Gaston Milhaud rejects the principle of contradiction if it is conceived as an absolute and universal rule. He claims that it only holds in some narrowly defined circumstances. According to him, the greater is mental contribution to an act of cognition the more appropriate is the application of the principle of contradiction. My analysis of his views shows that he wanted to emphasize the differences between the objective reality and its mental or linguistic representations rather than undermine the logical principle of contradiction. Parallels can be noted between Milhaud’s views on contradiction and Leon Chwistek’s theory of the multiplicity of realities, as well as Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz’s concept of the cognitive role of language.

The article is an attempt to define reduction – a phenomenological methodological device – as the beginning of philosophy. The author considers such questions as: What motivates a phenomenologist to do reduction? Can one speak of philosophy before reduction? What is the essence of reduction? To answer these questions the author refers to Edmund Husserl and Jan Patočka, and tries to show that reduction is to be understood as an unmotivated expression of philosopher’s determination to overcome evidence inherent to natural attitude. The author argues that reduction enables one to perform a conceptualization of the world as such. Finally, reduction is defined as an attempt to take thinking seriously.