good evening everybody
I’m I’m very happy to be here tonight
and to share in fact a topic with you
that I’ve been interested in probably
for a very long time at least dating 20
years back to my studies in Austria than
in France and in Canada and in Italy and
then finally working around the world
and coming to Macau but it’s it was in a
way a secret to me for a long time this
topic and I only recently brought it to
the open for myself so I hope that
sharing this research that I did for a
long time looking in particular as my
background is in law for finding good
laws as a basis for making good
decisions for being right or wrong or or
making the just decision or an unjust
decision I was like very often
encountering a similar problem a similar
phenomenon that I later started to trace
and will hopefully present in a book
this year so to begin with I will be
talking about the oxymoron the force of
an open secret so the open secret let me
start with that is an oxymoron and I
will talk to tell you later what an
oxymoron is precisely but an open secret
made me think especially this evening of
the force of gravity that was already
mentioned in the context of physics
because gravity is not a secret
it was always probably since the Big
Bang with us but it was probably since
Isaac Newton that it became a known
force it came to the open so this is a
kind of contradiction that sometimes it
may happen that we look for things and I
was looking for things and then I
realized I was holding in my hand the
whole day and this is somehow the
phenomena of an open secret I think or
sometimes the best
way of hiding things is pretty much in
the open but what about force and the
force that I’m interested in is in
particular the force of language and
because language serves as a very not
the only one but a very important tool
for communicating ideas and expressing
ideas there are many other forms but in
law in particular and also in daily life
communication language is very important
and this open secret as a force in
nature was also mentioned by the German
poet wolfgang goethe and good was a
master I think of language in many ways
and it’s not surprising that he chose an
oxymoron to describe the nature we live
in and that surrounds us so what is an
oxymoron precisely an oxymoron is in a
way a kind of paradox have you heard of
paradox as well both terms are used to
express kind of contradictions there are
many more such rhetorical figures of
speech that kind of transcend this black
and white thinking that we used to when
it’s it’s a little bit of both it’s a
bit different shades of grey or so so
the oxymoron was a name though that show
off among all these contradictions in
terms or paradoxes and other such
figures of speech because it is one word
usually but because we have different
languages in this world and not every
language has the same grammar logic and
terms I have in a way try to summarize
all these different rhetorical figures
of speech expressing contradictions as
essentially oxymoronic concepts so
tonight I will talk about AXA more
broadly but it is important to know
there is a difference between an
oxymoron strictly speaking and a paradox
both Express contradictions but you can
see a paradox maybe a whole sentence
maybe a whole book telling you about the
contradictory side of life and in
between we have an a kind of combination
between two words but you have seem Iran
is a show of because it’s one word and
now
what does oxymoron mean oxymoron means
basically smart and foolish or stupid in
one word that is the etymological origin
in Greek language so it’s a kind of I
couldn’t find really a noun in English
that the only one I think it that would
be possible to compare to the oxymoron
would be a smartass because as is
usually the donkey the animal which
somehow has not a very smart reputation
but basically you get the idea it’s a
one word expressing two opposite things
and this of course is has has important
repercussions for our life because we
are and especially in law but in science
too we want to know is something good or
bad is it right or wrong and so on and
so forth
but we will not may be so sure that
already we are surrounded by a lot of
products or phenomena that in our daily
life in advertising that are similar
think about going to a coffee shop
Frappuccino
a frappe is usually an iced milkshake
and a cappuccino the way I used to know
it was always a hot coffee drink but now
it’s kind of both at the same time or
iced tea or even you may drive here with
a card which is a sports utility vehicle
and that means the sports kind the truck
put into one also quite opposite I think
categories of vehicles you may be
looking at the Eurovision Song Contest
in 2014 and see my fellow country man
winning it being visually and literally
an oxymoron and then you may also get a
tattoo and have the same visual and
literal oxymoron of hate love so they
are around us and we may not always be
aware of it what about other areas and
here I gave you a selection I’ve done a
lot of research I found at least simply
in 400 real court cases in the United
States alone I’ve found a mention of
oxymoron but in the arts you have
Shakespeare poets like good many of them
using oxymora as a basically powerful
forceful
two of language but also music think
about the piano the piano comes from the
term the Italian term pianoforte and
piano means basically silent and forth
aloud so it’s an oxymoron because you
can play loud and silent and everything
in between or you may watch a movie True
Lies I don’t know if you’ve seen it
also a fellow country men of mine is
playing in it Arnold Schwarzenegger and
then in science and that is surprising
because science is really about
precision about black and white about is
it like a force of this effusion or
efficient we heard this morning but here
we have also concepts like constant
change the only certainty we have is
uncertainty is constant change or we
heard already also today that Einstein
was traded in bringing space-time
together but for a long time space and
time I think were considered very
separate very different dimensions and
