Anti-Manicheanism

Manicheanism is an ancient belief system that may be as influential today as it was millennia ago. One measure of its current prevalence is that it is such a deeply-ingrained ingredient in a variety of doctrines that it is not even recognized as such. Another is that challenging it is not as easy as some have taken it to be. Its basic premise is that Reality is fundamentally an Ontological conflict between Good and Evil. One standard form of challenge to it is to argue against its simple-mindedness, by asserting that there are shades of Gray between Black and White, or even a whole spectrum of colors, as the film Pleasantville has put it. But, while such a counter-argument charges Manicheanism with oversimplification, it still concurs with the other fundamental facet of the latter, namely, that Good, Evil, and whatever might lie between, are still features of objective reality. Hence, Nietzsche, notably, has analyzed that aspect of the doctrine as being a projection onto the universe of an Us vs. Them mentality. This diagnosis is one of the primary results of his notion 'Beyond Good and Evil', to which he contrasts the value system 'Good vs. Bad', one that explicitly embraces the human origin of such judgements. Furthermore, he is typically astute enough to realize that merely replacing the term 'Evil' with 'Bad' does not suffice to distinguish his orientation from the Us vs. Them that he is trying to overturn. Hence, one important distinction for him is in the attitude to be taken towards 'Them'--while the Manichean calls for the obliteration of 'Evil', the anti-Manichean should bear with 'Badness', but keep it at a distance. Yet, this still fails to distance him from the Us vs. Them dimension of Manicheanism. A more complete break with the latter would entail rejecting both its ontological pretensions, and its bivalence, resulting in a value system that is gradated, e. g. from Worst to Best, and to limit its scope to human activity. The resultant anti-Manicheanism would thus be a better guide for human conduct than Manicheanism.