THE SIGNIFICANCE OF CONTRADICTIONS FOR THE LOGIC OF PHILOSOPHY

Abstract

In philosophy, for a long time it was thought that self-contradiction is themark of erroneous thinking. Th us, for the thinking of philosophers the logical demandwas made that they must avoid all kinds of contradictions if that thinking is to be inline with the truth. Lately, with the discussion of paradoxes in the theory of classes,insight has been gained on the problem of the self-application of thought which hasthrown a new light on self-contradiction. In the framework of the book Th e Logicof Contradiction, Robert Heiss attempted to give a defi ning method of philosophyby which it should be assembled and in showing those kinds of contradictions thatcannot be eliminated and which are in a certain sense necessary for thinking, andnot only for avoiding formal-logical contradictions. In that context, he explains thelogical structure of self-referentialness, or auto-referential thinking, and he makesa correlation between tautology as a positive self-application of thinking, and selfcontradictionas a negative one. Th is paper reviews Heiss’ argumentation in detailand then connects his theory to the so-called “logic of philosophy”. At the end of thepaper, the internal perspective of contradiction in philosophy is augmented with anexternal perspective of opposing positions and the postulating of the thesis of theprincipally “heterothetical” character of philosophizing.