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Dualism ordualistic cosmology is the moral or belief that two fundamental concepts exist, which often oppose each other. It is an umbrella term that covers a diversity of views from various religions, including both traditional religions and scriptural religions.
Moral dualism is the belief of the great complement of, or conflict between, the benevolent and the malevolent. It simply implies that there are two moral opposites at work, independent of any interpretation of what might be "moral" and independent of how these may be represented. Moral opposites might, for example, exist in a worldview that has one god, more than one god, or none. By contrast,duotheism,bitheism orditheism implies (at least) two gods. While bitheism implies harmony, ditheism implies rivalry and opposition, such as between good and evil, or light and dark, or summer and winter. For example, a ditheistic system could be one in which one god is a creator and the other a destroyer. Intheology, dualism can also refer to the relationship between the deity and creation or the deity and the universe (see theistic dualism). That form of dualism is a belief shared in certain traditions ofChristianity andHinduism.[1] Alternatively, in ontological dualism, the world is divided into two overarching categories. Within Chinese culture and philosophy the opposition and combination of the universe's two basic principles are expressed asyin and yang and are traditionally foundational doctrine ofTaoism,Confucianism and some Chinese Buddhist Schools.
Manymyths and creationmotifs with dualistic cosmologies have been described inethnographic andanthropological literature. The motifs conceive the world as being created, organized, or influenced by twodemiurges,culture heroes, or other mythological beings, who compete with each other or have a complementary function in creating, arranging or influencing the world. There is a huge diversity of such cosmologies. In some cases, such as among theChukchi, the beings collaborate rather than compete, and they contribute to the creation in a coequal way. In many other instances the two beings are not of the same importance or power (sometimes, one of them is even characterized as gullible). Sometimes they can be contrasted as good versus evil.[2] They may be oftenbelieved to be twins or at least brothers.[3][4] Dualistic motifs in mythologies can be observed in all inhabited continents. Zolotarjov concludes that they cannot be explained bydiffusion or borrowing but are rather of convergent origin. They are related to a dualistic organization of society (moieties); in some cultures, the social organization may have ceased to exist, but mythology preserves the memory in more and more disguised ways.[5]
Moral dualism is the belief of the great complement or conflict between the benevolent and the malevolent. Like ditheism/bitheism (see below), moral dualism does not imply the absence ofmonist ormonotheistic principles. Moral dualism simply implies that there are two moral opposites at work, independent of any interpretation of what might be "moral" and—unlike ditheism/bitheism—independent of how these may be represented.
For example, Mazdaism (MazdeanZoroastrianism) is both dualistic and monotheistic (but not monist by definition) since in that philosophy God—the Creator—is purely good, and theantithesis—which is also uncreated—is an absolute one.Mandaeism is monotheistic and Gnostic and in itscosmology, theWorld of Light (alma d-nhūra) that is good, is contrasted with theWorld of Darkness orunderworld (alma d-hšuka) that is evil.[6][7]Zurvanism (Zurvanite Zoroastrianism) andManichaeism are representative of dualisticandmonist philosophies since each has a supreme and transcendental First Principle from which the two equal-but-opposite entities then emanate. This is also true for the suppressed Christiangnostic religions, such asBogomils,Catharism, and so on. More complex forms of monist dualism also exist, for instance inHermeticism, whereNous "thought"—that is described to have created man—brings forth both good and evil, dependent on interpretation, whether it receives prompting from the God or from the Demon. Duality withpluralism is considered alogical fallacy.
Moral dualism began as a theological belief. Dualism was first seen implicitly in Egyptian religious beliefs by the contrast of the godsSet (disorder, death) andOsiris (order, life).[8] The first explicit conception of dualism came from the Ancient Persian religion ofZoroastrianism around the mid-fifth century BC. Zoroastrianism is a monotheistic religion that believes thatAhura Mazda is the eternal creator of all good things. Any violations of Ahura Mazda's order arise fromdruj, which is everything uncreated. From this comes a significant choice for humans to make. Either they fully participate in human life for Ahura Mazda or they do not and givedruj power. Personal dualism is even more distinct in thebeliefs of later religions.
