of the non-ego he calls natural dualism or natural realism. The other, which holds a mediate cognition of the non-ego, as the inferred cause of a representation immediately apprehended, he terms hypothetical dualism or hypothetical realism. The doctrine of immediate or presentative perception is that adopted by the great body of Scholastic philosophers and is embodied in the dictum that the idea, concept, or mental act of apprehension is non id quod percipitur sed medium quo res percipitur — not that which is perceived but the medium by which the object itself is perceived. This seems to be the only account of the nature of knowledge that does not lead logically to idealism; and the history of the subject confirms this view. But affirmation of the mind’s capacity for immediate perception of the non-ego and insistence on the distinction between id quod and id quo percipitur, do not dispose of the whole difficulty. Modern psychology has become genetic. Its interest centres in tracing the growth and development of cognition from the simplest and most elementary sensations of infancy. Analysis of the perceptive processes of a later age, e.g. apprehension of size, shape, solidity, distance, and other qualities of remote objects, proves that operations seemingly instantaneous and immediate may involve the activity of memory, imagination, judgment, reasoning, and subconscious contributions from the past experience of other senses. There is thus much that is indirect and inferential in nearly all the percipient acts of mature life. This should be frankly admitted by the defender of natural dualism, and the chief psychological problem for him at the present day is to sift and discriminate what is immediate and direct from what is mediate or representative in the admittedly complex cognitional operations of normal adult life.
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IN FAVOUR OF NATURAL DUALISM:–RICKABY, First Principles of Knowledge (New York and London, 1901); CASE, Physical Realism (New York and London, 1881); UEBERWEG, Logic, tr. (London, 1871); HAMILTON, Metaphysics (Edinburgh and London, 1877); McCOSH, Exam. of Mill (New York, 1875); MARTINEAU, A Study of Religion (Oxford, 1888): MIVART, Nature and Thought (London, 1882); MAHER, Psychology (New York and London, 1908); FARGES, L’Objectivit de la Perception (Paris, 1891). AGAINST NATURAL DUALISM:–BERKELEY, Principles of Human Knowledge, ed. FRASER (Oxford, 1871): ed. KRAUTH (Philadelphia, 1874); MILL, An Exam. of Sir W. Hamilton (London, 1865); BRADLEY, Appearance and Reality (New York and London, 1899).
MICHAEL MAHER Transcribed by Robert H. Sarkissian
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume VCopyright © 1909 by Robert Appleton CompanyOnline Edition Copyright © 2003 by K. KnightNihil Obstat, May 1, 1909. Remy Lafort, CensorImprimatur. +John M. Farley, Archbishop of New York
Fuente: Catholic Encyclopedia
Dualism
in philosophy, is that system which explains the phenomena of the universe by assuming two primal principles instead of one (Monism). In theology, Dualism explains evil by assuming two original principles or beings, one good, the other evil. The doctrine of two primal causes, one good and the other evil, constantly warring with each other, lay at the foundation of the system of Zoroaster (q.v.). It was also developed later in Manicheism (q.v.); and among the Sclavonians, who, during the interval between their undisturbed faith in their national mythology and their conversion to Christianity, added to the worship of the good being that of a supremely evil one, viz. Czernebog (the Black God) (London Review, April 1855, page 11). It was in this Sclavonic soil that the Oriental dualism found a congenial home, and from it seems to have originated the dualism of the Cathari and other sects during the Middle Ages. SEE CATHARI.
Its root is always found in imperfect speculation on the relation of God to the world, and on the origin of evil. It is apt to spring up, also, in the practical sphere, from the sense of personal sin, which seeks relief in a transfer of guilt from the real self the man to something outside of him, e.g. to the physical side of his own nature, or to the general laws of nature.
1. Oriental Dualism. The Chinese, at a very early period, adopted a dualistic philosophy and theology. The ordinary speech of their philosophers was dualistic, implying two primal essences, “one a power or cause, the other a more passive something on which that power or cause could operate. The former may be styled the ultimate immaterial principle of the universe (Le); the second, consisting of ethereal matter, is the ultimate material principle (Ke). The latter, again, is dual (yang and yin), viz. the paternal and maternal principles in nature. Man is the product of the marriage of the male and female principles in nature. Yang and yin, coexisting as the material ground in which the ultimate principle (Ke) takes effect, enter into the composition of rational as well as of irrational beings. In moral speculation, however, this dualism passed into a sort of pantheism” (Hardwick, Christ and other Masters, part 3, chapter 1).
