Eduard von Hartmann complained in the nineteenth century that it was impossible to argue against the Hegelians. Since they had abandoned the law of contradiction, they had removed all limits from thought. It would have been pointless, therefore, on the part of any critic ever to accuse them of being wrong, for there was no conclusion that (granted their standpoint) could not be derived from any principle whatsoever. 1 Hartmann's criticism, of course, is much too facile—at least if directed specifically against Hegel. It is true that in some passages of his writings contradiction is said to be the soul of reality. If one were to pay atten tion to these passages alone, the conclusion might well be drawn that'Hegel has denied tout court (as Hartmann would have it) the tradi tional principle of contradiction. But there are numerous other texts in which Hegel claims, with no apparent awareness of being inconsistent, that certain forms that the object of consciousness or consciousness itself assume in the course of their development collapse because they have incurred contradiction. In these passages Hegel is clearly making use of the principle of contradiction as traditionally understood. And if they are taken as normative for an interpretation of Hegel's thought, the latter cannot be said to have departed (at least not in its basic prin ciples) from traditional metaphysics. 2 Which set of texts should be taken as normative? It is this question that defines" the problem of contradiction" in Hegelian interpretation. In general critical opinion has been in favour of the second set. 3 He

1 Über die dialektische Methode. 2nd ed. Bad Sachsa 1910. 1st ed. 1868. 37 ff. 2 The second study of Grégoire's Études Hégéliennes is dedicated to this pro blem. Études Hégéliennes. Les Points Capitaux du Système. Pans et Louvain 1958. 51—102. We refer to this work for the Hegelian texts relevant to the present context. 3 For instance, TL Haering: Hegel. Sein Wollen und sein Werk. Bd 2. 620, 668—670; 7-McTaggart: Studies in the Hegelian Dialectic. Cambridge 1896. 9; GRG Mure: A Study of Hegel's Logic. Oxford 1959. 102—105. Grégoire's opinion is that although one must recognize, according to Hegel, the presence of contradiction in reality, the contradiction is there only in the process of being resolved:„... II ne pourrait s' agir de contradictions logiques dans les choses que dans le cas des