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The criticism of dialectical logic, of its relation to formal logic, and of the evidence produced in support of its claim that was raised on all sides in the years 1946-1948, put the Marxist-Leninist dialecticians into a philosophically untenable position. Dialectical logic appeared to be a huge misunderstanding, born of terminological ambiguities, ignorance of matters of fact, logical errors, primitive misconceptions and self-contradictory claims. Although Schaff stuck to his guns, he recognised that the relation of dialectics to formal logic was an "extremely complicated question'. He pleaded for patience and suspension of judgement until some undisclosed logical and dialectical problems were solved. Self-contradiction, he stated, is self-destruction. Marxist-Leninists accepted the requirements of consistency, did not deny the importance of formal logic, and were only concerned with finding the limits of its validity¹⁰⁷.

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-010-3636-8_19

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