The Persian Dualism. The Persian system, whether originated by Zoroaster, or, what is more likely modified by him from older doctrines, taught that there is “a supreme Being, all powerful and eternal, from whom have eternally proceeded, by his creative word (Honofer), two principles, Ormuzd and Ahriman; Ormuzd (Oromasdes) being pure and infinite Light, Wisdom, and Perfection, the Creator of every good thing; Ahriman the principle of darkness and evil, opposed to Ormuzd, either originally or in consequence of his fall. To this belief are attached fables respecting the conflicting efforts and creations of these two powers; on the universal dominion ultimately reserved for the good principle, and the return of Ahriman during four periods, each of which is to last three thousand years; on the good and the evil spirits (Amshaspands, Izeds, Ferfers, and Dives), and their differences of sex and rank; on the souls of men (Ferfers), which, created by Ormuzd before their union with the body, have their habitation in the heavens; and which ultimately, according as in this world they have served Ormuzd or Ahriman, pass after death into the dwellings of the blessed, or are precipitated into obscurity: finally, respecting the future resurrection of the bodies of the wicked after the victory of Ormuzd and the restoration of all things” (Tennemann, Manual Hist. of Philosophy, 71; see also Hardwick, Christ and other Masters, part 3, chapter 3). The Oriental Dualism first sets the Hyle (, matter) as an original principle over against the divinity. The Eastern philosophers soon found it necessary to run into Pantheism; for, the necessity of unity pressing on them, they found no other way of escape except to make God the soul of the world. But, the gulf between matter and divinity still remaining, they had to fall upon two principles, the material and spiritual; and, not willing to identify the original spiritual principle with matter, darkness, and evil, they fell upon the idea of two antagonistic beings or gods, a good and an evil one, the god of light and the god of darkness, the god of matter and the god of spirit Ahriman the evil principle, and Ormuzd the good.
2. Dualism in the Christian Age. This Oriental Dualism, carried out into the various departments of nature and mind, and embellished by innumerable beautiful fancies, had a great charm for the imagination of even the primitive Christian mind; and it seemed also to form a certain kind of natural and easy alliance with the doctrines of good and evil, God and Satan, spirit and matter, in the human constitution, as these are unfolded in the Christian revelation, so that this dualistic mode of thinking failed not to insinuate itself largely into the thinking of many in the primitive Church. It has also revealed itself, more or less, in various sects and systems in every period of Christian history, and its false theories have often troubled the mind of the Church in the development and statement of its dogmas. Thus in Gnosticism, and especially in the Docetic phase of it, Dualism enters as a ruling element. The Gnostics found it difficult to explain the existence of the sensible world, and especially the existence of evil, on the direct assumption of one absolutely good Being. Hence they mixed into their theory some elements of the Oriental philosophy. “They thought themselves compelled to combine with the doctrine of emanation that of Dualism, in order, by the commixture of two hostile realms, by the products of two opposite principles, to explain the origin of a world not answering to the divine idea, with all the defects cleaving to it, all the evils it contains” (Neander, Hist. of the Chr. Church, Bohn’s ed. 2:14). For the Manichaean Dualism, SEE MANICHEISM; and for that of the Cathari, SEE CATHARI.
That the ascetic tendencies of the early Christian age were strongly stimulated, if not unconsciously caused by a leaven of Dualism, can hardly be doubted. “A dark instinct of a state of abnormal and dangerous antipathy to God leads the devotee to take vengeance in time upon that part of himself which is outside, and which may be hardly treated, and even tortured, at far less cost than the renewal of the spirit of his mind, and the bringing of his whole inner man back to gravitate towards God instead of turning upon itself. Manes endeavored to unite Christianity and the noblest form of Oriental paganism in his brilliant and elaborately constructed speculative system. The Church repulsed the heresiarch because of his personal pretensions, his rival hierarchy, and his too open importations from the religion of Persia; but it was not the less profoundly modified by the tendencies which it nominally rejected. Monasticism in Syria and Egypt was the direct result of the contact of degenerating Christianity with pagan habits of thought. The idea that abstinence from food was meritorious in itself, the notion of impurity attached to the sexual relation, the growing tendency to look upon marriage as a state less holy than celibacy these were so many triumphs of the invading pagan conception. The errors and extravagances of the ascetic life were especially prevalent in the Eastern Church. Schmid quotes authorities to show that remembrances of Manichaeism were long kept up in Oriental convents, and also that sundry Greek monks, in their solitude, imagined they had constantly to struggle with the devil, whose power they magnified until they put him almost on a rank with God” (London Review, April 1855, page 10; see also Lea, Sacerdotal Celibacy, Phila. 1867, page 42 sq.).
