In this essay, I will consider some aspects of Conze's philosophical work prior to his turn to mysticism (ca 1937); in particular, I will consider Conze's attitude to Aristotle's law of noncontradiction. This was the subject of Conze's postgraduate research after earning a German doctorate in philosophy (at the time equivalent to a British Master of Arts degree). Conze himself said that all his later ideas were contained in the book that would have constituted his PhD thesis or Habilitationsschrift, i.e. Der Satz vom Widerspruch "The Principle of Contradiction" (1932). To be clear, he is talking about the same Aristotelian principle, that most modern sources refer to as the law or principle of noncontradiction. The term "noncontradiction" seems to more clearly convey Aristotle's intent.
Not long after it was printed, Der Satz vom Widerspruch was burned by the Nazis along with other books by communists. As Holger Heine (who recently translated the work into English) tells the story, "almost all of the five hundred copies of the first edition were destroyed [and] Conze's hopes for an academic career in Germany had come to naught" (xiv). There was an unauthorised reprint of 600 copies in 1976, produced by the German Socialist Students Association, however a literature review reveals very few citations of Conze's book or other work from the period up to 1937 when his midlife crisis began. It is safe to say that even Heine's enthusiastic attempts to resuscitate Conze's corpse have not led to signs of life. For someone who gets the kind of sycophantic praise that Heine and others heap on him, Conze remains a very minor figure in the history of early 20th Century Marxist philosophy, let alone philosophy generally. Still, given his elevated status in Prajñāpāramitā studies, those few of us who work in this field ought to at least make an effort to engage with Conze's earlier philosophy, given the influence it had on his later work.
In brief, the law of noncontradiction says that if logical contradictions were allowed, we could not make sense of the world. If I state that a proposition is true, the contrary of that proposition must be false. For example, if it is true that Conze was born in Germany, the contrary, that Conze was not born in Germany must be false. At face value this is trivial, but it has profound implications. In this essay I will explore the law of noncontradiction and Conze's attempt to invalidate it.
For Aristotle, the law of noncontradiction was the most fundamental axiom on which rational thought was based. It is what must be known if anything is to be known. It was not something that could be derived from first principles, but had to be true a priori for rational thinking to work at all. In his Metaphysics Aristotle states the law in at least three ways, which Gottlieb describes as ontological, doxastic, semantic.
“It is impossible for the same attribute at once to belong and not to belong to the same thing and in the same relation” (Metaphysics IV 3 1005b19–20).
“it is impossible for anyone to suppose that the same thing is and is not” (Metaphysics IV 3 1005b24 cf.1005b29–30. Emphasis added).”
“And since the contradiction of a statement cannot be true at the same time of the same thing, it is obvious that contraries cannot apply at the same time to the same thing.” (Metaphysics IV 6 1011b13–20).
Quotes are from the Tredennick translation (1933) as found on the Perseus Website.
The law of noncontradiction has to apply at the level of ontology. An object that exists and has certain attributes is not non-existent and lacking those attributes. As Conze puts it:
"We cannot judge that the same man is learned and is also not learned at the same time and in relation to the same group of facts, because in fact he is learned and cannot be not learned at the same time and in relation to the same group of facts" (1934: 207. Emphasis in the original).
At the level of belief, if one rejected it, one's thoughts would be disordered. I cannot logically believe that God exists and that God does not exist, though of course I can be undecided for various reasons. Aristotle notably makes a distinction between what someone says and what they believe. He is thinking of the latter, since lies are eminently possible.
And it must apply at the level of assertion because if it is not true then no communication would be possible. Communication depends on agreements amongst a language using community on what linguistic signs mean. If the law of noncontradiction does not hold then no such agreement is possible.
The principle goes deeper than this. Being fundamental, it must apply to all things and the commonality of all things is their existence. This principle can be stated as "Being is not and cannot be non-being" (Conze 1934: 208). Although, as we will see, Conze never accepted the universal validity of this and states the opposite in his Heart Sutra commentary using a reduction of Suzuki's logic of sokuhi, i.e. "A is not-A" (on which see Suzuki, Negation, and Bad Buddhist Philosophy).
Although we cannot argue for the law of noncontradiction on first principles, there are some approaches to justifying it.
