The Concept of ἀπορία

Aporia has its beginning with Socrates and is either defined subjectively as a state of mind of being perplexed, at a loss or in a state of inarticulateness, or objectively as the cause and object of this state of mind—or the active correlation between the two. Aporia may also simply refer to an issue to be enquired into. An aporia, with two conflicting perspectives, may be presented by and/or represented within a single person, where the purpose of discussing and resolving the aporia is the development of science and the gaining of new knowledge. In a negative aporia the two opposing views both have to be rejected, whereas in a positive aporia two promising positions are pitted against one another—but only one can remain standing. The formulation of an aporia serves as a tool to precisely identify an issue to be enquired into, so that the core of the conundrum becomes visible—the purpose is to reach euporia ‘a solution.’ Failure to formulate an aporia may result in a situation where the enquirer does not know in which direction to go and may not even recognise whether the solution has been found or not, but the one who has specified the issue precisely will have a clear telos ‘goal.’