Ethical dualism or, as theorized by Descartes, between thought and extension. Ethical dualism on the other hand highlights the moral dimension instead or in addition to the metaphysical one, and envisions an inherent situation of conflict between two antagonistic forces, like light and darkness, Good and Evil. One of the most known and clear-cut interpretations of ethical dualism is the one conceptualized by Zoroastrianism, the ancient Persian religion, which bases its thought on the figure of the prophet Zoroaster (or Zarathustra), who claimed the existence of two original and contrasting principles, Ahura Mazda and Ahriman, respectively representing the forces of Good and
Zoroaster that it was a form of rational Deism, preferable to Christianity. Zoroaster was the subject of the 1749 opera, "Zoroastre", by Jean-Philippe Rameau. With the translation of the Avesta by Abraham Anquetil-Duperron, Western scholarship of Zoroastrianism began. An early 19th-century representation of Zoroaster derived from the portrait of a figure that appears in a 4th-century sculpture at Taq-e Bostan in south-western Iran. In E. T. A. Hoffmann's novel "" (1819), the mage Prosper Alpanus states that Professor Zoroaster was his teacher. In his seminal work "Also sprach Zarathustra (Thus Spoke Zarathustra)" (1885) the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche uses the native Iranian