Paradox

EUBULIDES AND THE POLITICS OF THE LIAR 89“Eubulides the Eristic, who propounded his quibbles abouthorns and confounded the orators with falsely pretentiousarguments, is gone with all the braggadocio of a Demosthenes.”(1925, II, 108) The other commentators of antiquityalso demonize Eubulides as a serpentine quibbler. Given thisthin selection of uniformly negative “primary sources,”future historians had no textual basis to veer from Cicero’sverdict. Eubulides’ ignominy became self-perpetuating. Eachgeneration’s dismissal expanded the basis for the next. As lateas 1931, we find Eduard Zeller, in Outlines of the History ofGreek Philosophy, characterizing Eubulides’ paradoxes as“clever but worthless fallacies.”The emphasis on logic at the opening of the twentiethcentury elevated logical paradoxes to the status of instructiveanomalies. Logicians lacked any historical grounds to challengeCicero’s tradition. Yet, they began to feel towardEubulides what Mark Twain felt toward another figure ofantiquity:I have no special regard for Satan; but, I can at least claimthat I have no prejudice against him. It may even be thatI lean a little his way, on account of his not having a fairshow. All religions issue bibles against him, and say themost injurious things about him, but we never hear hisside. We have none but the evidence for the prosecution,and yet we have rendered the verdict. To my mind, thisis irregular. It is un-English; it is un-American; it isFrench.(from “Concerning the Jews”)In 1903, Gottlob Frege published his second volume of theGrundlagen which used a variation of the veiled figure to