The religious dualism ofChristianity between good and evil is not a perfect dualism asGod (good) will inevitably destroySatan (evil). Early Christian dualism is largely based on Platonic Dualism (See:Neoplatonism and Christianity). There is also a personal dualism in Christianity with a soul-body distinction based on the idea of an immaterial Christiansoul.[9]
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When used with regards to multiple gods,dualism may refer to duotheism, bitheism, or ditheism. Although ditheism/bitheism imply moral dualism, they are not equivalent: ditheism/bitheism implies (at least) two gods, while moral dualism does not necessarily implytheism (theos = god) at all.
Both bitheism and ditheism imply a belief in two equally powerful gods with complementary or antonymous properties; however, while bitheism implies harmony, ditheism implies rivalry and opposition, such as between good and evil, bright and dark, or summer and winter. For example, a ditheistic system would be one in which one god is creative, the other is destructive (cf.theodicy). In the original conception ofZoroastrianism, for example,Ahura Mazda was the spirit of ultimate good, while Ahriman (Angra Mainyu) was the spirit of ultimate evil.
In a bitheistic system, by contrast, where the two deities are not in conflict or opposition, one could be male and the other female (cf. duotheism[clarification needed]). One well-known example of a bitheistic or duotheistic theology based on gender polarity is found in theneopagan religion ofWicca. In Wicca, dualism is represented in the belief of a god and a goddess as a dual partnership in ruling the universe. This is centered on the worship of adivine couple, theMoon Goddess and theHorned God, who are regarded as lovers. However, there is also a ditheistic theme within traditional Wicca, as the Horned God has dual aspects of bright and dark—relating to day/night, summer/winter—expressed as theOak King and the Holly King, who in Wiccan myth and ritual are said to engage in battle twice a year for the hand of the Goddess, resulting in the changing seasons. (Within Wicca, bright and dark do not correspond to notions of "good" and "evil" but are aspects of the natural world, much likeyin and yang inTaoism.)
However, bitheistic and ditheistic principles are not always so easily contrastable, for instance in a system where one god is the representative of summer and drought and the other of winter and rain/fertility (cf. the mythology ofPersephone).Marcionism, an early Christian sect, held that the Old and New Testaments were the work of two opposing gods: both were First Principles, but of different religions.[11]
In theology, dualism can refer to the relationship between God and creation or God and the universe. This form of dualism is a belief shared in certain traditions of Christianity and Hinduism.[12][1]
Zoroastrianism or "Mazdayasna" is one of the world's oldest continuously-practiced religions, based on the teachings of theIranian-speaking prophetZoroaster.[13][14] It has a dualistic cosmology ofgood and evil and aneschatology which predicts the ultimate conquest of evil by good.[15] Zoroastrianism exalts an uncreated and benevolent deity of wisdom known asAhura Mazda (lit. 'Wise Lord') as its supreme being.[16]
Manichaeism was a major religion[17] founded in the 3rd century AD by theParthian[18] prophetMani (c. 216 – c. 274 AD), in theSasanian Empire.[19] Manichaeism taught an elaborate dualistic cosmology describing thestruggle between agood,spiritual world oflight, and anevil, material world ofdarkness.[20] Through an ongoing process that takes place in human history, light is gradually removed from the world of matter and returned to the world of light, whence it came. Its beliefs were based on local Mesopotamian religious movements andGnosticism.[21]
The dualism between God and Creation has existed as a central belief in multiple historical sects and traditions of Christianity, includingMarcionism,Catharism,Paulicianism, and other forms ofGnostic Christianity. Christian dualism refers to the belief that God and creation are distinct, but interrelated through an indivisible bond.[1] However, Gnosticism is a diverse,syncretisticreligious movement consisting of variousbelief systems generally united in a belief in a distinction between a supreme, transcendentGod and a blind, evildemiurge responsible for creating thematerial universe, thereby trapping thedivine spark within matter. Gnosticism is not limited to Christianity, and also incorporates beliefs from other Abrahamic traditions, such as early Jewish sects.[22]
