The dialectic of necessity and contingency mirrors the generation of meaning

Evidence

What conclusion should be drawn from the dialectical identity of necessity and contingency? In the passage just cited, we see how each term, necessity and contingency, is freed through the help of the other, and how both free themselves from one another. The process is the same as that of the generation of meaning: meaning is never original but always produced, engendered when its passivity is made manifest. ‘It is because it is’: the necessity of meaning, or necessity as meaning, at the same time sharply reveals meaning’s absolute passivity – its contingency. Conversely, contingency here determines meaning as being a power of eruption, a pure event, imposing itself absolutely and hence of necessity. — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 1112

Categorization

• XREF: Links directly to the reader’s brain/work plasticity concern: meaning as always produced, never original, is a plasticity thesis — form given and received at once. — connects to: Dialectical insight transmutes contingency into necessity in a fleeting unified glimpse.; Contingency and necessity co-imply with neither ontologically prior — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity,…, 1114; Thinking must hold dialectic and its opposite together at once — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from…, 170 (+4 more)
• DEFINE: Shows necessity and contingency freeing each other as the same movement in which passivity is manifested.

Broader Connections

• Dialectical insight transmutes contingency into necessity in a fleeting unified glimpse. #corroborates (0.85)
• The essence of necessity is contingency, grounded in an event #expands (0.82) — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 128
• Contingency and necessity co-imply with neither ontologically prior #qualifies (0.80) — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 1114
• Contingency emerges from necessity’s own violence and becomes its power #qualifies (0.80) — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 1109
• Contingency allows determinacy to be thought without closure #expands (0.78)
• Thinking must hold dialectic and its opposite together at once #expands (0.75) — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia, 170
• Trust and power are generalized media converting improbable contingencies into stable meaning systems #corroborates (0.75)