Re: Spinoza

["Chris M. Sciabarra" <sciabrrc@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, 23 Feb 1996 HANLY@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
>   COMMENT: I don't comprehend the section about dualism and monism.
>  You must be using "dualism" and
> "monism" in a non-traditional manner. A dualist is someone who believes that
> there are two basic substances. Descartes is a typical dualist. A monist is
> someone who believes that there is only one basic substance. Hegel was a
> monist, believing everything is Mind or Spirit. So was Marx, believing that
> everything is matter. Hegel and Marx are the prime candidates for being
> dialectical thinkers but both are monists. So how is dialectical thought
> opposed to monism? Do you mean something like "mechanistic" or "linear"
> or what? Certainly you don't seem to have the correct term.
>   Cheers, Ken Hanly

        Ken is correct that dualism has been applied primarily to
ontological issues.  When I refer to dualism or monism, I am making a
FORMAL distinction.  One can find dualistic or monistic patterns in
ontology (the separation of mind and matter), epistemology (the radical
separation of the object from a knowing subject), ethics (the separation
of good and evil, or fact and value, or life and value, or choice and
value), politics (the separation of state and society), or even in
schools of thought (rationalists vs. empiricists, subjectivists vs.
intrinsicists [or classical objectivists], etc.).  The point here is that
what all of these alternatives have in common is a formal dualism, that
is, the separation of two spheres into mutually exclusive, opposed
forces.  For all intents and purposes, this implies external relations,
and in some cases, it also implies a kind of atomism and dichotomous
fragmentation.  Monists, whether they be neutral or reductionist, often
accept the formal distinctions of dualists, and merely emphasize one pole
of the distinction over another.
        Dialectics, on the other hand, is opposed to formal dualism or
monism, because it is interested not in formalizing distinctions, but in
understanding the relationships between said distinctions -- By altering
the level of generality, or one's vantage point, things that appear
opposed or distinct, gain a certain unity which cannot be overlooked in
one's analysis.
        So, yes, my use of dualism and monism is more specialized in this
case -- but it subsumes the kind of metaphysical or ontological kind of
dualism that you have suggested in your post.
        Now, as for Hegel and Marx being "monists" -- well, it is
entirely possible for a dialectical thinker to EMPHASIZE one pole of a
traditional duality, but I do not think that Marx, for instance, would
reduce all substances in the universe to the material.  That kind of
reductionism is somewhat foreign to his ontology.  Even Hegel has been
interpreted as being a realist (by Ken Westphal), and not an idealist.
There are two points that can be made:
        1.  It is possible that thinkers who exhibit a dialectical method
might smuggle into their thinking certain monistic, sometimes dualistic,
categories.  To the extent that these thinkers are monistic or dualistic,
they are, in my view, undermining their own dialectical approach.
        2.  It is also possible that thinkers who exhibit a dialectical
method might simply emphasize a kind of "asymmetric internality" -- that
is, they may recognize that material conditions (a la Marx) are primary
causal conditions in human activity and production, but this is never
viewed as one-way causality or linear causality.  Rather, the dialectical
approach requires a view toward reciprocal causation between and among
many factors.

        I tend to think that Marx is closer to the second approach, but I
do believe that sometimes, he falls prey to monistic tendencies.  One
must, however, never view Marx's writings as fragments -- often, he
spoke in more "vulgar" terms depending upon the audience he was
addressing in his exposition.

                                                - Chris
==================================================
Dr. Chris M. Sciabarra
Visiting Scholar, NYU Department of Politics
INTERNET:  sciabrrc@xxxxxxxxxxx
http://pages.nyu.edu/~sciabrrc
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