Dualism

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Dualism is a philosophical system that bases all world events on two fundamentally different and non-reducible principles, such as good and evil, this world and the otherworld, or spirit and matter.

Historical background

The origin of dualism lies in the ancient Persian culture, which was characterised by the constant struggle between two spiritual entities. Ahura Mazda, the god of light, was opposed by Ahriman, the spirit of darkness. They were, however, twins who had sprung from Zurvan and Zeruane Akarene, respectively, the "uncreated time". So there was still an awareness of the common origin. This continued as ethical-religious dualism in post-Christian times in Manichaeism, which sees world events as determined by the struggle between good and evil.

The contrast between spirit and matter was felt particularly strongly by the intellectual and mind soul that developed in the Greco-Latin period. Mythology was replaced by philosophy and with it the essential struggle between the gods receded into the background. The difference between one's own thinking activity and the externally perceived world of the senses was now felt much more strongly. Already Anaxagoras distinguished between the passive substance, fragmented into a chaotic multiplicity, and the actively ordering uniform impersonal principle of the world spirit, the Nous (Greek: νοῦς). Plato contrasted the world of sense with the world of ideas, and Aristotle distinguished between substance and form or act and potency. In the ethical dualism of the Stoics, the strictly causal natural order was opposed to the moral freedom of man.

In modern times, with the growing I-consciousness of the dawning consciousness-soul age, the gap felt between the I and the world became even greater. René Descartes made a strict distinction between the res extensa and the res cogitans. His interactionist substance dualism sharpened the mind-body problem that still confronts science with seemingly insoluble problems today.

„Descartes' sentence "Cogito, ergo sum" is actually wrong. The sentence should actually be: Cogito, ergo non sum, I think, therefore I am not, because thinking never illuminates a reality, but on the contrary, it is the annihilation of reality. Only when one approaches the I through imagination, inspiration and intuition is the real certainty of the I present. If we have become accustomed to applying the criteria of being to our surroundings, we must say: I think, therefore I am not. It is precisely in this non-being that the possibility of receiving something new lies. That is what lies in intellectuality. The intellectualistic concepts are actually empty in relation to reality, they are holes in the universe, and this is necessary for the development of freedom.“ (Lit.:GA 343a, p. 433)

John Locke's distinction of primary and secondary sense qualities only further worsened the situation. Nevertheless, Cartesian dualism has had a lasting influence on philosophical-scientific thought up to the present day. Karl Popper and John Eccles were the best-known interactionist dualists of the 20th century[1], but they too failed to find a convincing bridge between being and consciousness. "The hard problem of consciousness"[2] leads neuroscientists and philosophers to limits they still cannot cross - a problem Emil du Bois-Reymond had already pointed out in his famous Ignorabimus speech in 1872. It is not recognised that our everyday consciousness is in fact only an unreal, i.e. non-effective, mirror image. That it is precisely in this that the possibility of human freedom lies has been emphasised again and again by Rudolf Steiner.

„Here, you see, lies the difficulty which philosophers continually encounter and which they cannot overcome with their philosophy, the main difficulty. Nothing else is given to these philosophers but what they imagine. But remember that being is pressed out of the imagination, out of the content of consciousness. It cannot be in it, for what is in consciousness is only a reflection. Being cannot be in it. Now the philosophers seek being through consciousness, through ordinary physical consciousness. They cannot find it that way. And it is quite natural that such philosophies had to arise as Kant's, for example, which seeks being through consciousness. But because consciousness, quite naturally, can only contain images of being, one can come to nothing other than to acknowledge that one can never approach being with consciousness.“ (Lit.:GA 162, p. 31)

Literature
References to the work of Rudolf Steiner follow Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works (CW or GA), Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach/Switzerland, unless otherwise stated.
Email: verlag@steinerverlag.com URL: www.steinerverlag.com.
Index to the Complete Works of Rudolf Steiner - Aelzina Books
A complete list by Volume Number and a full list of known English translations you may also find at Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works
Rudolf Steiner Archive - The largest online collection of Rudolf Steiner's books, lectures and articles in English.
Rudolf Steiner Audio - Recorded and Read by Dale Brunsvold
steinerbooks.org - Anthroposophic Press Inc. (USA)
Rudolf Steiner Handbook - Christian Karl's proven standard work for orientation in Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works for free download as PDF.

References

  1. ↑ Karl Popper, John Carew Eccles: Das Ich und sein Gehirn. 8. Auflage Piper, München u. a. 2002, ISBN 3-492-21096-1
  2. ↑ David Chalmers: The Character of Consciousness. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2010, ISBN 978-0195311112, p. 39
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