The progress of philosophy and theology in all Christian ages has been a continuous struggle to overcome Dualism, to bring God and the world, the infinite and the finite, heaven and earth, spirit and matter together, and to do this without violence to the essential nature of either, by, on the one hand, confusing them, or, on the other, annihilating one or the other by identification of them. Pantheism, as it has sprung up on the arena of modern theological investigation, has been an earnest, though mistaken effort to overcome Dualism. Much as Pantheism is to be abhorred and dreaded, yet ought its service to be acknowledged in helping philosophy and theology to master Dualism. It has both suggested and stimulated the movement that aims at the creation of a christological theology, and we may also say philosophy, which professes, not without hope of success, to overcome that mischievous Dualism which knows only to negate, and which, in a cowardly manner, has only given up the great fundamental problems. It holds that the great gulf can be, and can only be, bridged by the God man in whose mysterious person all dualismn is overcome the center and perennial source of all life and thought, the principle of all unities and the unity of all principles, the whole of all that is divided, the harmony of all manifoldness and diversity, the center of all science, and the imperial, incarnate Word of all authority and truth, the final rest of all minds, as he is also of all hearts. Hardwick, Christ and other Masters (London. 1863, 2 volumes, 12mo); Dorner, Doctrine of the Person of Christ (see Index); Hagenbach, Hist. of Doctrines, Smith’s ed., 51, 127; Theol. Stud. u. Kritiken (1837), page 357; Lange, Life of Christ (Edinb. 1854, 6 volumes, 8vo), 1:135 sq.; H. Schmid, in Herzog, Real Encykl. 19:432.
Fuente: Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature
Dualism
DUALISM.The belief in, or doctrine of, two ultimate conflicting principles, powers, or tendencies in the universe. Haeckel describes as dualism the distinction between God and the world, and between matter and mind, and opposes to it his monism, which identifies both (Riddle of the Universe, ch. 1, p. 8). In this sense of the word the Bible teaches dualism. It does distinguish God as Creator from the world as created (Gen 1:1, Isa 40:26, Joh 1:3), and describes God as Spirit in contrast with matter (Joh 4:24). In man it distinguishes the body taken from the dust, and the spirit given by God (Gen 2:7, Ecc 12:7). This conclusion need not be proved further, as this view is implied in all the teaching of the Bible about God, world, man. But, setting aside this new sense of the term, we must consider whether the Bible gives evidence of dualism in the older sense, as opposing to God any antagonist or hindrance in His creating, preserving, and ruling the world. It is held that dualism in three forms can be traced in the Bible(1) the mythical, (2) the metaphysical, (3) the ethical. Each must be separately examined.
1. Mythical dualism.In the Babylonian cosmology, Marduk, the champion of the upper deities, wages war against Tiamat, who leads the lower deities; at last he slays her, divides her body, and makes part a covering for the heavens to hold back the upper waters. There is little doubt that the account of the Creation in Gen 1:1-31 reproduces some of the features of this myth, but it is transformed by the monotheism of the author (see Bennetts Genesis, pp. 6772). Tiamat appears under the name Rahab in several passages (Job 9:13 [RV [Note: Revised Version.] ] Job 26:12-13 [see Davidsons Job, p. 54], Isa 51:9; cf. Isa 27:1 leviathan the swift serpent, leviathan the crooked serpent, the dragon that is in the sea). See Cheynes notes on these passages in the Prophecies of Isaiah, i. 158, ii. 31. In illustration of Isa 51:9 he quotes the address to Ra in the Egyptian Book of the Dead: Hail! thou who hast cut in pieces the Scorner and strangled the Apophis [i.e. the evil serpent, Psa 89:10, cf. Psa 74:13-14 the dragons, leviathan]. This name is used as a symbolic name of Egypt (Psa 87:4, Isa 30:7), probably on account of its position on the Nile, and its hostility to the people of God. The sea is regarded as Gods foe (Dan 7:3 four great beasts came up from the sea; Rev 13:1 a beast coming up out of the sea, Rev 21:1 the sea is no more, that is, the power hostile to God has ceased), a conception in which the myth survives. The influence of the myth is seen only in the poetical language, but not in the religious beliefs of the Holy Scriptures.