Arguments for the Law of Noncontradiction
As evidence for the applicability of the axiom, we can cite the fact that reality is somewhat comprehensible, our thoughts are somewhat ordered, and communication is somewhat possible. Unlike traditional transcendental arguments I am hedging here (using "somewhat") and I will get into this shortly. The point is that with effort we can attain a very high degree of comprehensibility as represented in a vast body of mathematical formulae used in science to describe patterns of regularity we experience when we examine the universe. The intricate web of computers and communications networks that we call the Internet is one physical manifestation of this. If the principle of noncontradiction did not hold, something like the internet would be impossible. Some level of order is required, and though in practical terms this need not be absolute, it must be substantial.
Now let's address the issue of hedging. Aristotelian logic is the foundation of modern logic, it is not the whole of modern logic. The problem with reality is that our knowledge of it is necessarily indirect and incomplete. Aristotle sets out the ideal case in which we have perfect knowledge and reason infallibly. This is useful because it is a model for how things work under ideal conditions. If we did solve problems using reasoning, this is what it would look like. Of course we have known since the mid 1960s that this is not how we solve problems and that 90% of us routinely fall for simple logical fallacies.
We always operate at some remove from the ideal. Our knowledge is inevitably partial, and there is always the possibility of unknown unknowns (aka the black swan effect). Still, the fact that reality is comprehensible at all is a sign that Aristotle's ideal is relevant to our world. The better our knowledge of the world, the closer we can come to this ideal.
Aristotle dismisses the idea that this axiom requires proof. It cannot be proved because it has to be in place in order for the notion of proving something to mean anything. However, what we can do is refute the opposite. Consider the contrary, i.e. the case where logical contradiction is the norm, i.e. A is not-A. In this case, whatever is true is also false. And whatever is false is also true. One could never know anything because whatever one knew would ipso facto also be unknown. One could not get out of bed in the morning because neither "bed" nor "morning" would stand for anything. Bed and not-bed are indistinguishable. If contradiction is the norm, then one is in a realm of utter nihilism. If what I said could mean literally anything at all, then utterances would convey no information. A lie would be true and a truth would be a lie; "turn left in 200m" would be indistinguishable from "eat a peach while the sun is out" or "the yellow flower is wilting".
Refuting the contrary does not prove the proposition. All we can say is that any scenario in which the law does not hold would be incomprehensible. And since our world is comprehensible, we have to assume that the law holds.
In his rejection of the law of noncontradiction, Conze takes an exclusively logical approach and in particular his argument against the law of noncontradiction rests on the absolute validity of the law of noncontradiction. Aristotle warned against exactly this: "You cannot engage in argument unless you rely on [the law of noncontradiction]. Anyone who claims to reject [the law of noncontradiction] 'for the sake of argument' is similarly misguided." ‒ Gottlieb (2019).
Another reason that we might hedge on noncontradiction in the modern world is quantum physics. In this branch of physics we describe the state of a subatomic entity using the Schrödinger equation, and this gives us the probability of, for example, finding a given particle at any point in space at any given time. Unfortunately, the Schrödinger equation usually has more than one valid answer. Physicists typically take this to have an ontological counterpart in which the particle is in multiple locations (or states) called a superposition. However, once the particle (or the system of interest) interacts with its environment, then the possibilities collapse to one state with 100% certainty. Again this is interpreted as an ontology in which the interaction causes the cloud of possibilities to collapse down to one, also known as the collapse of the "wave function". This term "wave function" is confusingly used both for the abstract mathematics that describes the state of the particle and for the corresponding physical reality. In this view, the wave function is the particle or, more importantly, the particle is a wave function. The nature of subatomic entities is wave functions in fields.
In the famous thought experiment, Schrödinger's cat is alive and dead at the same time, breaking the law of noncontradiction. This was intended as a criticism of the idea that "observation" caused the collapse of the wave function. Eugene Wigner went further and suggested that the observation had to be made by a sentient being, that somehow "consciousness" caused the collapse of wave functions. Not only was Wigner's wrinkle nonsense, but it is generally considered that the whole idea of observation is poorly defined, discussed in vague terms, and doesn't qualify as science. Still, we are left with the fact that, in quantum metaphysics, reality behaves in counterintuitive ways that apparently break the law of noncontradiction.
