Paradox

212 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE PARADOXon other statements. In his essay “On False Modesty,” Plutarchrelates an incident involving Menedemus, a student ofthe Megarian Stilpo, who had a reputation for teasing otherswith paradoxes: “When he heard that Alexinus often praisedhim, he said ‘And I’m always chiding Alexinus; so Alexinusmust be a bad man, since he either praises a bad man, or ischided by a good one.’” Alexinus’s otherwise innocent remarkhas been dragooned into a paradox.These contingent paradoxes refute subjective definitionsof “paradox” that require any paradoxical statement to seemabsurd to someone. Plato could have drawn a random statementfrom an urn, declared it true without reading it, and thencast the unread message into the sea. If that unread statementwas “What Plato says is false,” then Plato’s original remarkwas paradoxical even if it never seemed absurd to anyone.Paradoxes are as objective as diseases. My subjectivesense of disorder is evidence of a disorder but is not itself adisorder. I can be sick without feeling sick and without thepossibility of a physician being able to detect any illness. Justas there are diseases that will never be discovered, there areparadoxes that will be forever unknown.THE DECLINE OF SCHOLASTICISMMany of these paradoxes will never be known because of areal disease: the Black Death. In addition to killing Buridan,Ockham, and a third of Europe, this plague lowered theprestige of the Church and its satellite institutions. Insightsinto the liar paradox were packaged in an esoteric terminologyand format that received blanket condemnation bydisaffected survivors. As intellectual life reconstituted, think-