On the Question of Difference and Contradiction [1]

(1937)

1

Comrade Sichi [2]:

Your book Philosophy and Life [3] is the most profound among your works. I have benefited greatly from reading it and have copied down some passages, which I am sending to you for a look to see if there are any errors in my transcription.

There is one point in it about which I have a slight doubt [4] (not a fundamental difference). Please give it further thought, and I will tell you the details in person.

When are you free today? I will come to see you.

Mao Zedong

2

The basic principle is correct, but the statement that “difference is not contradiction” is wrong. It should be said that all things that differ are contradictions under given conditions. When a person sits in a chair, wields a pen, dips it in ink, and engages in writing an essay, it is because the two given conditions—the person and the act of writing—temporarily unite the contradictory things. One cannot say that these differences are not contradictions. When a master chef cooks a meal, firewood, rice, oil, salt, soy sauce, vinegar, and tea are united under given conditions. A shop assistant and a writer can also be united under given conditions. Half work, half study can unite work and study. Difference exists in all things in the world, and under given conditions all are contradictions; therefore, difference is contradiction. This is what is meant by concrete contradiction. Ai’s formulation is inappropriate.

(Opinion of Mao Zedong)

Published according to the manuscript.

Notes

[1] The first part of this piece is a letter from Mao Zedong to Ai Sichi, probably written in October 1937. The second part is a marginal note written by Mao Zedong in September 1937 while reading Ai Sichi’s book Philosophy and Life. This note was written after the following passage in Philosophy and Life: “Things that differ are not contradictions; for example, a pen, ink, and a chair are not contradictions. But if one understands the principle of transition and change, one will know that things that differ can also transform into contradictions under given conditions. If two differing things exist together at the same time and in the same place and exert a mutually repelling effect, they become a contradiction. For example, a shop assistant and a writer originally have no contradiction, but if a certain shop assistant develops an interest in writing and wants to become a writer, the two will repel each other within a unity and thus become a contradiction....”

[2] Sichi, i.e., Ai Sichi (1910–1966), a native of Tengchong, Yunnan Province. He arrived in Yan’an in October 1937 and served as a chief instructor at the Anti-Japanese Military and Political University.

[3] Philosophy and Life was a work written by Ai Sichi, following his Popular Philosophy, in the form of answers to readers’ questions to propagate Marxist philosophy. It was published by the Shanghai Dushu Shenghuo Publishing House in April 1937. In September 1937, Mao Zedong wrote “Extracts from Ai’s Philosophy and Life,” which was published in full in the first issue of Chinese Philosophy, put out by the Sanlian Bookstore in August 1979.

[4] This refers to Mao Zedong’s query regarding Ai Sichi’s argument in Philosophy and Life that “difference is not contradiction.” For details, see the second part of this piece and Note 1.