Opposites genuinely coincide while remaining opposites. Some philosophies tend to collapse into the monism that opposites are identical; others into the dualism that opposites remain irreconcilable and are merely, at most, juxtaposed.34 The important perception is that opposites not only co-exist, but give rise to and fulfil one another (‘sunt complementa’), and are conjoined (like the poles of a magnet) without any intervening boundary, while nonetheless remaining distinct as opposites. And indeed the more intimately they are united, the more, not the less, they are differentiated.
