ABSTRACT
No principle has enjoyed more abject fealty in the annals of Western philosophy than the principle of contradiction. The principle of contradiction is the fundamental first principle of reason, and only on its basis can philosophy achieve any positive results. Aristotle advances the principle of contradiction as the first principle of reason because it alone supposedly exhibits this irrefutability. Although determinacy may be thought to depend upon it, the principle of contradiction itself appears to depend upon the presence of determinate beings with determinate attributes to which it can apply. Beginning with indeterminacy might seem to confirm Aristotle's fear that only adherence to the principle of contradiction can make determinate being and meaning possible, what follows from indeterminacy is none other than the thoroughgoing refutation of that completely incoherent view. Only by having the same self-determining, self-differentiating character as the concept can the will escape the formal self-identity that plagues Kant's application of the categorical imperative.