2. Metaphysical dualism.Greek thought was dualistic. Anaxagoras assumed hyl, matter, as well as nous, mind, as the ultimate principles. Plato does not harmonize the world of ideas and the world of sense. Aristotle begins with matter and form. Neo-Platonism seeks to fill up the gulf between God and the world by a series of emanations. In Gnosticism the plrma and the logos mediate between the essential and the phenomenal existence. St. John (Joh 1:1; Joh 1:14) meets this Greek thought of his environment by asserting that Christ is the Word who is with God and is God, and who has become flesh. Against Gnostic heretics St. Paul in Colossians (Col 1:19; Col 2:9) asserts that the plrma, the fulness of the Godhead, dwells bodily in Christ; to this dualism is opposed the union of Creator and creation, reason and matter in Christ.
From this metaphysical there resulted a practical dualism in Greek thought, between sense and reason. While Aristotle thought that reason might use sense as an artist his material, Neo-Platonism taught that only by an ascetic discipline could reason be emancipated from the bondage of sense; and Stoicism treated sense as a usurper in mans nature, to be crushed and cast out by reason. Holsten has tried to show that this dualism is involved in St. Pauls doctrine of the flesh, and Pfleiderer also holds this position. It is held that St. Paul, starting from the common Hebraic notion of flesh (sarx), according to which it signifies material substance, which is void indeed of the spirit, but not contrary to it, which is certainly weak and perishable, and so far unclean, but not positively evil, advances to the conception of the flesh as an agency opposed to the spirit, having an active tendency towards death. From the opposition of physically different substances results the dualism of antagonistic moral principles (Pfleiderers Paulinism, i. 52 ff.). This conclusion is, however, generally challenged with good reason, and cannot be regarded as proved. The question will be more fully discussed in art. Flesh.
3. Ethical dualism.In Persian thought there are opposed to one another, as in conflict with one another, Ormuzd and Ahriman, the personal principles of good and evil. While the OT recognizes the power of sin in the world, yet Gods ultimate causality and sole supremacy are affirmed. In post-exilic Judaism, however, there was a twofold tendency so to assert the transcendence of God that angels must be recognized as mediating between Him and the world, and to preserve His moral perfection by assigning the evil in the world to the agency of evil spirits under the leadership of Satan, the adversary. While these tendencies may be regarded as inherent in the development of Hebrew monotheism, both were doubtless stimulated by the influence of Persian thought with its elaborate angelology and demonology. In the Apocalyptic literature the present world is represented as under Satans dominion, and as wrested from him only by a supernatural manifestation of Gods power to establish His Kingdom. This dualism pervades the Apocalypse. In the NT generally the doctrine of the devil current in Judaism is taken over, but the Divine supremacy is never denied, and the Divine victory over all evil is always confidently anticipated. (See artt. Apocalyptic Literature, Devil, Eschatology.)
While in the Bible there are these traces of the threefold dualism, it is never developed; and monotheism is throughout maintained, Gods sole eternity, ultimate causality, and final victory being asserted, while God is distinguished from the world, and in the world a distinction between matter and mind is recognized.
Alfred E. Garvie.
Fuente: Hastings’ Dictionary of the Bible
Dualism
dual-iz’m. See PHILOSOPHY.
Fuente: International Standard Bible Encyclopedia
Dualism
(Lat. duo, two)
(a) In metaphysicsTheory which admits in any given domain, two independent and mutually irreducible substances e.g. the Platonic dualism of the sensible and intelligible worlds, the Cartesian dinlism of thinking and extended substances, the Leibnizian dualism of the actual and possible worlds, the Kantian dualism of the noumenal and the phenomenal. The term dualism first appeared in Thomas Hyde, Historia religionis veterum Persarum (1700) ch. IX, p. 164, where it applied to religious dualism of good and evil and is similarly employed by Bayle m his Dictionary article “Zoroaster” and by Leibniz in Theodicee. C. Wolff is responsible for its use in the psycho-physical sense, (cf. A. Lalande, Vocabulaire de la Philosophie. Vol. I, p. 180, note by R. Eucken.)
(b) In epistemologyEpistemological dualism is the theory that in perception, memory and other types of non-inferential cognition, there is a numerical duality of the content or dntum immediately present to the knowing mind and (sense datum, memory image, etc.) and the real object known (the thing perceived or remembered) (cf. A. O. Lovejoy, The Revolt Against Dualism, pp. 15-6). Epistemological monism, on the contrary identifies the immediate datum and the cognitive object either by assimilating the content to the object (epistemological realism) or the object to the content (epistemological idealism). — L.W.