Contradiction stems from substance-as-totality clashing with substance-as-accidents

Evidence

To invoke an automatism does not mean that we are falling into the common practice of attaching to the Hegelian System the image of a mechanism pure and simple: as if there is a machine, indeed a dialectical machine, in which everything finds its place without the slightest intervention of free choice. … Contradiction in all its forms arises originally out of the tension between substance as a totality – the synthesis of all the predicates – and substance as particularity – as separate or absolved existence, as accident. ‘External reflection’, writes Hegel in the Science of Logic, posits on the one side ‘formless substance’, and, on the other ‘the flux of accidents (Wechsel der Akzidenten)’. On the one ‘side’, indeed, totality tends to negate its determinate being only to feel its simple self-identity: ‘Spirit is … formally speaking, liberty, the concept’s absolute negativity or self-identity. Considered as this formal aspect, it may withdraw itself by abstracting from everything exterior and from its own externality, its very existence.’ — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 1099

Categorization

• XREF: Ties directly to Spinoza’s substance-attribute-accident framework the reader will know, and to how Malabou later reads plasticity against structural determination. — connects to: Plasticity’s mechanism is the substance-subject seesaw between essence and accident — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity,…, 1256; Substance’s actuosity is simultaneously creative and destructive power — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity,…, 1102; Substance becomes subject by self-negating into its own content — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity,…, 240 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Plasticity’s mechanism is the substance-subject seesaw between essence and accident #expands (0.90) — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 1256
• Substance becomes subject by self-negating into its own content #expands (0.85) — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 240
• Substance’s actuosity is simultaneously creative and destructive power #expands (0.82) — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 1102
• Bantu logic allows contradictory explanations to coexist as causally related #contradicts (0.72) — Frans Dokman, Beyond Bantu Philosophy_…, 1019
• Anything can be two contradictory things at once, including social systems #complicates (0.70) — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 56