Think about a visual observation. A photon leaves the system of interest and strikes the retina, and causes an electrochemical cascade partly shaped by the frequency of the photon and what kind of cell it hit. This cascade arrives in the visual cortex and is interpreted as a visual stimulus. At no point does the eye or brain physically interact with the system. The eye is a passive receiver. Wigner wanted to say, and many people wanted to believe, that looking at something (or perceiving it) changes it. In reality the causality is the other way around. Changes in the system, resulting in the emission or reflection of photons, cause us to observe the system. Without that change our eye receives no photons. So observation by a human being cannot be the cause of anything.
Conze was certainly ignorant of quantum physics and did not invoke it in his work. On the other hand, Aristotle was concerned only with the visible world and with the functioning of human reasoning as understood in his time. Which brings us to Conze's views on Aristotle.
Conze's Rejection of the Principle of Noncontradiction
Conze has said that all of his later thinking is contained in Der Satz vom Widerspruch. The book purports to be a Marxist critique of Aristotle. Typically, Marxists eschew the mechanical materialism of the nineteenth century and replace it with a materialism inspired by Hegel. In Hegel's dialectic, opposites (thesis and antithesis) clash and this leads to a resolution in which the extremes are unified (synthesis).
Marx and Engels "stressed the dialectical development of human knowledge, socially acquired in the course of practical activity [and] social practice alone provides the test of the correspondence of idea with reality—i.e., of truth." Britannica. This aspect of their thought is distinct from historical materialism and class struggle.
Conze attempts to explain human knowledge as a clash between magic and logic. However, rather than casting them in a dialectical relationship, which would see the triumph of a synthesis of the two, Conze sees the clash of thesis and antithesis as leading to the hegemony of one or the other. And as a result Conze is caught in a cleft stick. On one side is the hegemony of logic, which Conze loathes but relies on to make his point; on the other is the hegemony of magic, something he believes in but cannot use to make his argument (since magical arguments are not persuasive). Conze makes no bones about his view that magic is superior to logic. He outspokenly asserted this superiority in his Prajñāpāramitā work, despite continuing to tacitly use logic throughout. Using logic to show how logic doesn't work is not a very convincing rhetorical strategy.
Thus, also though the idea that truth is socially defined might have some merit, the argument that this leads us to necessarily abandoning the law of noncontradiction is still nonsensical. Rather, noncontradiction becomes even more important as a yardstick for truth. In the most extreme version of this approach, truth is that which does not contradict social norms. Even if we accept the full-on relativism of Conze's Marxism, the social nature of logic does not eliminate the need for the law of noncontradiction. The hardcore relativist imagines that they stand outside any system and can see the merits of each. This God's eye view is a nonsense however. Despite being a refugee, Conze was very much a man of his time, culture, and class, i.e. a minor German aristocrat of the early 20th Century. Conze's views on truth are just as socially conditioned as anyone else's.
Unfortunately, Conze's antipathy to science has blinded him to the possibility that some observations are not culturally defined. Everyone experiences gravity, for example, and if they took the time to measure it, everyone would find that the acceleration due to gravity is ~ 9.8 ms-2. We may have different accounts of gravity, but some are more accurate than others. As I pointed out in my article on Conze, the historian Carl R. Trueman makes the salient point that objectivity is not neutral or unbiased (2010: 27ff). Objectivity by its very nature excludes the majority of explanations. Objectively, magic is not real; astrology does not describe the influence of the planets on human beings, and "A is not-A" is nonsense.
Marxist ideas about materialism assert an objective world existing independently of the mind with the corollary that mind can exist independently of matter. The latter idea has long been disproved, but in the 1930s there may well have been educated people who sincerely believed in it. Conze, rejected the idea of an objective world, and instead substituted a magical world. To Conze, such ideas were axiomatic and he made no attempt to defend them. He simply asserted the existence of magic and of a magical reality. Citing my essay on Conze's place in Prajñāpāramitā research:
As he says, his “life-long acceptance of magic... has not been so much due to theoretical considerations as to the early acquired intuitive certainty that beyond, or behind, the veil of the deceptive sensory appearances, there lies a reality of magical, or occult, forces” ( Conze 1979: I 32). And in his view science “…has little cognitive value, but is rather a bag of tricks invented by God-defying people to make life increasingly unbearable on Earth and finally to destroy it” (1979: I 32).
