Toolbox – Contradiction Studies #10 in the winter term 2025/26
sustained engagement
“The history of Western philosophy can be understood as a sustained engagement with contradiction.”
Norman Sieroka
paradox
“The basis of law is not an idea as a systematic unified principle but a paradox.”
Andreas Fischer-Lescano
hierarchy of norms
“If social contradictions are reflected in law, law cannot form a hierarchy of norms free of contradictions.”
Andreas Fischer-Lescano
power and resistance
“Michel Foucault says: “Where there is power, there is resistance, and […] this resistance is never in a position of exteriority in relation to power” (History of Sexuality I, The Will to Knowledge, 1976, p. 95)”
Gisela Febel
city
“The city is a laboratory not only of modernity, but also of contradiction.”
Julia Lossau