Contradiction

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Summary

Dominique Pagani starts from Aristotle's principle of non-contradiction: two opposite attributes cannot belong to the same subject at the same time and in the same respect. He concludes that a great deal of identity is needed for there to be contradiction1. Not contradicting oneself gives truth its form before any content and is the condition of dialogue, as Socrates shows when facing Callicles2. In his view, Hegel does not break with this principle: contradiction exists, but in the form of becoming3. He stresses that internal contradiction presupposes a subject with an inner life and a prior "diction". Pebbles, stars, the sea and the cliff have none, and seeing contradiction in nature is animism, hence his doubt about a dialectics of nature4 5. The "I" that changes while remaining itself is the model for it6. Following Marx, he applies it to capital and to the conflict between productive forces and relations of production, which time makes contradictory7.

Summary produced automatically from 54 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.

Cycle 13 · 29 Aug 2025State and state apparatus: the conflict between public and private

9:29This is not a distinction but a contradiction within the notion of the State, which can mean A and not-A.

Cycle 13 · 17 Dec 2024The essence of evil: innocence of nature, horror of naturalism!

51:32Internal contradiction can happen only to someone, a subject that possesses an interiority.
57:08There is no struggle between the sea and the cliff; to see a contradiction there is animism.

Cycle 12 · 21 Apr 2024Saving the saviour? Redemption, the end of the cycle or its new beginning?

42:05The engraving carries a contradiction: the scene that should abolish contradictions in salvation shows the blood of the Grail drawn from the wound of sin.

Cycle 12 · 22 Dec 2023Birth and carnage: the Massacre of the Innocents

10:33There is no internal contradiction in nature; internal contradiction presupposes a subject endowed with interiority.
51:43There is dialectic when two contradictory requirements impose themselves within the same subject.

Cycle 12 · 12 Dec 2023“I is another”, or contradictory identity

1:19The theme of the cycle is the contradiction that runs within the subject; the time that devours its children devours itself.
22:59The statement "I have changed" expresses a contradiction: attributes change while the same self remains.

Cycle 11 · 3 Sept 2023Worldliness in Clouscard: desiring what? Through whom?

44:06True contradiction is internal to the subject; the contrasts of nature exist only for an external observer.
1:27:05Senancour is aware of the dialecticity of what he feels: the idea of destruction is painful to him yet he loves the feeling of it.

Cycle 11 · 3 Mar 2023War, neo-fascism: libertarian liberalism

23:39According to Aristotle, two opposite attributes cannot belong at the same time to the same subject under the same relation; the same people can thus be pacifist regarding Spain and warmongering regarding Finland.

Cycle 11 · 19 Oct 2022“Speech is the best and the worst of things” (Aesop)

7:44Aesop's phrase expresses a contradiction: the same speech educates and consoles, slanders and sows discord.
32:24The Greater Logic likewise contains the best and the worst: the most idealist passage is the most materialist.

Cycle 11 · 14 Oct 2022Clouscard and the problem of Socrates

53:20Internal contradiction is constitutive of every subject; objects do not speak, there is no contradiction in them.
1:18:32Hypothesis: the contradiction constitutive of anthropology comes from the fact that we never go to the end of "know thyself."
1:22:04Contradiction is ontological: it enters existence because its terms are not simultaneous.

Cycle 11 · 28 Sept 2022And what about the subject in all this? Hölderlin, Mallarmé and Baudelaire

22:31For there to be contradiction, there must be diction; pebbles and stars do not speak.
1:57:26Hence his doubt about a dialectic of nature.

Talks · 14 Jul 2022From Plato to world revolution

28:12Not contradicting oneself gives the form of truth before any content; one must first be in agreement with oneself.
33:28It is not marginal: agreement with oneself is the condition of dia-logos.

Cycle 10 · 7 Apr 2022#12 From Kafka to Proust, the dialectical passage from the intermezzo to the perpetuated edge

33:14An internal contradiction presupposes a subject: the inside of a pebble or of intestines is still only exteriority.
59:39The animal in the burrow splits between the one who sleeps and the one who watches over it: a contradiction inside the subject.

Cycle 10 · 23 Dec 2021#10.7 “Postmodern” eco-petty-Nazism: Plato's Gorgias

47:51A thought that can be heard must be free of contradiction, one, and must not forget on Tuesday what it said on Monday.
1:36:11The opposite of narcissism is to assume division and contradiction within the subject.

Cycle 10 · 8 Dec 2021#10.6 War and peace: “The death drives advance in silence…” (Freud)

1:15:34According to the principle of non-contradiction, two opposite attributes are ascribed to the same subject, at the same time, in the same respect: a great deal of identity is needed for there to be contradiction.

Series · 4 Oct 2021#4 Nomad and sedentary: the case of Nerval

52:44The negative subject: the same subject wants to remember and a force within it refuses to go too far into memory; a contradiction within identity.

