The Unity of Opposites

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Creator:
Series Begun:
2025-09-26
Series Updated:
2026-04-03
Description:

Professors Anthony Crowley and Aziraphale Fell do not like each other.

They despise one another.

In fact, most would more than likely describe them as being mortal enemies if nothing else.

Rivals in their field of Philosophy at a prestigious university, they clash in nearly every sense of the word, doing their absolute best to either 1) go out of their way to metaphorically rip the each other to shreds, or 2) aggressively and/or spitefully avoid the other.

So what happens when one of them is rather unexpectedly chosen as Head of Department over the other?

Tensions— inevitably and ineffably— reach a breaking point.

Notes:

The Unity of Opposites is, at its simplest, a philosophical principle alleging that contradictory forces are not only interconnected, but absolutely essential to each other and their mutual existence.

The opposing elements of light and dark are an example of this concept at work: light and dark are opposite but interdependent elements, as their contrasts both illuminate and ensure the existence of the other. We wouldn’t know dark if we did not know light, therefore dark wouldn’t exist without light.

The pre Socratic Ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus is well known for exploring and expanding on this idea. He also famously claimed that strife was justice, believing that conflict between opposites can lead to order and balance, that the answer to that conflict isn’t to remove one element or to distance them, but to allow them to interact until change— or harmony— is achieved.

“There is harmony in the tension of opposites, as in the case of the bow and the lyre.”
— from Heraclitus, Fragments

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