Toolbox – Contradiction Studies #2 in the winter term 2025/26
Literature:
Priest, Graham. 1998. What is so bad About Contradictions? The Journal of Philosophy 95(8). 410–426.
driver
“Contradictions are an important driver of scientific practice and knowledge.”
Norman Sieroka
idea of democratic critique
“If you think that acts of contradicting someone always need to point to better solutions, you haven’t really understood the idea of democratic critique.”
Martin Nonhoff
ideal of a contradiction-free world
“Science has long been animated by the ideal of a contradiction-free world in which logical orders could merge with society, politics, culture and language. In the GRC Contradiction Studies we are working on ways of describing the multiplicity and complexity, the danger and beauty of our worlds that clearly go beyond concepts of freedom from contradiction.”
Michi Knecht
space
“According to Niklas Luhmann, space is a ‘special facility to negate contradictions’”.
Julia Lossau
prison of difference
“‘Contradiction is the prison of difference‘ writes the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze. Worlds of Contradiction asks: how can we explain and describe the world without making it more coherent and systematic than it is?”
Michi Knecht