Monism
Monism is the
metaphysical and
theological view that all is of one essential
essence,
principle,
substance or
energy.
Monism is to be distinguished from
dualism, which holds that ultimately there are two kinds of substance, and from
pluralism, which holds that ultimately there are many kinds of substance.
Monism is often erroneously seen in relation to
pantheism,
panentheism, and an
immanent God. The concepts of
absolutism, the
monad, and the "
Universal substrate" are closely related as well.
Many forms of
Hinduism (including
Vedanta and
Yoga),
Taoism,
Pantheism,
Rastafari and similar systems of thought explore the
mystical and
spiritual elements of a monistic philosophy. With increasing awareness of these systems of thought, western spiritual and philosophical climate has seen a growing understanding of monism. Moreover, the
New Thought Movement has embraced many monistic concepts for over 100 years.
Monism is often seen as partitioned into three basic types:
#
Substantial Monism, (One thing) which holds that there is one substance.#
Attributive Monism, (One category) which holds that while there is only one kind of thing, there are many different individual things or beings in this category.#
Absolute Monism, which holds that there is only one substance and only one being. Absolute Monism, therefore can only be of the idealistic type. (see below)
Monism is further defined according to three kinds:
#
Idealism, phenomenalism, or mentalistic monism which holds that only mind is real. #
Neutral monism, which holds that both the mental and the physical can be reduced to some sort of third substance, or energy.#
Physicalism or
materialism, which holds that only the physical is real, and that the mental can be
reduced to the physical.
Certain other positions are hard to pigeonhole into the above categories, including:
#
Functionalism, like materialism, holds that the mental can ultimately be reduced to the physical, but also holds that all critical aspects of the mind are
also reducible to some substrate-neutral "functional" level. Thus something need not be made out of
neurons to have mental states. This is a popular stance in
cognitive science and
artificial intelligence.#
Eliminativism, which holds that talk of the mental will eventually be proved as unscientific and completely discarded. Just as we no longer follow the ancient Greeks in saying that all matter is composed of earth, air, water, and fire, people of the future will no longer speak of "beliefs", "desires", and other mental states. A subcategory of eliminativism is
radical behaviourism, a view held by
B. F. Skinner.#
anomalous monism, a position proposed by
Donald Davidson in the
1970s as a way to resolve the
mind-body problem. It could be considered (by the above definitions) either physicalism or neutral monism. Davidson holds that there is only physical matter, but that all mental objects and events are perfectly real and are identical with (some) physical matter. But physicalism retains a certain priority, inasmuch as (1) All mental things are physical, but not all physical things are mental, and (2) (As
John Haugeland puts it) Once you take away all the atoms, there's nothing left. This monism was widely considered an advance over previous identity theories of mind and body, because it does
not entail that one must be able to provide an actual method for redescribing any particular kind of mental entity in purely physical terms. Indeed there may be no such method. This is a case of
nonreductive physicalism, or perhaps
emergent physicalism/
materialism.#
Reflexive monism, a position developed by
Max Velmans in 2000, as a method of resolving the difficulties associated with both
dualist and
reductionist agendas concerning consciousness, by viewing physical phenomena-as-perceived as being part of the contents of consciousness.
Following a long and still current tradition
H.P. Owen (1971: 65) claimed that
"
Pantheists are ‘monists'...they believe that there is only one Being, and that all other forms of reality are either modes (or appearances) of it or identical with it."
Although, like
Spinoza, some pantheists may also be monists, and monism may even be essential to some versions of pantheism (like Spinoza's), not all pantheists are monists. Some are polytheists and some are pluralists; they believe, that there are many things and kinds of things and many different kinds of value. (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). Not all Monists are Pantheists. Exclusive Monists believe that the universe, the God of the Pantheist, simply does not exist. In addition, monists can be
Deists,
Theists or
panentheists; believing in a
monotheistic God that is omnipotent and all-pervading, and both transcendent and immanent. There are monist deists and panentheists in
Hinduism (particularly in
Advaita and
Vishistadvaita respectively),
Judaism (especially in
Kabbalah), and in
Christianity (especially among
Oriental Orthodox,
Eastern Orthodox, and
Anglicans).
the
Rig Veda, in which
hymnists speak of one being-non-being that 'breathed without breath,' and which singular force self-projected into the cosmic existence. Nevertheless, the first system in Hinduism that clearly, unequivocably explicated
absolute monism was that of
Advaita (or nondualist)
Vedanta (see
Advaita Vedanta) as expounded by
Adi Shankaracharya. It is part of the six
Hindu systems of
philosophy, based on the
Upanishads, and posits that the ultimate
monad is a formless, ineffable Divine Ground called
Brahman. Such monistic thought also extends to other Hindu systems like
Yoga and non-dualist
Tantra.
Another type of monism, qualified monism, from the school of
Ramanuja or
Vishishtadvaita, admits that the universe is part of God, or
Narayana, a type of either
pantheism or panentheism, but sees a plurality of souls and substances within this supreme Being. This type of monism,
monistic theism, which includes the concept of a personal
God as a
universal,
omnipotent Supreme Being who is both
Immanent and
Transcendent, is prevalent in Hinduism. (Monistic theism is not to be confused with absolute monotheism where God is viewed as transcendent only. In absolute monotheism, the notion of
Immanence divinity (essence of God) present in all things is absent.)
Christianity
Christianity, being monotheistic, can be said to combine both
Monistic and
Dualistic assumptions, akin to
Vishishtadvaita Vedanta in
Hinduism, and Neoplatonic thought such as expressed by
Plotinus, ultimately concluding that there is one
transcendent,
immanent,
all-pervading,
omnipotent,
ineffable God. See
Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite.
