Paradox

//__Paradox__//

**Definition::** A paradox is a statement (or set of statements) where a seemingly impossible contradiction is presented.

**Random Examples:** //I always lie//. (If the person is a liar, then this is true, which makes them not a liar). //Death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die//. (how can death die?) //Youth is wasted on the young//. (but how can young people know the value of youth without not having it?)



 * On being presented a paradox, most people pause and try to work out what it means. In this way it uses the principle of confusion to distract them and so gives opportunity for persuasion.
 * Paradoxes may be self-referential, contradictory and circular. They may also use half-truths or falsehood, although the listener may be initially distracted from this fallacy by the confusion of the paradox.
 * Paradoxes can be used as explanations, such as the circular paradox known as the 'grandfather paradox' which is used to discount the possibility of time travel. In this conundrum, a person travels back in time and kills their grandfather before he has children, so preventing the person being born (and also from killing the grandfather).
 * Paradoxes can appear to be false but actually be true, such as a person having their fifth birthday after living twenty years (if they are born on February 29th in a leap year).
 * Paradoxes may be deliberate puzzles and are common in philosophy, where pedants spend time musing upon their construction and how feasible solutions may be derived. Poets likewise delight in the twists of a paradox and seek to place them in matching linguistic settings. Authors also use paradoxes to create excitement, confusion and enlightening lessons.
 * An //antinomy// is a false paradox that is arrived at by using accepted forms of reasoning. A //dialetheia// is a paradox that is both true and false at the same time, such as when you say 'I am both in the room and outside the room', whilst you are standing in the doorway.
 * A //moral paradox// occurs where values conflict, for example where a person is faced with the choice of killing another person or letting a loved one die.

(www.changingminds.org)


 * Examples** from text:

A Rose for Emily, William Faulkner

 When Mr. Grierson reared Emily, he instilled in her his Old South values, manners, and customs. He also drove off all her New South suitors, presumably because they could not measure up to his Old South standards. Townspeople generally regarded Emily as haughty, a true daughter of Southern aristocracy. Paradoxically, however, many people — in particular the older residents — later began to admire and respect her for daring to live according to bygone dictums. She was, as the first paragraph says, something of a "monument."

"WHEN MISS EMILY GRIERSON DIED, our whole town went to her funeral: the men through a sort of respect-ful affection for a fallen monument, the women mostly out of curiosity to see the inside of her house, which no one save an old man-servant—a combined gardener and cook—had seen in at least ten years."

Emily is both weak and strong. For example, her father manipulated her in her youth, but she manipulates city officials in gaining tax forgiveness.

"Her voice was dry and cold. “I have no taxes in Jefferson. Colonel Sartoris explained it to me. Perhaps one of you can gain access to the city records and satisfy yourselves.” “But we have. We are the city authorities, Miss Emily. Didn't you get a notice from the sheriff, signed by him?” “I received a paper, yes,” Miss Emily said. “Perhaps he considers himself the sheriff. . . . I have no taxes in Jefferson.” “But there is nothing on the books to show that, you see. We must go by the—” “See Colonel Sartoris. I have no taxes in Jefferson.” “But, Miss Emily—” “See Colonel Sartoris.” (Colonel Sartoris had been dead almost ten years.) “I have no taxes in Jefferson. Tobe!” The Negro appeared. “Show these gentlemen out.”

(www.cummingsstudyguide.net) Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius by Jorge Luis Borges (Sur, 1940 [1947]) This entire story is a paradox in and of itself!

"If we explain (or judge) a fact, we connect it with another; such linking, in Tlön, is a later state of the subject which cannot affect or illuminate the previous state. Every mental state is irreducible: ther mere fact of naming it — i.e., of classifying it — implies a falsification. From which it can be deduced that there are no sciences on Tlön, not even reasoning. The paradoxical truth is that they do exist, and in almost uncountable number."

Paradoxes in Poe 1. His life - basically insecure and highly emotional, but his writing is structured.

2. He reflects the paradoxical time - there was the apocalyptic sense of doom combined with the romantic innocence of childhood.

3. Poe was a romantic writer, but he emphasized rationality.

4. He presents realistic details in gothic settings.

5. There is a paradox in Poe's critical thinking - he believed in individual creativity but advocated classical norms - the ideal length of a poem, suggested Poe, is 100 lines.

PAL: Perspectives in American Literature - A Research and Reference Guide - An Ongoing Project © Paul P. Reuben >  Paradoxes in Bisclavret by Marie de France

His name literally names him as a beast; “bisclavret” = werewolf But, he acts civilized and not like a werewolf in the forest, demonstrating quickly and irrefutably his true nature to the king

Another paradox: He is civilized in the forest but savage in the courts

“There must be reason,/ the household said, for him to seize on/ the knight, who must have done him wrong;/ the wish for vengeance seemed so strong”

Kelli Holland