Pain and Thinking

The price of thinking

REFLECTIONS SERIES

Summary: The price to be paid for actual thinking, is the courage to think pain, which is the contradiction, as opposed to the coherence, of identity.

Quote: “It is said that contradiction cannot be thought; but in the pain of the living being it is even an actual, concrete existence.” (Hegel, Science of Logic, p. 684)

Important reflections:

1. The Law of Non-Contradiction is a commonly presupposed “Law of Thought”

2. Hegel’s philosophy suggests that this “Law” is a defence against the pain of contradiction

3. Difficulty thinking contradiction is equal to difficulty in thinking pain of conceptual identity

4. All identities, whether intellectual, spiritual, personal, professional, are structured by contradictions (i.e. they are Non-All)

5. Identity is a process requiring courageous openness to the becoming of, not this or that concept, but the truth of the concept as such

Hegel’s Science of Logic course starts January 16th 2023.