Some Christians inveigh against the 'dangers of monism', asserting that in order to resolve all things to a single substrate, one dissolves God in the process. Much Christian thought has insisted that while the universe is dependent on God for its existence, it is also of a separate substance from God. Some contend that this means that monism is false, while others argue that there is a distinction between Ultimate Essence, and the differentiated essences (substances), so that the "single substrate"
essentially is God.
Theological arguments can be made for this within
Christianity, for example employing the
Christian doctrine of "
divine simplicity" (though a monistic interpretation of that doctrine would not be considered
orthodox by the Roman Catholic Church).
Valentinianism
Valentinianism is commonly viewed as being a
Gnostic heresy, most prevalent in the first centuries. While Gnostic traditions are typically regarded as dualistic, "a standard element in the interpretation of Valentinianism and similar forms of Gnosticism is the recognition that they are fundamentally monistic" (Schoedel, William, "Gnostic Monism and the Gospel of Truth" in Bentley Layton (ed.)
The Rediscovery of Gnosticism, Vol.1: The School of Valentinus, E.J. Brill, Leiden.).
Valentinian sources regularly proclaim God (which is more akin to an indescribable
Neoplatonist monad than the typical Orthodox Christian conception of a transcendent entity nevertheless possessed of a recognisable persona) to be fundamental to all things, and that our perception of a material universe is simply a
misperception of this same fundamental, "superior" one-ness. Inasmuch as materiality is occasionally described by the Valentinians as being
exterior to the monad, this description is intended in an
epistemological sense, as depicting a state of being that is ignorant of the true nature of the universe. The depiction of differing states of knowledge or awareness in spatial terms is typical of Gnostic metaphor, especially within the Valentinian tradition.
Judaism
In
Jewish thought, God is held to be
immanent within
creation for two interrelated reasons.
*Firstly, a very strong Jewish belief is that "[t]he Divine life-force which brings [the universe] into existence must constantly be present... were this life-force to forsake [the universe] for even one brief moment, it would revert to a state of utter nothingness, as before the creation..." [
1].
*Secondly, and simultaneously, Judaism holds as
axiomatic that
God is an absolute unity, and that He is
Perfectly Simple - thus if His sustaining power is within nature, then His essence is also within nature.
Note that, at the same time, Jewish Thought considers God as separate from all physical, created things (
transcendent) and as existing outside of time (eternal). For a discussion of the resultant
paradox; see
Tzimtzum. :See also
Negative theology.
Others
Several modern religious movements and texts, for example the organizations within the
New Thought Movement, the
Unity Church and the book,
A Course in Miracles, may be said to have a particularly mentalistic monism orientation. The
theology of
Christian Science is explicitly mentalistic monism: it teaches that all that exists is God and God's ideas; that the world as it appears to the senses is a distortion of the underlying spiritual reality. In
A Course in Miracles the body and the senses are said to do nothing. All of our perceptions including the body and the sense organs are projected thought within the mind which only appear to function. One analogy is the movie screen. There is an appearance of characters sensing and reacting to one another when this is simply a projection.
The West is inundated with physicalistic monism. There is widespread belief that everything will be explained in terms of matter/energy by science. Since we are constantly taught this it may make the idea of mentalistic monism hard to grasp. One way to begin to grasp the idea is through analogy. The movie screen analogy was given above. If we next consider "
Star Trek's holodeck" it takes us a step further as what appear to be physical objects are not. Next consider the movie "
The Matrix". In "The Matrix" even people's bodies and identities are projected. Then replace the machine with a vast andpowerful mind. A last analogy is our dreams at night. We seem to be in a world filled with other objects and other people and yet there is nothing physical. Projection makes perception. Although this is not a strict philosophical argument it does allow us to begin to think along these lines.
Historically, monism has been promoted in spiritual terms on several occasions, notably by
Ernst Haeckel. To the dismay of some modern observers, Haeckel's various ideas often had components of
social darwinism and
scientific racism.
Paul Carus called himself "an atheist who loves God", and advocated "
henism", which is often seen as monist or
pantheist in nature.
The following
pre-Socratic philosophers described reality as being monistic:
*
Shankara: The Self.
*
Thales: Water.
*
Anaximander: Apeiron (meaning 'the unknown'). Reality is some, one thing, but we cannot know what.
*
Ashtavakra.
*
Anaximenes: Air.
*
Pythagoras: Number. Math entirely describes the world, to the extent that its logical model
is the world.
*
Heraclitus: Fire (in that everything is in constant flux).
*
Parmenides: One. Reality is an unmoving perfect sphere, unchanging, undivided.
*
Leucippus of Miletus and his disciple
Democritus of Abdera: Atoms and void (i.e. atoms and lack of atoms).
*
Empedocles: Earth, Air, Fire, Water: Four Elements - no longer monism.
Neoplatonism is Monistic.
Plotinus taught that there was an ineffable transcendent God, 'The One,' of which subsequent realities were emanations. From The One emanates the Divine Mind (Nous), the Cosmic Soul (Psyche), and the World (Cosmos).
*
Course In Miracles*
Acosmism*
Advaita Vedanta*
Christian Science*
Cosmotheism*
Dialectical monism*
Dualism*
Freethought*
Holism*
Hindu idealism*
Naturalistic spirituality*
Mind-body problem*
Monadology*
Monotheism *
Panentheism*
Pluralism (philosophy of mind)*
Reduction (philosophy)*
Reductionism*
Catholic Encyclopedia - Monism
*
Hinduism's Online Lexicon - (scroll down to find the definition of monism)