These words were written at the end of his life, but they do appear to reflect an attitude that is apparent in his early philosophical work (1934, 1935, 1937).
It is true that magical thinking exists even today. I know many people who sincerely believe that the Heart Sutra is magical and who assume that by studying it some of that magic will rub off on me. And when I shrug and say, "magic isn't real", they are genuinely dismayed. Just because some people are attracted to the idea does not mean that magic is real or the magical thinking is appropriate to decision making. Generally speaking, magical thinking leads to poor decisions.
Seeing Conze's work on Prajñāpāramitā in the light of his earlier work, as he suggested, is instructive. He is already using the terms "God", "the One", and "the Absolute" as synonyms when talking about mysticism in his 1934 presentation to the Aristotelian Society. Clearly he is drawing on several different traditions: Christianity, Neoplatonism, German idealism, and Theosophy. He even cites Mahāyāna Buddhism in passing. It is useful to read this paper since it helps us understand Conze's turn to Buddhism in terms of his earlier embrace of mysticism, which he defines as a state of "complete union with God, with the One". One can see much of his later attitude to Prajñāpāramitā in these earlier works. In another early essay, Conze notes, for example, the tendency of Mahāyāna Buddhism (amongst other ideologies) to what he calls mystical pantheism:
"Mysticism develops into mystical pantheism under two conditions, namely, that the state of ecstasy is considered to give a true, the only true image of reality, and further that the one object of ecstasy is expressly stated to include all reality." (1935: 212)
He also says:
"Generally mystical pantheists do not devote much attention to the consequences of their ideas on logical thinking, its categories and laws." (1935: 212)
This describes the later Conze and the way he writes about the Heart Sutra in 1946. For Conze, the mystical pantheist, "nothing except the One and infinite Absolute" exists and:
"All differences are then absolutely reduced to nought. Since contradictions are not possible without differences, the [law of noncontradiction] is meaningless and inapplicable." (1935: 212)
In effect, Conze shoehorns the epistemic rhetoric of Prajñāpāramitā into his own idiosyncratic mystical metaphysics. In my article I called this Conze's idiodoxy. Behind all of Conze's meandering thought is a conviction that reality is magical.
Now I could work through Conze's argument, taking it point by point. But we can short circuit this discussion by taking a step back. Conze's argument is, in immortal words of Michael Palin, "a series of connected statements intended to establish a definite proposition". Conze's aim is to discredit logic itself and to propose magic as the viable alternative, but in doing so he used a logical argument. Moreover, his target is specifically the principle of noncontradiction. "The validity of thought has a social origin and meaning... the delusion that a supersocial validity can be reached [using logic] has its social roots" (1934: 42).
In Conze's view, validity is merely a matter of belief. And belief is a matter of social convention. In his view if we all decided that logic was not valid, then it would not be. And this is how he imagines the world working prior to the systematisation of reasoning in ancient Athens. He argues that before logic, people lived by magical thinking rather than using reason. And moreover logic is inimical to magic:
Magic and logic are irreconcilable and unintelligible in terms of one another... this mutual hostility between them makes it impossible to regard magic as a form of logic or logic as a form of magic. (1934: 33)
In other words, there is a contradiction between magic and logic. And this concrete contradiction is central to Conze's argument that the principle of contradiction is not valid. Worse, if we say that the principle of noncontradiction does not hold, then it is equally valid to say that it does hold. If we allow contradiction, the result is nonsense. Conze wants to distinguish magical thinking from logical thinking, but a consequence of his conclusion is that logical thinking is magical thinking. In other words Conze is deeply confused about logic. And as noted there is nothing dialectical about this approach. Conze is not interested in synthesis, he is interested in defending magic.
