What Exactly Is The Duality Of Human Nature?
Why does the duality of human nature exist and why is it significant? Why is it important to recognize the duality of our own nature and what can we learn from it?
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Asserting the duality of human nature means asserting that human nature, despite its complexity, has two fundamental aspects.
What these aspects are depends on who you ask. These four examples aren’t exhaustive:
Some people believe that every human being has a good side and an evil side. “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” is a classic story that illustrates and explains this view.
Some believe that every human being has a masculine side and a feminine side. I think that belief came out of the psychoanalytic tradition, via Jung. Personally, I think it would be simpler to conceive of a woman’s “masculine side” and a man’s “feminine side” as groups of psychological traits that happen to be common to both sexes.
Some believe that the left and right hemispheres of the brain represent, respectively, the logical and analytical side vs. the creative and holistic side. Most neurologists regard this “left-brain right-brain dichotomania” as oversimplification to the point of falsehood.
Not everyone believes that it is useful to divide human nature into two fundamental aspects. I don’t.
To me, human nature seems too complicated to be reduced to a simple dichotomy.
Rainchild
not sure whether this is what you’re referring to, but…
Many philosophers throughout history (plato, etc) have believed in duality, and christianity has lots of tendencies toward this idea. Its that there is a separation b/w mind and body, that every “fixed” form (things on earth that you can see and touch) also have a transcendent form (like a spiritual part of it that you cant see that is floating around in the world). An example: the soul. If you believe that your spirit will outlast your body, you believe in mind-body dualism.
Hope it helps.
Duality is like a coin sides, you cannot deny its existence.
bad —- good
dark —-light
sad—-joy
evil—-godliness
……
yin —-yang
…..
We cannot delete one side without deleting the other side, so we have to live by accepting duality.