Contradiction Set Free

First published in in 1976, Hermann Levin Goldschmidt’s Contradiction Set Free, (Freiheit für den Widerspruch), reflects the push to explore new forms of critical thinking that gained momentum in the decade between Theodor Adorno’s Negative Dialectics of 1966 and Paul Feyerabend’s Against Method in 1975.The book articulates Goldschmidt’s reclamation of an epistemologically critical position that acknowledges the deep underlying link between the modes of production of knowledge and the social and political life they produce. In signalling a breakout from the academic rut and its repressive hold, Goldschmidt pointed beyond the ossified methods of a philosophical discourse whose oppressive consequences could no longer be ignored.Contradiction Set Free makes available for the first time in English a pivotal work by one of the great critical thinkers of the 20th century.

[Goldschmidt's] writing evinces the clear and straightforward development and exposition of a thought ... [An] impressive work., What if, instead of trying compulsively to avoid contradiction, we embrace it as an opportunity? This work discusses in an entirely original and highly lucid way some of the consequences this change of attitude might have for our views about such phenomena as meaning, freedom, guilt, politics and technology., Contradiction Set Free is one of Herman Levin Goldschmidt's most important books and it has lost none of its power since its publication forty years ago.This meticulous translation, together with Willi Goetschel's extremely helpful introduction, should go a long way to seeing that he is finally given his rightful due in the English-speaking world.

Hermann Levin Goldschmidt (1914-1998) was an independent philosopher and champion of dialogical thinking. A native of Berlin, he fled to Zurich in 1938 and continued to live and work in Switzerland until his death in 1998. He is also the author of The Legacy of German Jewry (translated in 2007).Willi Goetschel is Professor of German and Philosophy at the University of Toronto, Canada.