Some will say that in jumping to the end I have misrepresented Conze's argument. So, even though the conclusion is self-defeating and based on false assumptions, I want to loop back for a brief look at that argument. There is some merit in locating logic or at least reasoning in the social sphere. Long time readers of mine will recall my enthusiasm for the work of Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber (2011, 2017). Like Conze, Mercier and Sperber attack the classical understanding of reasoning. However, they do not share Conze's ulterior motive.
Classically, reason is a faculty of pure logic, free from external influences such as emotions, beliefs, or social conditions. Mercier and Sperber show that evidence has been accumulating from the mid 1960s decisively showing that this faculty doesn't exist. We can use logic, but most of us do not use it routinely. What we call reasoning has two aspects in their thought. In their earlier work (2011) they made the case that reasoning evolved to assist group decision making. Members of a group will propose different courses of action and then the group will use reason to weigh the relative merits of each proposition. In this view reasoning is social and even argumentative. By contrast, individual problem-solving tends to be based on "on intuitions of relevance." (Mercier & Sperber 2017: 43). The later work (2017) characterises reasoning as a process of producing reasons for actions after the fact. The evidence on reasoning shows that our decision making is based on many unconscious inferential processes. We decide and then, if need be, we produce reasons that seem to plausibly account for our behaviour.
This critique by Mercier and Sperber is compelling but it is a critique of the classical view of reason. It is not, as I understand it, a critique of logic per se. Logic is affected by fuzziness and quantum uncertainty or indeterminacy but it is more or less intact as a way of validating reasoning processes. It is simply that people don't actually use logic that much unless trained to do so and then mostly in formal situations: e.g. when presented with a syllogism in a logic class. Mercier and Sperber are not interested, per Conze, in eliminating logic in favour of magic. Logic, in its modern guise, is intact. Rather it is the idea of humans as logic users that comes into question. The inferential processes we do use are not magic, they are heuristic. They are rules of thumb for surviving in the wild.
When we take Conze seriously as a philosopher we rapidly encounter all kinds of problems. It is no wonder, therefore, that his later works on Prajñāpāramitā were so confused and misleading. It is not simply that Conze did not pay attention to detail (by his own admission) with the result that his editions are faulty. It is not that his translations are execrable, barely qualify as English, and misrepresent the source texts in numerous ways. All of this is true. But taking into account his earlier work we can see Conze as pursuing an agenda that preceded and guided all his work on Buddhist texts and his interpretation of Mahāyāna Buddhism.
His agenda is anachronistic. Conze imagines a golden age of magical thought and pines for it though he missed it by at least 2500 years. Worse, there is simply no evidence for his assertion that before logic was formalised in Athens people relied on magical thinking. Moreover, the argument is based on a now discredited understanding of what reasoning is. We evolved the capacity for speech, reasoning and inferential decision-making processes as part of becoming anatomically modern humans in Africa ca 200,000 years ago. These attributes didn't suddenly appear in Athens in 500 BC.
Magical thinking was undoubtedly present in the human intellect before the modern era and indeed well beyond it. Some people still childishly want magic to be real (and want Buddhism to be magical). An intellectual who rejects logic in favour of magical thinking now looks quaintly ridiculous. So does a Marxist who rejects materialism and dialectical arguments, nor less a Marxist who was bourgeoisie in his bones and never lost the attitudes and values of the German upper classes.
The eleventh century Persian polymath, Avicenna (aka Ibn Sina) had a plan for dealing with people who share Conze's rejection of Aristotle's law of noncontradiction, i.e.
“The obdurate one must be subjected to the conflagration of fire, since ‘fire’ and ‘not fire’ are one. Pain must be inflicted on him through beating, since ‘pain’ and ‘no pain’ are one. And he must be denied food and drink, since eating and drinking and the abstention from both are one and the same.”—Avicenna (2005: 43).
It was this that inspired my paraphrase of the easily misunderstood old Zen maxim "If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him." If you meet Conze on the road burn him, beat him, and starve him until he admits that burning is different from not burning, beating is different from not-beating, and starving is different from not starving.
