On Contradiction
Contradiction is a Basic Feature of Life and Thought
What should we make of contradictions?
Analytic philosophers see a contradiction and go “Gotcha.”
Talmudists see a contradiction and go, “This is only an apparent contradiction. The cases are different.”
Straussians see one and go “Huh. Wonder what the author was trying to teach me.”
Derrideans see one and go “All terms are unstable.”
Poets see one and go: “Very well, then, I guess we contain multitudes.”
In the science fiction future, some version of this will supplement the new age corporate astrology that is the Myers-Briggs test. And dating websites will feature bios like “Straussian sun, Talmudic moon with Poetic Jupiter in the 5th house” seeking “Analytic sun, Derridean moon…”
More Distinctions Needed
The above scheme is crass, but a good start. We need more distinctions.
Straussians only offer their hermeneutics of generosity (the assumption that the author is wiser than the reader) to philosophical texts, not to all texts. Some people are simply careless.
Derrideans tend to apply deconstructive pressure to texts they dislike or find problematic, but not to themselves and their own team. For example, they’ll deconstruct Plato and Rousseau, but they won’t deconstruct Derrida.
Poets do not accept all contradictions everywhere, but are selective. They contradict themselves even regarding the value they assign to contradiction.
Occasionally, the Talmud will let a contradiction stand. Most powerfully, the Talmud considers the actions of teachers (ma’aseh rav) to qualify as texts, and to give them such weight that they are assumed to be rooted in first principles. In reality, people do things all the time that are ill-considered or non-considered. Did Rabbi X really hold Y when he did Z? Maybe the moment simply called for a certain response.
The Hermeneutics of Contradiction
Generally, we don’t find contradictions and then decide how to deal with them. Rather, we come to contradictions with an attitude already formed about them. There is nothing in a text that can instruct us in how to relate to contradiction. It is, rather, a prejudice we have, or a method we’ve inherited, or a temperament we’ve cultivated, that guides us.
A non-Talmudist sees the Talmudist, particularly, let’s say, a Tosafist or a Brisker, as overly rigid and categorical, trying to fit poetry to the Procrustean bed of logic.
A non-Straussian sees the Straussian reading Xenophon and thinks “this person is over-reading. Maybe Xenophon is more or less saying what he means and it’s not that good or interesting.”
A non-Derridean sees a Derridean reading of Plato, and thinks “I want my text back. This is an interesting exercise, but it’s a bit unfair, even violent, to Plato, who never asked for this kind of procedure.”
The poet and the analytic thinker clash the most. I felt this in philosophy seminars at Oxford, where one would prove one’s smarts by constantly badgering the lecturer with objections. The poet in me felt this game contained the opposite of wisdom.
But poets who celebrate contradiction can be sloppy. There’s a tyranny in making oneself immune to criticism or correction. Whitman’s generosity of spirit can also be a kind of overbearingness. Poetic charisma can be weak on accountability. We grant individuals the private right to self-expression, but, in a democratic society, or even just a society ruled by a sense of procedural decorum, we wouldn’t want our rulers and decision makers to invoke “poetic license” as the basis for many of their decisions.
Conclusion
No philosophy of contradiction is free from problems. And no person or text can authorize a correct view of contradiction. But contradiction is part of daily life, not just scholarly life. And working out our relationship to it—in ourselves and others—is fundamental to the kind of lives we end up leading. Textual training and people reading skills are symbiotic. How you treat the person who cuts you off in traffic or the person trolling you on social media and how you read Shakespeare or the Bible or pulp fiction are interrelated. To know oneself one cannot overlook one’s attitude to contradiction.
I don't know which school of thought this would fall into, but your piece made me think of something Agnes Callard said on Ezra Klein's podcast a few months back-- basically that apparent contradictions are really just a lack of knowledge of the larger truth and that choosing to "live with the contradictions" is really just a way of swerving from our collective, multi-generational responsibility to seek truth. A quote from the podcast transcript below.
"AGNES CALLARD: So I think the difference there is just in thinking how far from knowledge we are. So I think the way I am is that I see a bunch of conflicts, and I don’t know how to resolve them. And that’s just my ignorance. If I had knowledge, I would know how to resolve them. But what I at least try to do is to not be under the illusion that I have the knowledge already. To say knowledge would involve resolving them is to acknowledge that we are very, very, very far from that. It’s not clear that it’s achievable within a human lifetime, but it is.
And so there’s a different question, which is, how do we make do without knowledge, right? And we have to do some of that. But once you see it that way, nothing can really look as attractive to you as just having knowledge. You have to make do without it while you’re looking for it.
But I guess I think the whole “living with contradictions, accepting contradictions” thing is just — it’s a way of swerving. It’s a way of dressing up your own ignorance as being somehow responsibility and realism. But I think I can see what it would be to know. And it would be something amazing that’s way better than where I am."
Hello! I'm somewhat of a new reader here. I've been following you silently for about a year now, Mr. Atkins, and I always find great wisdom in your words. As someone engages in "textual training" for his livelihood, I see your interests are of significant overlap to my own.
This essay makes some crucial points. Often fundamental contradictions exist between "subjects," let us say - the operations of particular fields or subfields, ways of seeing and being in the world. To be a platonist, as it were, I have to stick my head into the bucket of Platonist ideas and concepts and make them my own. The "Idea" then becomes a planet unto itself, amongst a solar system of ideas. And like any good planet, its orbit attracts and repels certain objects and sits in its track going round and round. You need to stick your head in another bucket to fly to mars!
One also has personal contradictions, as you say. My sub-selves and the modes required to be those selves can often be at odds. And when they are very contradictory, one can feel very unwell indeed. When I was first a young parent, I felt an overwhelming contradiction between my Work Habits (workaholic) and my burgeoning "fatherhood." It was a contradictory process that needed a lot of smoothing out. This process of contradiction plays itself out throughout our lives, of course, as you point out.
Your last point, which is pedagogical, is essential, and I was delighted to see it phrased so eloquently. Textual training - proper, classical textual training in the form of Great Books and rhetoric, writing, composition, etc - is significantly tied to how we interact with the world. It is one of the reasons schools often fail our children. Thank you for your posts!