Curious Word: Aporetic
Thanks to Leo Strauss, today's word is aporetic.
The term is largely philosophical in use (near as I can divine) and means, in short, "tending to doubt." Of course, I can imagine many other ways such a term might be employed, not the least of which would be a twist on the Calvin & Hobbes classic...
"Hobbes, what would you say if someone called us a pair of pathetic aporetics?"
"I'd doubt they knew what they were saying."
Hmmm...on second thought, I'll leave the jokes to Bill Waterson. But there you have it aporetic...if that's really what it means.
1 comment:
The word 'aporetic' and the noun form, 'aporia,' are Greek in origin: an alpha-privitive, 'a-' prefix followed by the word 'poros' which probably means 'path.' A literal rendering might be 'pathless.' The word is used in Plato's dialogues to describe the point at which an argument reaches an impasse, i.e., the interlocutors don't know how to proceed -- they've lost the path. I guess you could think of it as a point of confusion or doubt about how to proceed. The condition of aporia results from an encounter with a paradox or seeming paradox.
More interesting Strauss words would be: zetetic, logographic necessity, and esoteric.
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