224) The first is the principle of noncontradiction...

224.The first is the principle of noncontradiction, which asserts that a thing cannot be simultaneously qualified by a certain attribute and by its contradictory. The second is the principle of identity. This is the principle that states that every quiddity is what it is by necessity; that is, a thing cannot be stripped of itself. The third is the principle of rest and frozenness in nature.

This principle asserts the negativity and fixedness of nature, and denies that the realm of matter is dynamic. In the new logic, there is no room for the first principle, since everything pertaining to the reality of this logic is based on contradiction. If contradiction prevails as a general law, it is then also natural to drop the other principle of classical logic, the principle of non-contradiction.

Everything loses its identity exactly at the moment of the affirmation, since it is in a continuous becoming. As long as contradiction is the main foundation, it will not be surprising that truth always means two contradictory things.

Since this kind of contradiction, which lies at the heart of every reality, produces a continuous conflict in all things, and [since] 'conflict' means movement and progression, therefore nature is continuously active and developing, constantly moving forward and becoming. These are the blows that dialectical logic claims to have directed against general human logic and the familiar notion of the world, on which metaphysics rested for thousands of years.

The new method of understanding existence can be summed up in the assumption of a primary proposition that it views as a fundamental. Later, this fundamental converts to its contradictory by virtue of the conflict among the contradictories of the internal content. After that, the two contradictories are synthesized in a unity. This unity, in turn, becomes a fundamental and a new point of departure. Thus, this tri-progression is repeated (p. 225) endlessly and without limit.

It moves with existence and extends as far as the phenomena and events of existence extend. Hegel began with the general notions and categories, applying the dialectic to them, and inferring them in a disputational method based on the contradiction represented in the thesis, antithesis and synthesis. His bestknown and first triad in this area is that which begins from the simplest and most primary of chose notions: the notion of existence. Thus, existence is. This is the affirmation or thesis.

✦ ✦ ✦