Dualism

DUALISM. - From the Latin dualis (derived from duo), it is any tendency or system that, in the general interpretation of the universe, or in a particular order of reality, facts or phenomena, admits the existence of two heterogeneous and opposed principles. Dualistic, for example, is every system that defends the radical irreducibility of God and the world, of matter and spirit, of being and thought. The term, today of varied and manifold use, is found for the first time applied to the Persian religion, in Th. Hyde, Historia religionis veterum Persarum eorumque magorum (Oxford 1700), ch. 9: Mazdeism in fact, which reappeared later in Manichaeism with the fundamental doctrine of the two supreme independent principles, of good (Ormuzd) and of evil (Ahriman), presents a religious-metaphysical dualism of universal and absolute order; for the specific content of this form of dualism, which always remains one of the principal references of the term, v. MANICHEISMO.

In the history of philosophical thought dualism, as a system of interpretation of reality and its manifestations opposed to monism, appears quite early, subsequently determining itself in manifold forms, according to the various formal aspects of reality and the different order of facts taken into examination by philosophical inquiry. An essential classification, even if not complete down to the most particular and specific applications, distinguishes cosmological-metaphysical, anthropological (psychological), gnoseological (logical), ethical, and religious dualism. Dualistic is the conception of the world in the Pythagorean school (6th century B.C.). Having placed in numbers and their relations the most intimate and essential value of reality, the Pythagoreans also believed they found in an opposition of mathematical order the root of the different antagonistic aspects that things present: the immanent antithesis of finite-indefinite, limited-unlimited, odd-even that lives in numbers, expresses the radical dualistic opposition of reality to which every other form of opposition in the physical, metaphysical, and ethical field is reduced, for example light-darkness, perfect-imperfect, good-evil. Cosmological dualism, in a form that presents analogies with the fundamental doctrine of Persian dualism, appears in Empedocles (5th century B.C.) who traces all movements and corporeal phenomena back to two primordial forces or antithetical principles, Love (φιλία) and Hate (νεῖκος). Shortly afterward, Anaxagoras, rising above the essentially naturalistic inquiry of the first Ionians, posits, to explain the world, alongside passive matter an ordering rationality (νοῦς). This is a metaphysical-theological dualism, which will not be overcome, but rather will be expressed in more mature forms in the greatest Greek speculation: both in Plato and in Aristotle, eternal and passive matter will remain as an absolute position over against the supreme intelligence, artificer and orderer.

But in Plato the dualistic moment is essential also in relation to the remaining motives of his philosophical speculation: the intelligible world separated from and opposed to the sensible world (the precedents of this gnoseological dualism are found in Socrates and in presocratic speculation itself, particularly in Heraclitus and Parmenides), the soul pre-existing and violently conjoined with the body, constitute the most radical expressions of the gnoseological and anthropological dualism of Platonism. And notwithstanding the correction that Aristotelianism brought to it, the dualistic tendency of Plato's philosophy will pass, with predominantly ethical-religious resonances, to Stoicism, to Hellenistic speculation and to Neoplatonism, which will accentuate, in different forms, the radical opposition between matter and spirit, soul and body, senses and reason, passions and freedom. The particular opposition proclaimed by Gnosticism between the God of the Old and the God of the New Testament is an analogous expression of this form of dualism. A reflection of Platonic dualism seems at times to surface also in certain currents of Christian asceticism, where the contrast between flesh and spirit, nature and grace, is too much exacerbated, to the detriment of the harmony and living psychological unity of the person.

In medieval thought a singular dualism, which will also have echoes repeatedly in the Christian speculation of Humanism and the Renaissance, is offered by the Averroistic theory of the "two truths," of reason and of faith, independent and sometimes contradictory to each other.

In modern philosophy a rigid anthropological dualism is taken up again with Descartes: once the radical opposition between spatiality (res extensa) and consciousness (res cogitans) is affirmed, the natural unity of the human composite is in Cartesian thought again broken, to the benefit of an excessive spiritualism that reproduces in a new form the dualistic theory of Plato. It is well known how Cartesian dualism influenced the antithetical position of Spinoza's monism, in which matter and spirit, spatiality and consciousness are reduced to pure expressions or attributes of an identical substance. In Kant, on the other hand, a radical gnoseological dualism is affirmed with the separation introduced between reality and thought, datum of experience and transcendental form, phenomenon and noumenon: a dualism that reappears in the moral theory of the author of criticism, with the irreducible opposition established between nature and morality, ethical value and finality.

Alongside these excessive forms of dualism, there is a moderate expression of it that imposes itself on an objective philosophical speculation and that traditional philosophy continues to defend against the extreme affirmations of both materialistic and spiritualistic monism. First of all, in the metaphysical-theological field, the duality of finite and infinite, contingent and necessary, world and God is a positive result of rational inquiry into the data offered by reality and experience: a dualism, this, fundamental in Christian philosophy, in opposition to the various forms of monistic pantheism.

In the psychological field, traditional philosophy, while rejecting Platonic-Cartesian extremism, nonetheless affirms the essential distinction and transcendence of the human soul over the pure physical-physiological forces and activities of matter, thus rejecting all materialistic solutions of the anthropological problem, in which the most certain ethical-religious values of the human person are irreparably compromised. In parallel and consequently, a temperate gnoseological dualism is also affirmed in the recognition of a superior value and function of the intellect, essentially distinct from sensibility, even if in intimate and constant relation with it. Moreover, to the transcendental idealism of modern philosophy, traditional thought opposes the dualism of being and thought, subject and object, as an immediate result of critical-metaphysical inquiry into the content of experience. Finally, in the moral field, Christian philosophy, while denying the Kantian opposition between the subordinate values of the pleasant and the useful and ethical value, nonetheless affirms their essential heterogeneity, recognizing for morality, against every form of hedonism and eudemonism (v.), an absolute and unconditioned position. V. CONOSCENZA; DIO; IDEALISMO; MONISMO; PANTEISMO.

Ugo Viglino