Everything is Its Opposite: Bennett’s Stalemates, Willard’s Draws, Kant’s Antinomies, and Hegel’s Sublation

Abstract

Karen Bennett maintains that some metaphysical debates have stalemated. M.B. Willard claims that all metaphysical debates result in draws. They regard stalemates and draws as impasses. Their precursor, Kant, maintains that reason falls into contradictions, antinomies, where equally compelling arguments can be given for the theses and antitheses. Advocating dialetheism, Hegel recognizes that reality itself is contradictory. Impasses indicate that contradictory positions are each partially correct, and that those positions must be sublated. While Hegel and Graham Priest agree that there are true contradictions, contra Robert B. Brandom, Michela Bordignon shows that their dialetheisms are significantly different. Hegel’s dynamic dialectical logic does not entail trivialism. To not be one with reality, which is not one with itself, is paradoxically to be one with it.