Paradox

138 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE PARADOXChrysippus, the most distinguished member of theirschool, in his work On the Growing (Argument), creates afreak of the following kind. Having first established thatit is impossible for two peculiarly qualified individuals tooccupy the same substance jointly, he says: “For the sakeof argument, let one man be thought of as whole-limbed,the other as minus one foot. Let the whole-limbed one becalled Dion, the defective one Theon. Then let one ofDion’s feet be amputated.” The question arises which oneof them has perished, and his claim is that Theon is thestronger candidate. These are the words of a paradoxmongerrather than of a speaker of truth. For how can itbe that Theon, who has had no part chopped off, has beensnatched away, while Dion, whose foot has been amputated,has not perished? “Necessarily,” says Chrysippus.“For Dion, the one whose foot has been cut off, hascollapsed into the defective substance of Theon, and twopeculiarly qualified individuals cannot occupy the samesubstrate. Therefore it is necessary that Dion remainswhile Theon has perished.”(Long and Sedley 1987, 171–72)Philo makes it seem as if Chrysippus conceded that there weretwo men already in the pre-amputated body and that theamputation crowds one of them out. The question given thisinterpretation is “Who goes and who stays?” But Chrysippuscould not accept this interpretation because of his allegianceto the principle that two men cannot occupy the same bodyat the same time. Relativists about identity generally requirethat the colocated objects be of distinct sorts.Michael Burke (1994) has recently advanced an argumentfor Chrysippus’s surprising conclusion. He does not