Unfortunately, we cannot put Conze the man through the ordeal of fire. We can, however, read and critically evaluate his oeuvre. If, as his acolytes say, Conze is a scholar of the highest rank, a veritable genius, with insight into the true nature of reality, then this critical examination can only further glorify His presence amongst us. However, if I am right then critical evaluation will topple Conze and the pedestal that devotees have placed him on. Very few people ever take the time to read Conze at all, let alone critically. Which means that his mistakes go unnoticed by the majority even when they have been pointed out in print. I have searched in vain for any mention of his philosophical works, any attempt to compare his earlier and later phases, or any critical evaluation of his contribution.
In writing critically about Conze, I see two main responses. One from scholars who work in or near Prajñāpāramitā, which is "about time someone said this". However, for the most part people are unwilling to openly criticise Conze. A few examples exist of people listing faults in his editions or translations, but these are almost inevitably accompanied by supplication and homage to Conze. I don't bow before false idols.
The other response is from Conze acolytes who see my critical reflections as mere "hostility". This group appear to be shocked to discover a dissenting voice and view it as an expression of emotion rather than intellect. For true believers it seems to be difficult to imagine anyone who refuses to assent to Conze's self-confessed greatness. And this means that they don't engage with the content of my literary and philosophical criticism. In this sense, support for Conze has a cult-like quality to it. In the light of this, I have begun to see this aspect of my work as an attempt to normalise criticism of Conze so that we can get it all out in the open.
In reality, I'm not particularly interested in Conze, Mahāyāna, or the Heart Sutra. These are simply vehicles for writing. My personal approach to Buddhism is far more rooted in Pāli texts and my understanding of early Buddhism gained through exploring ideas on those texts. Until discovering Conze's mistakes in the Heart Sutra, unnoticed by all and sundry for 70 years, I saw myself as following in the footsteps of Richard Gombrich and Sue Hamilton (Richard having been an informal mentor since we met in 2006). I have a certain amount of animus towards bullies but I'm mostly just shocked by the disparity between the poor quality of Conze's work and the superlatives that continue to be heaped on him. I'm more motivated by trying to resolve the cognitive dissonance created by this disparity than about hatred of Conze.
~~oOo~~
Bibliography
Aristotle. 1933. Aristotle in 23 Volumes, Vols.17, 18, translated by Hugh Tredennick. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. Reprinted 1989. As found on the Perseus Website.
Avicenna. 2005. The Metaphysics of The Healing. Translated by Michael E. Marmura. Provo, Utah. Brigham Young University Press.
Attwood, J. 2020. "Edward Conze: A Call to Reassess the Man and his Contribution to Prajñāpāramitā Studies." JOCBS 19: 22–51. http://jocbs.org/index.php/jocbs/article/view/223
Conze, E. 1932. Der Satz vom Widerspruch: Zur Theorie des Dialektischen Materialism. Hamburg. Reprinted 1976 by Frankfurt: Neue Kritik.
———. 1934. "Social Implications of Logical Thinking". Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 35, 23-44. Retrieved February 4, 2021, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/4544248
———. 1935. "The Objective Validity of the Principle of Contradiction." Philosophy, 10(38): 205-218.
———. 1937" Social Origins of Nominalism ," Marxist Quarterly (January-March, 1937), pp. 115-124. Reprinted in Further Buddhist Studies.
———. 1953. “The Ontology of the Prajñāpāramitā.” Philosophy East and West 3(2): 117-129.
———. 1979. Memoires of a Modern Gnostic. Parts I and II. Privately Published.
———. 2016. The Principle of Contradiction. Translated by Holger Heine. Lanham MD: Lexington Books.
Gottlieb, Paula. 2019. "Aristotle on Non-contradiction", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Edited by Edward N. Zalta https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2019/entries/aristotle-noncontradiction
Heine, Holger. 2016. "Aristotle, Marx, Buddha: Edward Conze's Critique of the Principle of Contradiction." In Conze (2016: xiii-lxiii).
Mercier, Hugo & Sperber, Dan. (2011) 'Why Do Humans Reason. Arguments for an Argumentative Theory.' Behavioral and Brain Sciences. 34: 57 – 111. doi:10.1017/S0140525X10000968. Available from Dan Sperber's website.
Mercier, Hugo & Sperber, Dan. (2017) The Enigma of Reason: A New Theory of Human Understanding. Allen Lane.
Trueman, Carl R. 2010. Histories and Fallacies: Problems Faced in the Writing of History. Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway.
