No \u2013 and the confusion on which the charge rests is instructive enough to be taken apart.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He does not claim that one may say A and not-A at will. Anyone who did could no longer assert anything determinate, and Hegel\u2019s whole procedure consists in setting up very determinate claims in a determinate order. A thinking to which everything were equally valid is for him expressly the worst \u2013 it is the scepticism that \u201ealways sees in the result only pure nothing\u201c.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That things, and the concepts with which we grasp them, turn into their opposite at their own limit, and that it is precisely from this that movement arises. Contradiction is in him not a property of sentences but of states of affairs:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\u2026 if there were any question of ranking, and the two determinations had to be held apart as separate, then contradiction would have to be taken as the deeper and more essential. For identity, as against it, is only the determination of the simple immediate, of dead being; but contradiction is the root of all movement and vitality; only in so far as something has a contradiction within itself does it move, have drive and activity.<\/p>\nScience of Logic II, \u201eContradiction\u201c<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Lawyers have a better ear for this than logicians. A contract is for Hegel expressly a contradiction (\u00a7 72<\/a>): I remain owner in ceasing to be one. No lawyer takes that for a mistake in thinking; it is the description of what happens in a transfer of title. Likewise wrong (\u00a7 82<\/a>): it is the negation of right which does not remove right but compels its restoration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Why this is not an abolition of logic<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
What is decisive is Hegel\u2019s concept of determinate negation<\/a>. A negation that only says \u201enot\u201c ends in empty nothing and carries nothing. A determinate negation is the negation of this<\/em> matter and retains its content: \u201eso that the result essentially contains that from which it results \u2013 which is properly a tautology, for otherwise it would be an immediate and not a result.\u201c It is precisely this that keeps every step checkable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Scholarship now reads it this way: Hegel does not deny the principle of contradiction, he reinterprets the formal principles from a standpoint at which they show their limit. The charge belongs among the legends that Jon Stewart records separately.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sources.<\/strong> Jon Stewart (ed.), The Hegel Myths and Legends<\/em>, 1996, there \u201eThe Myth that Hegel Denied the Law of Contradiction\u201c with contributions by Robert Pippin and Robert Hanna \u00b7 Science of Logic II, Second Section, \u201eContradiction\u201c. \u2013 In the edition: \u00a7 72<\/a>, \u00a7 82<\/a>, \u00a7 31<\/a>. \u2013 In the glossary: Contradiction<\/a>, Determinate Negation<\/a>, Dialectic<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n