Monism
The circled dot was used by the Pythagoreans and later Greeks to represent the first metaphysical being, the Monad or The Absolute
Definitions
There are two sorts of definitions for monism:
- The wide definition: a philosophy is monistic if it postulates unity of the origin of all things; all existing things return to a source that is distinct from them.[1]
- The restricted definition: this requires not only unity of origin but also unity of substance and essence.[1]
Although the term monism is derived from Western philosophy to typify positions in the mind–body problem, it has also been used to typify religious traditions.
In modern Hinduism, the term "absolute monism" has been applied to Advaita Vedanta,[4][5] though Renard points out that this may be a Western interpretation, bypassing the intuitive understanding of a nondual reality.[6]
It is more generally categorized by scholars as a form of absolute nondualism.[7][8][9]
Monism attributes oneness or singleness (Greek: μόνος) to a concept, such as to existence. Various kinds of monism can be distinguished:
- Priority monism states that all existing things go back to a source that is distinct from them; e.g., in Neoplatonism everything is derived from The One.[1] In this view only the One is ontologically basic or prior to everything else.
- Existence monism posits that, strictly speaking, there exists only a single thing, the universe, which can only be artificially and arbitrarily divided into many things.[2]
- Substance monism asserts that a variety of existing things can be explained in terms of a single reality or substance.[3] Substance monism posits that only one kind of substance exists, although many things may be made up of this substance, e.g., matter or mind.
- Dual-aspect monism is the view that the mental and the physical are two aspects of, or perspectives on, the same substance.
- Neutral monism believes the fundamental nature of reality to be neither mental nor physical; in other words it is "neutral".