Giuseppe Tulli

Homo contradictorius Giuseppe Tulli

Modern physics only recently discovered that sub-atomic reality is complementary. Actually, this is an established knowledge in traditional mythology, as most conspicuously illustrated in the Chinese diagram of the tao, showing complete reality as the interaction of the yin and yang opposite principles. Ancient Greek pre-Socratic philosophers, particularly Heraclitus and Empedocles, also conceived the world as a "unity of opposites". But then the great discovery of ancient Greek philosophy by Plato and Aristotle was the contradiction underlying man, whereas complementarity was just assumed, or only marginally addressed. Modern philosophy then only built upon this basis, while modern science has relied ultimately on mathematics, established as an exclusive reality in contradiction to the world, yet fully explaining it. It does, in fact, because it's complementary itself.

Modern knowledge thus just assumes complementarity and contradiction without further ado. But why is the world complementary? And why does contradiction take place in it? Contradiction means precisely the separation from the "unity of opposites" of complementarity, which is actually necessary for knowledge. And as knowledge is complementary itself then the ultimate sense of contradiction is to resolve into complementarity again. Or as simply stated by Friedrich Nietzsche: "Nature needs knowledge"; that is, it needs contradiction in order to "know itself". Indeed, it can be proved that complementarity in the world leads inevitably to contradiction, whence the world can ultimately be determined itself completely, or universally, from complementarity.

Nietzsche's "artistic philosophy" developed precisely the consciousness of contradiction as the "bridge" towards the "knowledge of nature of itself". Man is such a "bridge". But the task of resolving it still lies ahead, still is the "philosophy of the future". What is at stake therefore is rediscovering contradiction on the basis of complementarity, and then to complete the full course of nature, i.e. from complementarity to contradiction to complementarity. This book offers an approximation, with an elucidation of the contradictory expressions of man's knowledge. And then of human society itself and its future.