Law of contradiction

“ It should be observed that, in all cases of general principles, particular instances, dealing with familiar things, are more evident than the general principle. For example, the law of contradiction states that nothing can both have a certain property and not have it. ”

“ It seems to me that modern debates over the validity of the law of contradiction may be a disagreement of this kind. The soundness of a culture may well be measured by this ability to recognize what is extraneous. One knows what to do with the extraneous, even if one decides upon a policy of temporary accommodation. It is when the line dividing us from the extraneous begins to fade that we are assailed with destructive doubts. ”

“ To solve this contradiction we must discover its ground.
The state takes possession of the remainder, not in respect to its form, as remainder and as property, but in respect to its substance, as something which is necessary to sustain life.
In order to solve the contradiction thoroughly, form and substance must, therefore, be separated. The state must have the power of taking the substance without touching the form.
Without exhibiting here unnecessary profundity, I shall solve the problem at once. ”

“ In this refusal to do justice there is contradiction; and as error exists where contradiction lies, it is precisely in that contradiction that we must seek the means of refuting error and assert the power of truth. ”

“ And the contradiction becomes more apparent when the question is put: Who is to be the Judge in a controversy between the People and the Sovereign? For the People and the Sovereign are to be constitutionally or juridically regarded as two different Moral Persons ”

“ A long habit of objecting to every thing establishes a monopoly in the right of contradiction; a prescriptive title to the privilege of starting doubts and difficulties in the common belief, without being liable to have our own called in question. There cannot be a more infallible way to prove that we must be in the right, than by maintaining roundly that every one else is in the wrong! Not only the opposition of sects to one another, but their unanimity among themselves, strengthens their confidence in their peculiar notions. ”

“ And in much the same way we may very profitably recognize contradiction or controversy, whether personal or social, as a necessary condition of all valid experience, but not on that account are we to cultivate what is contradictory, to be always blindly spoiling for a contradiction. Like crime or death, if directly courted, contradiction would lose its peculiar effectiveness. The both-sidedness or the all-sidedness, which at once develops and conserves human life, is only [p.152] that which is maintained with a tenacious, even with a would-be consistent loyalty to each and every side. ”

“ Does it follow, as has been said with such ridiculous emphasis, that every truth, every idea, results from a contradiction,— that is, from a something which is affirmed and denied at the same moment and from the same point of view,—and that it may be necessary to abandon wholly the old-fashioned logic, which regards contradiction as the infallible sign of error? ”

“ When we judge a contradictory character, whether our own or another person’s, we are apt to proceed objectively; we ascertain in the individual the simultaneous existence of two governing ideas, one of which negatives the other; we rationally declare this to be illogical, because the principle of contradiction is the pith of all our affirmations, and the logic of the intellect rests on it. ”

“ But if one ought to contradict for the truth’s sake, then a single contradiction is enough; when opinions are once acknowledged and firmly fixed, continued disputation about them is entirely fruitless. ”

“ If a ‘contradiction’ is real, it means either a difference of opinion between those who make the incompatible assertions, or, in the case of a real ‘self-​contradiction’, the uttering of ‘nonsense’ and a failure to propound a meaning at all. ”

“ I can see no way out of it unless either frankly to admit that contradiction in terms is the bedrock on which all our thoughts and deeds are founded, and to acquiesce cheerfully in the fact that whenever we try to go below the surface of any enquiry we find ourselves utterly baffled—or to redefine freedom and necessity, admitting each as a potent factor of the other. ”

“ If a man's capacities are hinted at or even stated by himself to his fellow-creatures with a certain amount of discretion, and if he does not court failure by putting them to the proof, it does not occur to most people to contradict him, and the possible truth of the contradiction soon sinks out of sight. ”

“ The effect of ignorance of the causes of right, equity, law, and justice, is to make custom and example the rule of actions, as with children, or to induce the setting of custom against reason, and reason against custom, whereby the doctrine of right and wrong is perpetually disputed, both by the pen, and by the sword. ”

“ Contradictions in Things and Men.
If any literary society is inclined to undertake a history of contradictions, I will subscribe for twenty folio volumes. The world displays nothing but contradictions. What would be necessary to put an end to them? To assemble the states-general of the human race. But, according to the nature and constitution of mankind, it would be a new contradiction were they to agree. Bring together all the rabbits in the world, and there would not be two different minds among them. ”

“ This is the source of the superiority which every one claims, who believes to be in the right over his opponent. But, by appealing to this common law, I invite him to judge with me, and demand that in the present case he shall himself acknowledge my conduct toward him to be logical, and shall, forced by the laws of thinking, approve my conduct. ”

“ Hence the contradictory of the commandment contains a simple contradiction directly it is made a rule universal; and the commandment itself is established as one of the principles for the harmony of individual wills.
“ ‘Thou shalt not tell a lie,’ as a rule of morality, may be expressed generally: thou shall not by thy outward act make another to believe thy thought to be other than it is. The contradictory made universal is: every man may by his outward act make another to believe his thought to be other than it is. Now this maxim also contains a contradiction, and is self-destructive. ”

“ Passing from this supreme evidence that the wrong can never be the strong, look at those ignorant and unhappy persons who combine against the laws of society. Their suspicions of each other are proverbial, and ever with them is the feeling that sooner or later they will be overtaken by the law. ”

“ Complete liberty of contradicting and disproving our opinion is the very condition which justifies us in assuming its truth for purposes of action, and on no other terms can a being with human faculties have any rational assurance of being right. ”

