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otherness, that is, through the recognition of an object that resists, that possesses its own relative self-standing, that is “presupposed to thought” but only to be “posited” by it, and even – in a typically Hegelian redundancy – that is presupposed because posited as presupposed. In contrast, contradiction does not even have this much dimension of exteriority anymore. It is the organizing form of determining reflection, that is, the return of external reflection into positing reflection, this time full of content. This means that, from a strictly Hegelian point of view, any attempt to make of contradiction a structure of exteriority, independent of thought, is a misinterpretation. Exteriority, in the process of reflection, is represented by the moments of difference. Contradiction is already beyond it. Making contradiction a category that represents anything is radically contrary not only to Hegel’s characterization of this category itself, but to the whole dialectical process which is that of the Doctrine of Essence. What about Hegel’s comments in the third Remark to the section on Contradiction, in which Hegel does seem to indicate that contradiction is manifest in what is? He gives numerous (and disparate) examples that seem to grant contradiction an immediate existence. They are, moreover, the major sources of “famous quotes,” particularly for Marxist authors, and thus ring familiar. Contradiction, says Hegel, is “the root of all movement and vitality; it is only in so far as something has a contradiction within it that it moves, has impulse and activity” (GW 11, 286; S. 6, 75; L. 439). “Motion is existent contradiction itself” (GW 11, 287; S. 6, 76; L. 440). We also learn that “Something . . . is alive only insofar as it contains contradiction within it . . . ” (GW 11, 287; S. 6, 76; L. 440) and – better and better – that common experience itself never ceases to make use of the category of contradiction. For after all, what are “above and below,” “right and left,” “father and son” if not instances of contradiction itself? (GW 11, 288; S. 6, 77; L. 441) Was it worth going through so many complexities to arrive at such apparent absurdities? In fact, Hegel’s intention is not to identify contradiction with such representations. It is to show that representational thought itself, which pretends that there is no contradiction, that contradiction is not something present (vorhanden), nevertheless is replete with representations that can give rise to a thought of contradiction. Contradiction is not “present”; but what is present are objects which lead us to the recognition of contradiction. The latter is not a new object, but a new way to think the object. Indeed any object, according to Hegel, can and