grant said:
“Who said being a man is the opposite of being a woman?”
Which is really a damn fine question. Some of you may know that I have spent a good deal of time thinking and writing about duality (and not merely here on the board). I have spent this time wrestling with duality because, in part, it seems like such a common thing in our reality. We have—listed as binary pairings—{left, right}, {up, down}, {on, off}, {light, dark} to name but a few of the polarities that we encounter in day-to-day living. One of the “heaviest” dualities that we are confronted with is {true, false}. The Oxford Dictionary defines ‘dual’ as “in two parts, twofold.” This definition doesn’t contain the notion of “opposite” per se, but binary pairs often come to be seen as opposites. Opposites imply a notion of contrariness, whereas duality in the sense given does not. However, dualities can also be seen as contraries—we certainly see this in the dual {true, false}; hence, proof by reductio ad absurdum.
Part of my work with duality is to show (by argument or rhetoric, depending on your authoritative position and the particular dual pairing that I am working with at any given time) that these dualistic pairings are representative of a single whole—that binary pairings are a “twofold” manifestation of a unity: two sides to the same coin, to use a coined phrase. Or, closer to how I tend to think about it, duality is the alternating frequency of a single vibration: {peak, valley}, or perhaps {positive, negative}. In reference to grant’s question, we can see that {man, woman} is the twofold manifestation of the unity captured by “human being.” There are humans, and then there is the dual manifestation of basic types of humans. Granted, there are examples that don’t fit neatly into a static dualistic perspective ( as Ganesh points out in the same thread ), but in a general sense there are human males and human females—the methods of natural reproduction illustrate this quite clearly!
(Besides, I am not one to ever think that things can be merely static (get the joke?)!)
Anyway, I started reading Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche, and he tends to be critical of thinking there are opposites; that is, I think that grant’s question would make Nietzsche happy to know that it was asked. Nietzsche, in doubting the existence of opposites, instead asserts the existence of degrees of graduation. This is something which I am comfortable with, but also somewhat skeptical (depending on what Nietzsche is rejecting). Do not degrees of graduation need some dual polarity between which the degrees are defined? An example of this would be the various degrees of light or dark at any given point between pitch black and entirely blinding white light. In order to define the degree of light present or absent, we need the binary pair of {light, dark}.
But then, light and dark are commonly seen as opposites. As I said above, I do not tend to think of dual pairings as opposites, but more as complements to one and other: a twofold manifestation of a singularity. However, several dual pairings can be—and are—easily formulated as contrary to one another. In computer language, a one is not a zero; that is, on stands in direct opposition to off. And for another example, a positive current is not a negative current, and the two stand in opposition to one and other.
So, while the Pythagoreans formulated their Table of Opposites (as it is often called) and this table did indeed include the binary pair {male, female}, is it reasonable to say that this pair, unlike other pairs, do not stand in opposition to one and other (and if yes, then so much for the battle of the sexes!); i.e., are male and female not opposites in the way that light and dark might be opposites? Or are we best to go with an interpretation, like Nietzsche, which dismisses the notion of opposites altogether? But if we take to such an interpretation, then do we a still have binary pairs which will define the spectrum of the degrees of graduation? |
