Word Finder - dualism

definition

Duality; the condition of being double.

definition

The view that the world consists of, or is explicable in terms of, two fundamental principles, such as mind and matter or good and evil.

definition

The belief that the world is ruled by a pair of antagonistic forces, such as good and evil; the belief that man has two basic natures, the physical and the spiritual.

definition

The theory, originated by Lavoisier and developed by Berzelius, that all definite compounds are binary in their nature, and consist of two distinct constituents, themselves simple or complex, and having opposite chemical or electrical affinities.

This philosophy, called Empirio-criticism, is not, however, a realistic but an idealistic dualism, nor can it be called materialism.

Dualism meets the assertion of absolute unity by the counter assertion of mere difference.

So far from establishing the truth for which dualism is itself concerned - the reality of all differences - such a theory can end only in a scepticism as to the reality of any difference.

The psychological theory of cognition takes for granted the dualism of the mind that knows and the object known; it takes no account of the metaphysical problem as to the possibility of a relation between the ego and the non-ego, but assumes that such a relation does exist.

It might seem, indeed, that Stoicism indicates a falling off from Plato and Aristotle towards materialism, but the ethical dualism, which was the ruling tendency of the Stoa, could not long endure its materialistic physics, and took refuge in the metaphysical dualism of the Platonists.

The Apotheosis and Hamartigenia are polemic, the first against the disclaimers of the divinity of Christ, the latter against the gnostic dualism of Marcion and his followers.

In the case of other systems, owing to the inexactness of our information, we are unable to decide; the later systems of Mandaeism and Manichaeanism, so closely related to Gnosticism, are also based upon a decided dualism.

And even when there is an attempt at reconciliation, it is still quite clear how strong was the original dualism which has to be overcome.

A further weakening of the dualism is indicated when, in the systems of the Valentinian school, the fall of Sophia takes place within the godhead, and Sophia, inflamed with love, plunges into the Bythos, the highest divinity, and when the attempt is thus made genetically to derive the lower world from the sufferings and passions of fallen divinity.

All these efforts at reconciliation show how clearly the problem of evil was realized in these Gnostic and half-Gnostic sects, and how deeply they meditated on the subject; it was not altogether without reason that in the ranks of its opponents Gnosticism was judged to have arisen out of the question, 7r60ev TO KaK6P; This dualism had not its origin in Hellenic soil, neither is it related to that dualism which to a certain extent existed also in late Greek religion.

It is an Oriental (Iranian) dualism which here finds expression, though in one point, it is true, the mark of Greek influence is quite clear.

When Gnosticism recognizes in this corporeal and material world the true seat of evil, consistently treating the bodily existence of mankind as essentially evil and the separation of the spiritual from the corporeal being as the object of salvation, this is an outcome of the contrast in Greek dualism between spirit and matter, soul and body.

For in Oriental (Persian) dualism it is within this material world that the good and evil powers are at war, and this world beneath the stars is by no means conceived as entirely subject to the influence of evil.

Gnosticism has combined the two, the Greek opposition between spirit and matter, and the sharp Zoroastrian dualism, which, where the Greek mind conceived of a higher and a lower world, saw instead two hostile worlds, standing in contrast to each other like light and darkness.

Even the characteristic dualism of Gnosticism has already proved to be in part of Iranian origin; and now it becomes clear how from that mingling of late Greek and Persian dualism the idea could arise that these seven halfdaemonic powers are the creators or rulers of this material world, which is separated infinitely from the light-world of the good God.

The attitude of Gnosticism to the Old Testament and to the creator-god proclaimed in it had its deeper roots, as we have already seen, in the dualism by which it was dominated.

With this dualism and the recognition of the worthlessness and absolutely vicious nature of the material world is combined a decided spiritualism.

And it is interesting to observe how, e.g., St Augustine, though desperately combating the dualism of the Manichaeans, yet afterwards introduced a number of dualistic ideas into Christianity, which are distinguishable from those of Manichaeism only by a very keen eye, and even then with difficulty.

They also exhibit a variation from the characteristic dualism of Gnosticism into monism, in their conception of the fall of Sophia and their derivation of matter from the passions of the fallen Sophia.

Both the systems which are handed down under his name by Irenaeus and Hippolytus, that of emanations and the monistic-evolutionary system, represent further developments of his ideas with a tendency away from dualism towards monism.

Between these two powers Marcion affirms a sharp and, as it appears, originally irreconcilable dualism which with him rests moreover on a speculative basis.

The Manichaean system is one of consistent, uncompromising dualism, in the form of a fantastic philosophy of nature.

What gave it strength was that it united an ancient mythology and a thorough-going materialistic dualism with an exceedingly simple spiritual worship and a strict morality.

