antinomy
nounUS, UK /ænˈtɪn.ə.mi/
Etymology
Learned borrowing from Latin antinomia, from Ancient Greek ἀντινομία (antinomía), from ἀντι- (anti-, prefix meaning ‘against’) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *h₂ent- (“face; forehead; front”)) + νόμος (nómos, “custom, usage; law, ordinance”) + -ῐ́ᾱ (-ĭ́ā, suffix forming feminine abstract nouns), with νόμος (nómos) derived from νέμω (némō, “to deal out, dispense, distribute”) (from Proto-Indo-European *nem- (“to distribute; to give; to take”)) + -ος (-os, suffix forming nouns indicating actions or their results). The English word may be analysed as anti- (prefix meaning ‘against; opposite of’) + -nomy (suffix indicating a system of laws, rules, or knowledge about a body of a particular field).
Archaic A contradiction within a law, or between different laws; also, a contradiction between authorities.
Broadly Any contradiction or paradox.
- The Antinomians: These Gospell-truths, these sweet Sermons of Free-grace, that setting up of naked Christ on his Throne, which hath seduced so many thousands of well-meaning souls, do now appear in their own colours, and to any common eye may be seen to be nothing but the grosse Antinomy of the old Libertines.1645, Robin Jeffs, Fast sermons to Parliament, page 14:
- There is, notwithstanding, a sort of Manicheism in genius, as there is the antinomy in science, as there are light and shade in art, as there are opposite and similarly appearing movements in life, as there are diverse and simultaneous springs in the human conscience, as there are attraction and repulsion in the sidereal worlds, as there are multiferous and heterogeneous forces that resolve themselves into astonishing antithetic duality .1888, José M. Aguirre, An Open Letter to James G. Blaine, page 27:
2 more examples
- Slowly, the term reveals itself as an expression of fundamental tensions and deep structural antinomies: between the sacred and the profane, purity and impurity, morality and immorality, cleanliness and dirt. In conjoining such primal opposites into a single category, white trash names a kind of disturbing liminality a monstrous, transgressive identity of mutually violating boundary terms, a dangerous threshold state of being neither one nor the other.2006, Matt Wray, Not Quite White, page 2:
- But in fact the antinomy of exceptionalism and assimilationism has been there all along, and otherwise puzzling decisions from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries become readily understandable when seen as moments when assimilationism was ascendant.2024 September 30, Michael Doran, “EXCEPTIONALISM AND ASSIMILATIONISM IN FEDERAL INDIAN LAW”, in Stanford Law School, volume 20, number 2, page 268, archived from the original on 24 Feb 2025:
Epistemology, Human sciences, Logic, Mathematics, Philosophy, Sciences Broadly, Specifically In the thought of the German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804): an apparent contradiction between valid conclusions; a paradox.
- This introduces the antinomy that has followed us through the whole study. The solution of this antinomy is found in making the Not-me, which interrupts self-consciousness, really reflect self-consciousness, by manifesting the nature of the I—in other words, by making it conform to the ideal of the soul.1884, Charles Carroll Everett, Fichte’s Science of Knowledge: A Critical Exposition, page 12:
- Of the work that has been done on the liar antinomy, possibly the most profound and certainly the most influential has been that of Tarski1991, Vann McGee, Truth, Vagueness, & Paradox: An Essay on the Logic of Truth, page 67:
- Derived terms
- antinomic, antinomical, antinomically, Russell's antinomy
- Related terms
- antinome, antinomian, antinomianism, antinomist, antinomistic