In sects like the Cathars and the Paulicians, this is a dualism between the material world, created by an evil god, and a moral god. Historians divide Christian dualism into absolute dualism, which held that the good and evil gods were equally powerful, and mitigated dualism, which held that material evil was subordinate to the spiritual good.[23] The belief, by Christian theologians who adhere to a libertarian or compatibilist view of free will, thatfree will separates humankind from God has also been characterized as a form of dualism.[1] The theologian Leroy Stephens Rouner compares the dualism of Christianity with the dualism that exists in Zoroastrianism and theSamkhya tradition of Hinduism. The theological use of the word dualism dates back to 1700, in a book that describes the dualism between good and evil.[1]
The tolerance of dualism ranges widely among the different Christian traditions. As a monotheistic religion, the conflict between dualism and monism has existed in Christianity since its inception.[24] The 1912Catholic Encyclopedia describes that, in the Catholic Church, "the dualistic hypothesis of an eternal world existing side by side with God was of course rejected" by the thirteenth century, butmind–body dualism was not.[25] Theproblem of evil is difficult to reconcile with absolute monism, and has prompted some Christian sects to veer towards dualism. Gnostic forms of Christianity were more dualistic, and some Gnostic traditions posited that the Devil was separate from God as an independent deity.[24] The Christian dualists of the Byzantine Empire, thePaulicians, were seen as Manichean heretics by Byzantine theologians. This tradition of Christian dualism, founded byConstantine-Silvanus, argued that the universe was created through evil and separate from a moral God.[26]
TheCathars, a Christian sect in southern France, believed that there was a dualism between two gods, one representing good and the other representing evil. Whether or not the Cathari possessed direct historical influence from ancient Gnosticism is a matter of dispute, as the basic conceptions of Gnostic cosmology are to be found in Cathar beliefs (most distinctly in their notion of a lesser creator god), though unlike the second century Gnostics, they did not apparently place any special relevance upon knowledge (gnosis) as an effectivesalvific force. In any case, the Roman Catholic Church denounced the Cathars as heretics, and sought to crush the movement in the 13th century. TheAlbigensian Crusade was initiated byPope Innocent III in 1208 to remove the Cathars fromLanguedoc in France, where they were known as Albigensians. TheInquisition, which began in 1233 underPope Gregory IX, also targeted the Cathars.[27]
TheDvaita Vedanta school ofIndian philosophy espouses a dualism between God and the universe by theorizing the existence of two separaterealities. The first and the more important reality is that ofShiva orShakti orVishnu orBrahman. Shiva or Shakti or Vishnu is the supremeSelf, God, the absolute truth of the universe, the independent reality. The second reality is that of dependent but equally real universe that exists with its own separate essence. Everything that is composed of the second reality, such as individual soul (Jiva), matter, etc. exist with their own separate reality. The distinguishing factor of this philosophy as opposed toAdvaita Vedanta (monistic conclusion of Vedas) is that God takes on a personal role and is seen as a real eternal entity that governs and controls the universe.[28][better source needed] Because the existence of individuals is grounded in the divine, they are depicted as reflections, images or even shadows of the divine, but never in any way identical with the divine.Salvation therefore is described as the realization that all finite reality is essentially dependent on the Supreme.[29]
Alternatively,dualism can mean the tendency of humans to perceive and understand the world as being divided into two overarchingcategories. In this sense, it is dualistic when one perceives a tree as a thing separate from everything surrounding it. This form of ontological dualism exists in Taoism and Confucianism and a foundational theory within Traditional Chinese medicine, beliefs that divide the universe into the complementary oppositions ofyin and yang.[30] In traditions such as classical Hinduism (Samkhya,Yoga,Vaisheshika and the laterVedanta schools, which accepted the theory ofGunas), Chinese Pure land andZen Buddhism orIslamicSufism, a key to enlightenment is "transcending" this sort of dualistic thinking, without merely substituting dualism withmonism orpluralism.
