Performative contradiction are performative contradictions in this context. Habermas claims that post-modernism's epistemological relativism suffers from a performative contradiction. Hans-Hermann Hoppe claims in his theory of argumentation ethics that arguing for any political position other than free-market anarchism results in a performative contradiction. Jaakko Hintikka more rigorously fleshed out the notion of performative contradiction in analyzing Descartes' famous "cogito ergo sum" argument, concluding that "cogito ergo sum" relies on performance rather than logical inference. Performative contradiction A performative contradiction () arises when the propositional content of a statement contradicts the presuppositions of asserting it. An example of a performative contradiction is the
Cogito and the History of Madness his point of departure for "Cogito and the History of Madness" is Foucault's 1961 book "Folie et déraison". Derrida's paper primarily relies on two sections of Foucault's work, the original 1961 preface in which Foucault makes a number of general comments about the book, setting forth his intentions and methodology, and two and a half pages at the start of the second chapter where Foucault links Descartes to an historical event that silenced madness at the end of the classical age. Foucault's 1961 text was heavily abridged for a popular edition in 1964 that formed the basis for Richard Howard's