Gnosticism Ancient and modern Beliefs practices. Sponsored link. Gnostic beliefs The Nag Hummadi find revealed that there was a broad range of beliefs among the. LP+Duality+For+every+x+and+y%3A+cTx+%EF%82%B3+bTy+Thus%2C+Opt%28primal%29+%EF%82%B3+Opt%28dual%29.jpg' alt='Duality For' title='Duality For' />1. This fountain, as you can see, is a prime example of how the duality of man is witnessed through modern artwork. Wow, your painting really shows the duality of man. Ren Descartes The MindBody Distinction. One of the deepest and most lasting legacies of Descartes philosophy is his thesis that mind and body are really. Themes Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work. The Duality of Human Nature. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde centers upon a. Darkness 2 Iso on this page. The Arabic, Croatian, Greek, Thai andTurkish names given are not official. Check translation. CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA Dualism. Help support New Advent and get the full contents of this website as an instant download. Includes the Catholic Encyclopedia, Church Fathers, Summa, Bible and more all for only 1. From Latinduo, 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 Persianreligion, 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. Christianphilosophy, 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 moralevil, 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 moralevil 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 substantialminds, may along with dualism, be described as pluralism. Historically, in Greekphilosophy as early as 5. B. C. we find the Eleatic School with Parmenides as their chief, teaching a universalunity of being, thus exhibiting a certain affinity with modern Germanmonism. 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 Orientalspeculation. Again there is another dualism in man. The rationalsoul is a spiritualsubstance 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 Aristotleadopts the ordinary common sense view of the existence of individual objects distinct from our perceptions and ideas of them. Man is an individualsubstantial 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 humansoul 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. Indeed, since his time it has been a topic of central interest in philosophicalspeculation. 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 matterlies 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.