All obstinacy is an excrescence of the mind, a grandchild of passion which never did anything right. There are persons who make a war out of everything, real banditti of intercourse... they make government rebellion, and enemies out of those whom they ought to regard as children... Nothing can be done with such monsters except to flee from them.
Baltasar Gracián, 1647 (tr. Joseph Jacobs, 1892)
There is a difference between acting on knowledge and acting on obstinacy, and the maxim is scathing about the second: it is passion in disguise, and it never produces a good result. The obstinate person makes a war out of everything, needs every interaction to end in victory, and cannot simply let things be at peace. In authority this is ruinous, because it turns ordinary governance into a series of battles and makes rebels out of the people who should have been allies. The tell is the need to win rather than to be right: knowledge yields when the evidence turns, obstinacy digs in harder. Act from what you actually know, hold your position when knowledge supports it, and let it go the moment it does not, because defending a position past its evidence is not strength but the excrescence the maxim names.
Practice
- Separate the need to win from the desire to be right; if your certainty is rising while your evidence is not, that is obstinacy, not knowledge (maxim 183 stays open in mind).
- Do not make a war of every interaction; the person who must prevail on every point converts allies into opponents (maxim 135 drops the contradiction habit).
- Yield the moment knowledge turns against you; changing course on evidence is strength, and digging in is the passion this maxim condemns.
Use this when
- Use this as a self-check in disagreements, especially the ones where you feel the urge to win rather than to resolve.
- Use it in leadership, where obstinacy manufactures the rebellion it then has to fight (maxim 142 takes the right side whoever holds it).
Ignore this when
- Don't confuse firmness on evidence with obstinacy; steadfastness where knowledge supports you is not the fault (maxim 183 keeps will firm, mind open).
- Don't yield on the things that are actually right and matter; the cure for obstinacy is knowledge-led flexibility, not spinelessness (maxim 29 holds the real line).
A picture of it
Every disagreement in his department becomes a war the head must win, overruled on force rather than evidence, each concession treated as a defeat. Tired of being conquered, his team learns to resist and undermine, and his plans start failing not on their merits but because he has manufactured opposition to all of them. The turning point is uncomfortable: a mentor shows him that his certainty keeps rising while his evidence does not, which is the exact signature of obstinacy wearing the mask of conviction. When he starts holding only the positions the evidence supports and dropping the rest, the same people who fought him begin to execute. He had been making rebels out of allies, one won argument at a time.
Hold your ground on knowledge, and let it go on evidence. The need to win every point makes rebels of everyone you needed.