Contradiction Set Free

Book excerpt: 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.