DUALISM

in religion, the doctrine that the world (or reality) consists of two basic, opposed, and irreducible principles that account for all that exists. It has played an important role in the history of thought and of religion. in religion, belief in two supreme opposed powers or gods, or sets of divine or demonic beings, that control the world. Dualism is a phenomenon of major importance in the religions of the ancient world. A certain kind of dualism is implied in every religion by the simple fact that the sacred is considered to be radically different from and opposed to the profane. Hindu philosophy posits an eternal dialectical tension between ultimate reality and the illusory world of phenomena. Greek philosophers from Parmenides to Plato exhibit a marked preoccupation with either refuting or asserting dualistic conceptions of reality. In Chinese Taoism, the entire inventory of opposing principles in the world is embraced in the dualistic doctrine of Yin-Yang. In terms of mythology, most polytheistic religions recognize a class of supernatural beings (such as demons, Titans, monsters) that are different from and antagonistic to the gods. Even within a single pantheon of divinities there may be noted a tension and a conflict between the celestial and the terrestrial or chthonic gods (e.g., the Asen and the Vanen in Germanic mythology), or between destructive and constructive deities (e.g., Seth and Osiris in Egyptian religion). Another very characteristic type of religious dualism, exemplified in numerous cosmogonies worldwide, stresses the introduction of evil into a previously perfect universe. The extreme or absolute form of religious dualism is to be found in ancient Persia, where the Iranian religious reformer Zoroaster proclaimed an irreducible opposition between Ahura Mazda, the Wise Lord (or Ormazd, as he later came to be called), and Angra Mainyu, the Evil Spirit (or Ahriman). According to Zoroaster, Ahriman freely chose to do evil, thus bringing misery, illness, and death into the world. Later Zoroastrianism presented Ormazd and Ahriman as two coeternal principles of good and evilthe Creator and the Destroyer. Manichaeism took over this pessimistic valuation and blended it with the Gnostic myth of the corrupted creation. Under the influence of Iranian eschatology, some dualistic elements found their way into Jewish apocalyptic literature, but only in subordination to absolute monotheism. The New Testament utilizes some old dualistic formulas, but in a different sense, denoting antithetical phases in the history of salvation. Though Christianity accepts a radical difference between good and evil, it rejects a metaphysical dualism. In Roman Catholic theology, God and creature, Spirit and matter, etc., are only different modalities in the absolute unity of being. in philosophy, the use of two irreducible, heterogeneous principles (sometimes in conflict, sometimes complementary) to analyze the knowing process (epistemological dualism) or to explain all of reality or some broad aspect of it (metaphysical dualism). Examples of epistemological dualism are being and thought, subject and object, and sense datum and thing; examples of metaphysical dualism are God and the world, matter and spirit, body and mind, and good and evil. Dualism is distinguished from monism, which acknowledges only one principle, and from pluralism, which invokes more than two basic principles. Philosophers sometimes employ more than one dualism at the same time; e.g., Aristotle simultaneously invoked those of matter and form, body and soul, and immaterial and material substance. Additional reading Ugo Bianchi, Il dualismo religioso: saggio storico ed etnologico (1958), discusses the dualistic area extending from ancient Greece to Iran, eastern European folklore, northern and Central Asia, and North America; see also his Le dualisme en histoire des religions, Revue de l'histoire des religions, 159:146 (1961); and Le origini dello gnosticismo (1967), a collection of papers (in French, German, English, and Italian) presented at the Colloquium of Messina, April 1966, many of which are devoted to dualism in various religions. Mircea Eliade, Prolegomenon to Religious Dualism: Dyads and Polarities, The Quest: History and Meaning in Religion, ch. 8 (1969), is concerned not only with dualism proper but also with the functions of duality; his De Zalmoxis Gengis-Khan, ch. 23 (1970), is a study of dualism in folklore and ethnology. Simone Petrement, Le Dualisme dans l'histoire de la philosophie et des religions (1946), and Le Dualisme chez Platon, les Gnostiques et les Manichens (1947), are two important general surveys but do not sufficiently distinguish the different meanings of dualism in the philosophical and the religious-historical terminologies. For an analytic exposition of the Gnostic ideology, with modern analogies, see Hans Jonas, The Gnostic Religion, 2nd ed. (1963); for a discussion of the varieties of Iranian dualism, R.C. Zaehner, Zurvan: A Zoroastrian Dilemma (1955). Jacques Duchesne-Guillemin, The Western Response to Zoroaster (1958), deals with the history of the problem of Iranian dualism. Other works include: Geo Widengren, Der iranische Hintergrund der Gnosis, in Zeitschrift fur Religions- und Geistesgeschichte, 4:97114 (1952), on dualism in the Indian Upanisads; F.K. Numazawa, Die Weltanfange in der japanischen Mythologie . . . (1946), a comparative, ethnological appreciation of the YinYang opposition; Marcel Griaule and Germaine Dieterlen, Le Renard Ple, vol. 1, fasc. 1 (1965), an account of dualism in the ontology and the mythology of the Dogon of West Sudan; Helmer Ringgren, Dualism, The Faith of Qumran, ch. 2 (1963), a study of Qumranic dualism; and R.M. Grant, Gnosticism and Early Christianity, rev. ed. (1966).