then what about black light is there
black light anyone knows I read black
light is actually UV light the light you
may see in a discotheque maybe or so it
exists it’s a contradiction but it
exists and then politics localization we
usually talk about globalization I once
published an article and then when I got
the proofs the localization was
corrected to globalization they thought
I had a typo but it was on purpose
because especially a place like Macau is
very local think about it in terms of
Macau is small it’s a Special
Administrative Region of the People’s
Republic the Republic of China but it’s
also a global player it’s a membrane
international organizations like the
World Trade Organization and then
recently I also came across
unfortunately the term United Nations
can be considered and an oxymoron
because even though we all United on
this planet very often the nation’s
nationalism divides all of us again and
then another remarkable challenge I
think in logical terms is to one of
sustainable development we heard now
tourism sustainability sustainable
development is a very very serious
challenge and sustainable development
means basically to
change without changing so another
contradiction and then economics also
Macau very interesting place of the
creative industries creative economy
being mentioned and being put in place
you know like you can see it not far
from here and this is also kind of
considered an oxymoron because became it
evolved from the concept of culture
industry and culture and industry where
for a very long time separated in in the
treatment and the consideration because
culture was for pleasure not for money
and the industry was made usually manual
work and for for money also prosumer is
another example we are now no longer
just dealing with the dichotomy the
differences between producers and
consumers think about the social media
we all presume us we produce content we
upload it to our Facebook or other such
media and we consume it but to be get
paid for it know that the payment goes
between advertisement and the platform
provider usually so there are important
changes happening to and in law too
just to give an example the creative
economy is very much related to
intellectual property and property is
usually you own something tangible like
land can object a car
and but how do you like be in a way
process an idea that you have like may
be expressed and so on and for that we
have a term which is pretty much like
oxymoronic as well or we say lawyers
write briefs this is a summary of a case
usually and it comes it means letter or
summary when it comes from the Latin
word for short but usually you know
lawyers long write very short it’s very
long so it’s another contradiction as is
soft law because law is supposed to be
hard and not soft because if it’s soft
it’s good to see and not law so you see
there are some examples I could go on
speaking about many more I’m basically
trying to I’m discovering them
everywhere around and I believe this
some summarizes it from an article that
I published some years ago namely that
really like having not only been a
dominant force in the arts in poetry
they are now also becoming a force in
science and even in law and other areas
and you can just make yourself a test go
to google google books
our web page of the library put in
paradox or oxymoron and you will find a
lot of titles of scientific works being
published so if they are used what is
their impact do they have a message that
they convey to us is there something we
can learn from them and that is
something where I am very grateful to a
student of mine last semester who
attended my course on the global global
justice and the creative economy here
and who referred to these Japanese
photographer and researcher who does an
interesting experiment I think he takes
pictures of water being frozen and also
being basically exposed to music or
sound of language and then you see the
difference in the crystal materializing
so maybe this is a way to visualize the
force of language of sound there’s also
a term called cymatics where you can do
the same thing if you put sand on a
loudspeaker and you see it will build
the sound waves build patterns usually
but here you see that different
languages for the same word of thanking
someone have different outcomes visually
and then I was thinking is it
coincidence that the human body and
maybe the whole planet are made of
seventy percent roughly of of water so
does our language the old chitchat we do
every day have an impact on us and does
it have an impact on the world as a
whole and finally to conclude what is
the difference that these oxymora can
make if language makes a difference does
a language that is contradictory make a
difference to our lives basically if I
express something smart and stupid all
the time can I make sense and I believe
as we can see here from three paintings
like one by Caravaggio in a very long
time ago more than 500 years
than when they migrate the Belgium
painter like transcending the mere
opposition between a reflection you and
your reflection into something quite
surreal and then finally this is a
painting by my father like expressing in
my view one eye closed one eye open an
open secret and I think what this means
is that this new language that is
spreading namely oxymora paradoxes come
through various contradictions in terms
mean we should probably also start to
accept contradictions more in order to
reveal and bring out more secrets to the
open like that an open secret is not a
contradiction it’s it’s it’s a mandate
it’s a chance to be curious and to risk
to do research and to enrich our
understanding and hopefully also
challenge deal with important challenges
like those of sustainable development to
make the United Nations not a
contradiction in terms and to me to do
many other creative and wonderful things
in the future so I hope there’s
something that you can discover around
you and I hope you will see many of
these oxymora around you and I’m happy
if you let me know if you do because I’m
very interested in them thank you very
much and have a nice evening [Applause]