The only part of the Manichaean mythology that became popular was the crude, physical dualism.

Moreover, there is no real opposition between monism and dualism, for there can very well be one kind of being, without being all body or all soul; and as a matter of fact, Aristotelian realism is both a monism of substance and a dualism of body and soul.

So far true metaphysics is a dualism of body and soul.

In this case metaphysics generally will have to recognize three monisms, a materialistic monism of body, an idealistic monism of soul, and a realistic monism of substance, which is also a dualism of substances.

But a term so equivocal, leading to an antithesis so misleading as that between monism and dualism, can never represent the real difference between metaphysical schools.

It retains some relics of Fechner's influence; first, the theory of identity, according to which the difference between the physical and psychical is not a dualism, but everything is at once both; and secondly, the substitution of mathematical dependence for physical causality, except that, whereas Fechner only denied causality between physical and psychical, Mach rejects the entire distinction between causality and dependence, on the ground that " the law of causality simply asserts that the phenomena of Nature are dependent on one another."

At first this starting-point looks like dualistic realism, but in reality the author only meant dualism within experience.

His " empiriocriticism " is idealistic dualism within experience in an a posteriori form, but with a tendency towards materialism.

According to him, we begin with an experience of ideas, in which object and idea are originally identical (V orstellungsobject); we divide this unitary experience into its subjective and objective factors; and especially in natural science we so far abstract the objects as to believe them at last to be independent things; but it is the office of psychology to warn us against this popular dualism, and to teach us that there is only a duality of psychical and physical, which are divisible, not separable, factors of one and the same content of our immediate experience; and experience is our whole knowledge.

Laurie wrote Metaphysica, nova et vetusta, a Return to Dualism, by Scotus Novanticus (1884; 2nd ed., enlarged, 1889).

His theory of "attuition," by which he supposes that we become conscious of objects outside ourselves, is his " return to dualism," and is indeed so like natural realism as to suggest that, like Ferrier, he starts from Hamilton to end in Hegel.

In fact, his dualism is not realism, but merely the distinction of subject and object within idealism.

He infers the corollary that universal experience contains the same duality of subjective and objective factors without dualism.

Psychologically, Aristotle applied his dualism of matter and form to explain the antithesis of body and soul, so that the soul is the form, or entelechy, of an organic body, and he applied the same dualism to explain sensation, which he supposed to be reception of the sensible form or essence, without the matter, of a body, e.g.

But, with these modifications he accepted the general physics of Aristotle, the metaphysical dualism of matter and form, and the psychology founded upon it.

Centuries elapsed after Aquinas before Galileo and his successors reformed natural science, and before Bacon destroyed the metaphysical dualism of matter and form by showing that a form in Nature is only a law of the action of matter, and that, as the action of a body is as individual as the body, the form is eternal only in thought (ratione).

That work contains the doctrine common to the Essenes with Plato, and suggestive of Persian Dualism, that God is the author of good only.

It presents itself historically as an intellectual revolt against the difficulties involved in the presupposition of theistic and polytheistic systems, and in philosophy as an attempt to solve the dualism of the one and the many, unity and difference, thought and extension.

The great objection to pantheism is that, though ostensibly it magnifies the Creator and gets rid of the difficult dualism of Creator and Creation, it tends practically to deny his existence in any practical intelligible sense.

This dualism, where the one constituent (alga) furnishes carbohydrates, and the other (fungus) ensures a supply of mineral matters, shade and moisture, has been termed symbiosis.

The peace of Augsburg, 1555, which recognized a dualism within the Empire in religion as in politics, marked the failure of his plan of union (see Charles V.; Germany; Maurice Of Saxony); and meanwhile he had been able to accomplish nothing to rescue Hungary from the Turkish yoke.

While the Reichsrath, transferred to Kremsier, was discussing " fundamental rights " and the difficult question of how to reconcile the theoretical unity with the actual dualism of the empire, the knot was being cut by the sword on the plains of Hungary.

In doing so they carried out with great exactitude the principle of dualism, establishing in form a complete parity between Hungary on one side and the other territories of the king on the other.

After the financial question had been thus settled, the whole of these arrangements were then, on the 21st and the 24th of December 1867, enacted by the two parliaments, and the system of dualism was established.

It must be a parliament in which the Germans had a majority, for the system of dualism was directly opposed to the ambitions of the Sla y s and the Federalists.

The dualism, therefore, between "practice" and "theory" also vanishes; a "theory" unrelated to practice (however indirectly) is simply an illusion.

This Iranian dualism is proved to have penetrated into the late Jewish eschatology from the beginning of the ist century before Christ, and did so probably still earlier.