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The opposition and combination of the universe's two basic principles ofyin and yang is a large part ofChinese philosophy, and is an important feature ofTaoism, both as a philosophy and as a religion, although the concept developed much earlier. Some argue that yin and yang were originally an earth and sky god, respectively.[31]
Some of the common associations with yang and yin, respectively, are: male and female,light anddark, active and passive, motion and stillness. Some scholars believe that the two ideas may have originally referred to two opposite sides of a mountain, facing towards and away from the sun.[31] The yin and yang symbol actually has very little to do with Western dualism; instead it represents the philosophy of balance, where two opposites co-exist in harmony and are able to transmute into each other. In the yin-yang symbol there is a dot of yin in yang and a dot of yang in yin. In Taoism, this symbolizes the inter-connectedness of the opposite forces as different aspects of Tao, the First Principle. Contrast is needed to create a distinguishable reality, without which we would experience nothingness. Therefore, the independent principles of yin and yang are actually dependent on one another for each other's distinguishable existence.
The complementary dualistic concept seen in yin and yang represent the reciprocal interaction throughout nature, related to afeedback loop, where opposing forces do not exchange in opposition but instead exchange reciprocally to promote stabilization similar tohomeostasis. An underlying principle in Taoism states that within every independent entity lies a part of its opposite. Within sickness lies health and vice versa. This is because all opposites are manifestations of the single Tao, and are therefore not independent from one another, but rather a variation of the same unifying force throughout all of nature.
In aNenets myth,Num andNga collaborate and compete with each other, creating land,[32] there are also other myths about competing-collaborating demiurges.[33]
Among others, also dualistic myths were investigated in researches which tried to compare the mythologies of Siberian peoples and settle the problem of their origins.Vyacheslav Ivanov andVladimir Toporov compared themythology ofKet people with those of speakers ofUralic languages, assuming in the studies, that there are modellingsemiotic systems in the compared mythologies; and they have also made typological comparisons.[34][35] Among others, from possibly Uralic mythological analogies, those ofOb-Ugric peoples[36] andSamoyedic peoples[37] are mentioned. Some other discussed analogies (similar folkloremotifs, and purely typological considerations, certain binary pairs in symbolics) may be related to dualistic organization of society—some of such dualistic features can be found at these compared peoples.[38] It must be admitted that, for Kets, neither dualistic organization of society[39] nor cosmological dualism[40] has been researched thoroughly: if such features existed at all, they have either weakened or remained largely undiscovered;[39] although there are some reports on division into two exogamous patrilinear moieties,[41] folklore on conflicts of mythological figures, and also on cooperation of two beings in creating the land:[40] the diving of the water fowl.[42] If we include dualistic cosmologies meant in broad sense, not restricted to certain concrete motifs, then we find that they are much more widespread, they exist not only among some Siberian peoples, but there are examples in each inhabited continent.[43]
AChukchi myth and its variations report the creation of the world; in some variations, it is achieved by the collaboration of several beings (birds, collaborating in a coequal way; or the creator and theraven, collaborating in a coequal way; or the creator alone, using the birds only as assistants).[44]
All threeFuegian tribes had dualistic myths aboutculture heroes.[45] TheYámana have dualistic myths about the two brothers. They act as culture heroes, and sometimes stand in an antagonistic relation with each other, introducing opposite laws. Their figures can be compared to the Kwanyip-brothers of theSelkʼnam.[46] In general, the presence of dualistic myths in two compared cultures does not imply relatedness ordiffusion necessarily.[43]
[I]n Manicheism the world was a prison for demons...
Media related toDualism in cosmology at Wikimedia Commons
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