Paradoxes Essays

  • Ironies and Paradoxes

    3000 Words  | 6 Pages

    Ironies and Paradoxes ABSTRACT: In contemporary literary culture there is a widespread belief that ironies and paradoxes are closely akin. This is due to the importance that is given to the use of language in contemporary estimations of literature. Ironies and paradoxes seem to embody the sorts of a linguistic rebellion, innovation, deviation, and play, that have throughout this century become the dominant criteria of literary value. The association of irony with paradox, and of both with literature

  • Zeno's Paradoxes

    1561 Words  | 4 Pages

    known for introducing a number of intelligent and original paradoxes. A paradox is a statement or proposition that seems self-contradictory or absurd but in reality expresses a possible truth. Zeno was not only a Greek mathematician but also a Greek philosopher and wrote books about the paradoxes that he discovered. His paradoxes continue to stump intelligent people from Aristotle done to people in the present day. Not only did Zeno’s paradoxes contribute to him being considered a mathematician but

  • Zeno's Paradoxes

    1441 Words  | 3 Pages

    particularly known for his paradoxes that helped build both mathematics and logic, they specifically targeted the concepts of continuity and infinity. Zeno was born in 495 BCE and died in 430 BCE. In his lifetime he contributed some great things to the subject of math. He studied at the Eleatic School, a leading school in Greek philosophy. He is said to have been a good friend of the philosopher Parmenides. After his studies he went on to write a book containing 40 paradoxes! Unfortunately none of Zeno’s

  • John Ashbery's Paradoxes and Oxymorons

    778 Words  | 2 Pages

    John Ashbery's Paradoxes and Oxymorons This poem is concerned with language on a very plain level. Look at it talking to you. You look out a window Or pretend to fidget. You have it but you don't have it. You miss it, it misses you. You miss each other. This poem is sad because it wants to be yours, and cannot. What's a plain level? It is that and other things, Bringing a system of them into play. Play? Well, actually, yes, but I consider play to be A deeper outside thing, a dreamed

  • Time Travel Paradoxes in A Connecticut Yankee...

    804 Words  | 2 Pages

    Time Travel Paradoxes in Conneticut Yankee Mark Twain’s Conneticut Yankee in King Arthurs Court is a book about time travel. It was written 1989 which was before science as we now know it, which tells us that time travel is not possible because of paradoxes. This is still a good book that has many good things to say about America versus England, proving that the American way is superior. America in the day, had just won it’s independence and was trying to establish it’s own identity from England

  • Comparing Lemmon's Essay-Faithful And Fruitful Logic

    3200 Words  | 7 Pages

    (TF) hook to understand and represent that ordinary-language conditional which we use in, e.g., modus ponens, and that conditional’s remote and counterfactual counterparts, and also the proper negations of all three. Such a logic might obviate the paradoxes caused by T-F representation, and be educationally fruitful. William and Martha Kneale and Gilbert Ryle assist us: "In the hypothetical case in which p, it is inferable, on the basis that p and at least in the given context, that q." "Inferable"

  • ALL YOU ZOMBIES

    552 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the story, All You Zombies, there are many paradoxes that Heinlein touches upon. One being, the ability to travel back and forth through time. This jumping from one time to another would allow one to arrive at a time that he or she is already in causing there to be two of the same person at once. In fact, this is the scenario that occurs in the short story. It all starts when the bartender approaches a sad soul setting at the bar. He asks the fellow to tell him what is wrong. Though reluctant

  • Beholding the Beauty of Christ: A Blessed Paradox

    1379 Words  | 3 Pages

    obedience, divine self-sufficiency and childlike trust.” The Beauty and Excellency of Jesus is a coming together in one person of the perfect balance and proportion of extremely diverse qualities. He is a blessed paradox. I would like to explore 3 paradoxes of Jesus. II.     Paradox 1: Infinite Glory and Lowest Humility A.     Phil 2:5-7 “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation

  • Socialist Utopia In Nineteen E

    1495 Words  | 3 Pages

    considered himself a Socialist. He had hatred toward intellectuals, but he too was a political writer. It is only natural that a man of paradoxes would write of them. In his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell develops his Socialist Utopia as a paradoxical society that ultimately succeeds rather than flounders. The society that Orwell creates is full of paradoxes that existed all the way up to its origins. The founders of the new lifestyle, known as the revolutionaries of the mid-twentieth century

  • Joseph Conrad’s Lord Jim - Perfection is not Possible

    2187 Words  | 5 Pages

    central lesson: people need to realize that they are naturally fallible, and are not capable of achieving perfection with regard to honor. The first physical description of Jim by the third person narrator in the beginning of the novel presents paradoxes in Jim’s character, and introduces the fact that although characters can absorb him wholly, they cannot figure him out. The narrator says that Jim is “…an inch, perhaps two, under six feet, powerfully built,” and is much like “a charging bull” (9)

  • Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest

    3835 Words  | 8 Pages

    characterization with paradox to create comical characters that expose Victorian deficiencies. Each of these criticisms relies upon the paradoxes that Wilde sets up on successively larger scales within the play. It is, in fact, this tool of humor, not the object of ridicule that truly defines this work. While each paradox is pointed at Victorian society, the individual paradoxes each take on a different element of Victorian society, thereby diminishing the pointedness of the overall criticism. The use of

  • Puritan Life

    1344 Words  | 3 Pages

    Puritan life is probably one of the biggest paradoxes known to man theoretically. In practice is doesn’t seem like such an absurd notion. There are certain things that may lead someone into confusion over the way that Puritan life was conducted. One of these things is the object of holiness. This means that only certain members are allowed into the Puritan life after proving themselves holy. Another object that may cause confusion is the idea of enjoying oneself in Puritan life. Recreation did occur

  • The Multivisions of Multiculturalism

    3313 Words  | 7 Pages

    Berlin’s conception of human choice and will speak of as maximal multiculturalism, an orientation that is found in John Milton’s idea of truth as variegated and that sees multiculturalism as a great good. These views are plagued by at least three paradoxes that are really inconsistencies. In their place I develop the idea of a mitigated multiculturalism based on fear rather than on any ideal or vision, and with this a distinction between positive and negative toleration. Negative toleration proves

  • How Genuine is the Paradox of Irrationality?

    3782 Words  | 8 Pages

    the best lines on which our normative rational standards are based-"best" in the sense that they are close enough to limits of human practical potentialities and are not too high as to render our normative standards idle or even disastrous. In "Paradoxes of Irrationality," Davidson has the following remark, which arises from, but is not limited to, the explanation of weakness of will: The underlying paradox of irrationality, from which no theory can entirely escape, is this: if we explain it too

  • The Paradox of A Clockwork Orange

    2013 Words  | 5 Pages

    The main foci are the several aspects of evil, violence, and sexual acts committed by Alex and his gang members. However, Anthony Burgess has cleverly incorporated similar paradoxes to that of grace and evil, along with a different dialect to aid in masking the true harshness that lies underneath the violence. The other paradoxes include the extremes of night and day, good and bad, and black and white. The depiction of evil as being graceful is relevant to the actual title, but also reflects the

  • The Character of Moth in Love's Labor's Lost

    1215 Words  | 3 Pages

    Although physical ability doesn't carry significance in Love's Labor's Lost, mental ability does, and Moth (mentally superior to his contemporaries) proves himself worthy of a high status. Using Moth as a Herculean figure is one of the most obvious paradoxes in the play, but there are others. Moth relies on rhetoric and integrity to show how true intellect comes from understanding people and not through scholarly displays. Moth, for the most part, gets the better of his fellow characters, especially

  • Heart of Darkness

    2838 Words  | 6 Pages

    it is a “study on the effects of man’s isolation from the civilized world, represented by Kurtz” (Miller 129). The title "Heart of Darkness" the name itself implies a sense of unknown evil, and invokes thoughts of secrecy and mystery. It paints paradoxes of seemingly clear concepts and states, such as the mental condition of central character Kurtz, an enigmatic ivory trader deep in the heart of the "Dark Continent." The setting indeed takes place in a region remarkably like the Congo that has led

  • Critique on Peter Drucker's The New Realities

    4697 Words  | 10 Pages

    knowledge society. The New Realities book is Dr Drucker field guide to the large-scale paradoxes of our time. Dr Drucker hypothesis are a penetrating examination of the central issues, trends, and developments of the coming decades and the problems and opportunities they present to America and the world. He analyzes the new limits and functions of government, the transnational economy and ecology, the paradoxes of development, the post business society, information-based organizations, management

  • Destiny, Fate, and Free Will in Shakespeare's Macbeth

    973 Words  | 2 Pages

    witches can travel in and out of time at will.  Thus, they are able to both see the future and to change its very course.   When examined analytically, this ability appears to be an illogical paradox, but Shakespeare's great work is brimming with paradoxes, "Fair is foul, and foul is fair"(I.i.11). The witches seem to already know the consummation of both Macbeth’s and Banquo's respective fates.  However, they, for some reason unbeknownst to the audience, deem it necessary to interfere with this fate

  • The Soul of Darkness in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness

    1037 Words  | 3 Pages

    and invokes thoughts of secrecy and mystery. Written by Joseph Conrad in 1902, "Heart of Darkness" tells of a physical journey down the Congo during its era of Imperialism, yet also of a mental sojourn into the core of insanity. It also paints paradoxes of seemingly clear concepts and states, such as the mental condition of central character Kurtz, an enigmatic ivory trader deep in the heart of the "Dark Continent."  Two of the characters provide insight into Kurtz's moral paradox.  The Intended