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Philosophy contradiction existing between two apparently indubitable propositions; paradox



a contradiction between two positions, each of which is equally demonstrable by logic.

The term “antinomy” was introduced in 1613 by the German philosopher R. Goclenius, although the contradictory character of thinking had already been discovered in ancient philosophy. I. Kant, the founder of German classical philosophy, was the first to demonstrate that antinomies necessarily arose from the characteristics of the cognition process, especially from the continual attempts of reason to go beyond the bounds of experience, to arrive at the knowledge of the “thing in itself.” And insofar as this is impossible, according to Kant, every such departure leads to an antinomy. In the Kantian doctrine concerning antinomies, a profound thought was expressed about the contradictory nature of the cognitive process, the dependence of the results of cognition on the existing forms of cognitive activity, and, at the same time, the limitless quality of cognition itself. This thought, however, was undermined by the agnosticism which was characteristic of Kant and by his denial of the contradictory nature of reality itself.

Dialectical materialism makes a distinction between antinomies which are the logical reflection of contradictions in reality itself (for example, the contradiction between the wave and the particle characteristics of the electron) and antinomic opinions—paradoxes brought forth by the specific level in the development of knowledge, especially by contradictions in the system of assumptions. Solving paradoxes is one of the principal sources in the development of cognition. For example, the theory of relativity arose as a result of the solution of certain antinomical points of departure in classical physics. But on the whole the concept of antinomy has no independent meaning in dialectical materialism, since it is subordinate to the category of contradiction.


Asmus, V. F. Filosofiia I. Kanta. Moscow, 1957.


References in periodicals archive ?
In its antinomic romantic fashion it attests to the grandeur of what it, and what poetry' itself in this analysis, can never represent or sign for.
It is obviously not the only possible conception, although in certain circumstances which "liberate" the antinomic element of the unconscious itself, it is perhaps irresistible.
The stimulus here derives from a Nietzschean tradition that preceded the rise of high modernism and from writers influenced by it, such as de Certeau, for whom historiography--as quoted by Rabasa--'bears within its own name the paradox--almost an oxymoron--of a relation established between two antinomic terms, between the real and discourse' (IA, p.
Human thinking and feeling are thus antinomic by nature.
83) "In this way, the solution is that one conceives of this antinomic propositions .
In Drop City, this antinomic relationship assumes dramatic force when the hippies must struggle to move their possessions to Alaska.
Bourdieu's use of habitus has to be seen in the context of his broader project, 'whose ambition is not simply to combine, articulate or join structure and agency but, more fundamentally, to dissolve the very distinction between these two seemingly antinomic viewpoints of social analysis' (Wacquant 1993: 3).
When is this discourse best understood as self-contradictory, and when does it occupy that fraught, perhaps necessarily antinomic space where a certain limit to comprehension has been recognized and reflected upon but cannot be grasped or transcended?
In History and Class Consciousness, the term which tends to substitute for "observation" as the negative pole in Lukacs's antinomic scheme is "contemplation" (Kontemplation).
Yet, Bakhtin and Freidenberg were peers--their ideas on the novel were developing in the same period of time, and their theories 'are two antinomic worlds that badly need each other but never converge'.
However, this does not happen, since the signifier which imposes itself to the frontal vision of the narrator is not the newlyweds but Sofka, in what, nonetheless, looks, to the narrator, like a wedding picture ("at least, I assume it is a wedding, although the bride and bridegroom are absent"): this antinomic sentence illustrates perfectly a phrase by Jean-Charles Margolin, who defines anamorphoses as "the discordant reunion of a signifier and a signified drawing back from it.
Paul's description of his sinfulness, his inability to will the good, and his antinomic embrace of faith.