[lit-ideas] Re: [lit-ideas] Le Pesanteur et la Grâce
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 6 Aug 2004 23:46:15 EDT
We are considering S. Weil's assertion in _Le Pesanteur et la Grâce"
> > "The demonstrable correlation of opposites is an image of the
> > transcendental
> > correlation of contradictories."
E. Holder writes:
>I was totally thinking the same thing.
>What Weil must have in mind is
>Aristotle's Square of Opposition.
>It's the Square-of-Opposition-thing.
Note that the expression, "Square of Opposition", though common, does not
seem to be too ancient -- the OED has quotes from 1864 and 1891. I.e. nothing
'classical'. The minor problem here is that for Aristotle, 'contradictories'
_are_ opposites, so _opposition_ (in 'square of opposition') means something
more _general_ than 'contradiction'. The Square was well known in France and it
may well have been the source for Weil's assertion under consideration.
There are ways of conceiving opposition and contradiction which are _not_
Aristotelian (notably Platonic) and thus, less 'square'. Weil may be having
that
in mind, too (For Plato, it's the thesis and the antithesis, rather).
Cheers,
JL
'Square of Opposition' (from the OED)
Logic. A square diagram used to illustrate the four kinds of logical
opposition.
1864. Bowen Logic vi 168
That the various points in the doctrine of this sort of Immediate Inference
might be more easily remembered, the old logicians contrived..the
accompanying ingenious diagram, which may be called the Square of Opposition.
1891 Pall Mall G. 5 May 2/2 It is a logical square, and its squareness is
supposed to carry some metaphysical virtue.
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