Cycle 10 · 20 Sept 2021Presentation of the 2021-2022 workshops and association membership

7:04In the reading with three people, his acquaintances asked for clarifications without offering counter-arguments; he wants to expose himself to contradiction, like an author throwing a bottle into the sea.

Series · 19 Jul 2021Being born human is not enough to be human

6:15Only self-consciousness posits a contradiction between what becomes (my health) and what remains (the "I").

Cycle 9.2 · 28 Apr 2021#9.20 From signal to sign: Einstein

1:18:09Deduction formulates a statement that cannot be declared false without contradicting an already agreed statement; induction goes from the particular to the universal.
1:19:29For there to be contradiction, there must be a prior diction: one is in logic, the world of words, not in physics.

Cycle 9.2 · 5 Feb 2021#9.14 How can sciences of history be real?

1:04:42Productive forces and relations of production develop at different speeds: time introduces contradiction.

Cycle 9.2 · 7 Jan 2021#9.11 How can sciences of history be real?

40:32Self-knowledge encounters an ontological, not logical, contradiction: the subject opposes itself, whereas the Moon does not oppose itself.
1:31:28Kepler's horror at the infinite universe shows the subject opposing what it wants to know.

Series · 3 Dec 2020#4 Sound ghettos

1:02:21Contradiction of the mode of production: technical access to musics is possible, but the desire to access them is repressed.

Series · 3 Dec 2020#1 Schubert and the master singers

44:12The real Nietzsche is hyper-reactionary and says the opposite on the next page.

Cycle 7 · 5 May 2020#7 Harnessed to confinitude

17:31The contradictory movement of capitalist society is felt by the bourgeois through the periodic cycle of crises.

Talks · 2 Jul 2018Tribute to Domenico Losurdo

32:09To the category of the disease of revolution, Hegel's logic substitutes that of objective contradiction, within the third estate and between nations.

Talks · 19 May 2018The clash of cultures: K. Souleymane (Niger)

10:30Sub-Saharan Africa is the region most musically motivated, and yet it has the fewest music training institutions.

Cycle 4 · 16 May 2018#4.8 Angélique (by Nerval)

1:02:06The productive forces enter into contradiction with the relations of production, which become fetters: one passes from space to history.

Talks · 12 Mar 2018Tonight, we repoliticise (part 1)

1:31:28A contradiction has only two terms; it is one of them that performs the reconciliation of itself and the other, without a third term descending from heaven.

Cycle 2 · 1 Aug 2017#2.8 Between crisis and war: philosophising?

47:22At a certain stage, relations of production, forms of development of productive forces, become fetters on them: an era of social revolution opens.

Cycle 3 · 1 Aug 2017#3.3 From Ulysses to Daedalus

52:31A catastrophe for science, it nonetheless exists within us as heirs to two contradictory traditions.
1:23:40When it passes into reality, it threatens imbalance and madness; it is evaded through lying.

Talks · 2 Aug 2016Tribute to Jacques D'Hondt (3)

26:32True strength is that of the unity which lets contradiction develop in all its force in order to master it afterward.

Cycle 2 · 15 Feb 2016#2.1 Between crisis and war: philosophising?

52:05Principle of non-contradiction: two contradictory attributes cannot belong at the same time to the same subject under the same respect.

Series · 2 Feb 2016Hegel on the Beach 4/5

1:38:12Hegel does not depart from Aristotle's principle of non-contradiction: contradiction exists, but in the form of becoming, like the pair of forces of one moment.

Series · 1 Feb 2016Marx on the Beach 2/2

1:18:34The internal contradiction is not an opposition of army against army: capital is caught between the maximum margin and competition, and crisis comes from its own purpose.

Cycle 1 · 28 Jan 2016#1.8 Between crisis and war: philosophising?

7:36We move from a logic of identity to a logic that integrates contradiction: no same without other.
12:46Two opposite attributes cannot belong to the same subject at the same time in the same respect: three conditions for there to be contradiction.

Cycle 1 · 10 Dec 2015#1.4 Between crisis and war: philosophising?

1:00:04Principle of identity or of non-contradiction: two opposite attributes cannot belong at the same time to the same subject in the same respect.

Talks · 8 Aug 2015Mythology and truth

10:21Non-contradiction grounds mathematical reasoning: it is not a matter of agreeing with me, but of agreeing with yourself.
25:39Socrates shows Callicles that he contradicts himself by changing his definition of force.

Talks · 23 Jun 2015L'île du Peuple: the debate

17:26Contradiction is not a neurosis but a richness: according to Hegel, the highest unity is obtained by confronting the supreme contradiction.

Series · 29 Jan 2012Everything is allowed but nothing is possible: Michel Clouscard (1)

15:15"Everything is permitted but nothing is possible": permissiveness of mores for a class that consumes the production of others, a dialectical formula that sums up the era.