“ because laws, like houses, lean on one another, and the operation is delicate, and should be necessary: the objection, in such a case, ought not to arise from the natural infirmity of human institutions, but from substantial faults which contradict the nature and end of law itself,—faults not arising from the imperfection, but from the misapplication and abuse of our reason. ”

“ It is, however, obvious that law and authority have no business with restraining either, while opinion ought, in every instance, to determine its verdict by the circumstances of the individual case; condemning every one, on whichever side of the argument he places himself, in whose mode of advocacy either want of candour, or malignity, bigotry, or intolerance of feeling manifest themselves ”

“ Clearly, the principle of Contradiction takes for granted the principle of Identity, and is subject to the same difficulties in its practical application. As a matter of fact and common sense, if we affirm any term of a Subject, we are bound to deny of that Subject, in the same relation, not only the contradictory but all synonyms for this, and also all contraries and opposites ”

“ Whoever denies the principle of contradiction can neither directly nor indirectly be refuted by any other.
Demonstration.—It would be amusing to hear the arguments directed against a man who admits both affirmation and negation to be at the same time possible; although forced to admit the affirmative, he will still hold the negative, and vice versa. It is impossible not only to argue, but even to speak, or to think on such a supposition. ”

“ The reason of the contradiction is the fact that man is a contradiction. But man is more; he feels or knows himself as such, and this makes a vital difference; for to feel a contradiction is ipso facto to be above it. Otherwise, how would it be possible to feel it? A felt contradiction which does not imply, beside its two poles, an unity which includes and is above them, will, the more it is reflected on, the more be seen to be altogether unmeaning. ”

“ The principle of non-contradiction does not mean Do not contradict yourself; produce a harmony, a system in your acts and yourself; realize yourself as an organic whole. That would be vague enough without further directions; but what our principle here says is not that. It says the act must not contradict itself. ”

“ To censure guilt, my lords, is undoubtedly necessary, and to inquire into the conduct of men in power, incontestably just; but by the laws both of heaven and earth, the means as well as the end are prescribed, rectum recte, legitimum legitime faciendum; we must not only propose a good end in our conduct, but must attain it by that method which equity directs, and the law prescribes. ”

“ Realize, i.e. act and keep acting; do not contradict yourself, i.e. let all your acts embody and realize the principle of non-contradiction; for so only can you realize the formal will which is the good will. Whatever act embodies a self-contradiction is immoral. Whatever act is self-consistent is legal. Whatever act is self-consistent, and is done for the sake of realizing self-consistency, and for the sake of nothing else, is moral. ”

“ The limits must be determined by the nature of the occasion which calls for the law's interference—the principle being that the law must not undertake more, nor proceed further, than is required for the remedy of the evil or the removal of the mischief. ”

“ If your opponent requires you to admit something from which the point in dispute will immediately follow, you must refuse to do so, declaring that it is a petitio principii For he and the audience will regard a proposition which is near akin to the point in dispute as identical with it, and in this way you deprive him of his best argument.
XXIII.
Contradiction and contention irritate a man into exaggerating his statement. By contradicting your opponent you may drive him into extending beyond its proper limits a statement which, at all events within those limits and in itself, is true ”

“ If you see no side of the case but your own, your beautifully constructed argument may fall to pieces when your opponent, perhaps using some unpretentious fact which you, in your innocence, had entirely overlooked, knocks out the keystone of your arch of logic and your structure falls to ruin. On the other hand, you may demolish one after the other of your opponent’s positions and yet present no counter claims for your own side of the case. If you prove your opponent to be all wrong, you do not thereby prove yourself all right. ”

“ THERE is a palpable contradiction between the laws and the natural sentiments of mankind, in the case of oaths, which are administered to a criminal to make him speak the truth, when the contrary is his greatest interest. ”

“ This contradiction, like many other contradictions, is one which ought first of all to be registered as a mere fact; long before we attempt to explain why things contradict themselves, we ought, if we are honest men and good critics, to register the preliminary truth that things do contradict themselves. ”

“ By this means there can be no obsolete laws, and scarcely such a thing as laws standing in direct or equivocal contradiction to each other, and every person will know the period of time to which he is to look back for all the laws in being. ”

“ What is essential to the principle of contradiction, is the exclusion of being by not-being, and of not-being by being. The formula must express this fact, this truth, which is presented by immediate evidence, and is contemplated by the intellect in a most clear intuition, admitting neither doubt nor obscurity of any kind. ”

“ The principle of contradiction establishes merely the agreement of concepts, but does not itself produce concepts. ”

“ On the other hand, there may be cases in which the public interest—not merely according to some remote philosopher's view of it, but according to conceptions which the people are able to assimilate—is best served by a violation of some actual law. ”

“ Given a definite rule of law, a departure from it by a hair’s-breadth is visible to all men; but within the sphere of individual judgment the differences of honest opinion are so manifold and serious that dishonest opinion can pass in great part unchallenged and undetected. Where the duty of the judicature is to execute justice in accordance with fixed and known principles, the whole force of the public conscience can be brought to the enforcement of that duty and the maintenance of those principles. ”

“ For, by the laws of spirit, in the right Is every individual character That acts in strict consistence with itself: Self-contradiction is the only wrong. ”

“ I know nothing that can be said for our author, in excuse of so much confusion and self-contradiction, unless it be the particular hardships of his sect. The free-thinking few, he says, are forced into an outward compliance; and that which forces a man into a state of hypocrisy, may force him into a great deal of confusion and self-contradiction. ”