negate
reductio ad absurdum
escape logic by paradox or contradiction
negative thinking > achieving negative goals > reductio ad absurdum

It has been argued that change is impossible, at least within a rational framework. If change nonetheless happens, this can only mean stepping outside the rational framework. Deliberate deployment of paradox is therefore said to be a powerful stratagem for change, perhaps even the only one.

If rationality breeds caution, then it may inhibit all but small, tentative and reversible reforms. Real change means taking risks.

The things that are most difficult to change are self-preserving systems, where there are forces that counteract any straightforward or rational attempt to change them.
 
Post-modern
architecture
In the late twentieth century, the modern movement in design gave way to what many commentators and practitioners chose to call post-modernism. This is a style that flaunts paradox. In postmodern architecture, the ephemeral is set firmly in bronze and marble, while serious aesthetic values are mocked.
Double bind Followers of Bateson hold that schizophrenia may be caused by a particular form of paradox, known as a double-bind, and may also be cured by counter-paradox.

‘While the experience of the double bind must always be partly unpleasant, it is also possible that this type of experience is an integral part of what we may vaguely call characterological growth. Without it, the individual would be in some sense static; even though with too much of it, he may be driven to schizophrenia. It looks as if differentiation and creativity - whatever these words mean - occur when the environment is neither too consistent nor too capricious.’ [Bateson]

Consistency is a property not of the environment but of a description of the environment. It is a characteristic that is only meaningful within the symbolic realm. To analyse double binds, we must see the interaction between the system and its environment as a linguistic (symbolic) interaction.

[see also R.D. Laing]

Paradoxical
intervention
Popular in family therapy.
Contradiction Saying against. [From Hegel to Elster, via Marx]
Zen masters In Zen Buddhism, enlightenment is achieved through a koan, which is a deliberate contradiction posed by one’s master, designed to prod the student onto a new level of understanding. Probably the best known is the attempt to hear one hand clapping.
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Page last updated on February 18th, 2001
Copyright © 2000, 2001 Richard Veryard