 Hamann’s tool for conceiving the interrelation of these dimensions of human life increasingly was the Principle of the Union of Opposites. He writes approvingly of this principle to his friends; particularly after his encounter with Kant’s new epistemology, claiming to value it more than the principles of contradiction and of sufficient reason, and indeed more than the whole Kantian Critique (ZH 5, 327:12ff; ZH 4, 462:7–8). Contradictions and apparent oppositions fill our experience: