Michela Bordignon

The dissertation faces the problem of the meaning and the function of contradiction within Hegelian logical system. The dissertation is made of six chapters. The first one highlights the ambiguity of the contradiction within Hegel’s logic. Contradiction has three main meanings: first, the metaphorical meaning (contradiction denotes a strong but not contradictory opposition); second, contradiction has a critical-negative value and corresponds to the mistake of Understanding; third, contradiction is characterized by a properly contradictory structure and, at the same time, it has an ontological value. The last value represents the most important and the specifically hegelian meaning of the concept of contradiction, i.e. the meaning of the contradiction as regula veri. In the second chapter negation, namely the constitutive structure of contradiction, is analyzed. In particular, its ontological and self-referential character is underlined. The third chapter is focused on the comparison between the hegelian concept of contradiction and the different ways contradiction is conceived in formal logic and philosophy of language: the semantic definition, the syntactic one, the pragmatic definition and finally the ontological one. On the basis of these considerations a general explicative model of the contradiction is outlined. This model is applied in the analysis developed in the second part of the dissertation, dedicated to the specific meaning contradiction assumes in the different sections of Hegelian logical system. The fourth chapter examines the way contradiction is conceived in the Doctrine of Being. The becoming sheds light on the contradictory nature of being and nothing; in the finite the contradictory nature of the determinate being turns out to be concretely developed. The fifth chapter is focused on the analysis of the determinations of reflection, in order to show the contradictory structure of essence and explain the real meaning of the Hegelian claim: “all things are inherently contradictory”. The topic of sixth chapter is the role of contradiction in the Doctrine of the Concept and, more specifically, in the dialectic of the universal, particular, and individual concept and on the way this dialectic has a further development within the logical idea of life. The dissertation ends with some final considerations resuming the main results of the research and the constitutive role of contradiction in Hegelian logic: contradiction is not only one of the many determinations of the logical system, because it turns out to has a trans-categorical value according to which it represents an internal and determining structure of all the logical determinations. The contradiction is their principle of determination, the structure in which every logical category realizes its own truth

The article analyzes the meaning of infinite judgment within absolute knowing and tries to explain the role that this judgment plays within the last moment of the phenomenological path. The infinite judgment in question states: “the being of the ego is a thing”. The analysis starts with the conception of infinite judgment in pre-Kantian and Kantian logic, that has certainly influenced the way in which Hegel conceived of this logical structure. In order to shed light on the Hegelian conception of infinite judgment at the time the Phenomenology was written, it is necessary to examine the way in which this kind of judgment is presented in the Jena System (1804-05) which develops the logical structures at work in the phenomenological process. Finally, the negation implicit in the judgment “the being of the ego is a thing” is expounded upon: the being of the ego is a thing - the soul - that in actuality is not a thing. The paradoxical structure of this judgment, that consists of this absence-presence negation, becomes evident in this double value. This judgment expresses the moment of crisis in the structure of judgment itself. This crisis is the linguistic expression of the inconsistency immanent in the pretence of consciousness to capture its object, that is constitutively separated from it. At the same time this judgment is also the negative moment necessary for the solution of this crisis and for the passage of consciousness into absolute knowing, in which the radical separation between subject and object that characterizes consciousness is completely reconciled

The aim of the paper is to analyse Brandom’s account of Hegel’s conception of determinate negation and the role this structure plays in the dialectical process with respect to the problem of contradiction. After having shown both the merits and the limits of Brandom’s account, I will refer to Priest’s dialetheistic approach to contradiction as an alternative contemporary perspective from which it is possible to capture essential features of Hegel’s notion of contradiction, and I will test the equation of Hegel’s dialectic with Priest dialetheism