Antithesis

Antithesis is a figure of speech, a rhetorical or literary device, in which a contrast of meaning is emphasized by a parallel in grammatical structure.

One of the best example in poetry is Alexander Pope’s description of Atticus in his Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot, “Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike.”

An example in prose is from Samuel Johnson’s Rasselas:

Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures.

Someone or something directly opposite of someone or something else is also called antithesis of each other, such as love is antithesis of selfishness, or occult is antithesis of rational.

In Hegelian philosophy, an antithesis is simply negation of the thesis which is earlier stated. An antithesis in this philosophy is the second stage of argument in the process of dialectical reasoning.