Paradox Without Piety

'When paradox entered the English language sometime in the sixteenth century, it simply meant 'an eccentric opinion'....In contemporary English the word refers to a more curious kind of doxastic anomaly....I stipulatively define paradox as an apparently absurd claim, i.e., a claim that apparently entails a self-contradiction (either formally, materially or performatively), to which one feels at least some inclination to assent because it is supported by at least one form of epistemic authority that one recognises.'

 'Paradoxes are not mere wordplay. Neither are they primarily exercises in logic....The two elements of my definition - the apparent self-contradiction and the epistemic authority - point to the two conventional ways that a paradox can be resolved...either: one eliminates a paradox by concluding that the appearance of the self contradiction is deceiving...or: one eliminates a paradox by subverting the epistemic authority that supports what one now views as a straightforward self-contradiction...one finds the flaw in the argument, rejects the testimony, repudiates tradition, concludes the master made a mistake.....'

 'Faced with a contradiction that seems fundamentally irreconcilable, one can ignore it, or deny it, worship it or try to remove it...in religious contexts paradox can assume a holy or sacred mien.'

 'Religious thinkers venerate paradoxes….when a metaphysical doctrine that generates paradox is constitutive of religious beliefs or practices in which the thinkers are heavily invested. Paradox functions as a means of worship - not an object of worship - when it comes to inform cognitive practices. Cognitive practices are techniques of self transformation....They work to alter the individual's volitional complex - his or her beliefs, emotions, attitudes, perspectives and desires - in accord with a religious end.'

 '...pre-commitment strategies bind one through causal mechanisms one sets up in the world...some raise the stakes for failure..others restrict one's exposure to temptation...or opportunities for failure...yet others work directly to change one's volitional complex (e.g. taking cold showers to strengthen the will, working to develop habits)...Manuals of spiritual discipline advocate all the pre-commitment techniques, but also recommend a rich variety of techniques for rearranging inner space.'

 'Meditation takes many forms...the Buddhist monk engaged in 'mental culture' (bhavana) aims to appropriate the truth of Buddhist doctrine subjectively. Through vipassana or insight meditation he discerns the real by applying Buddhist doctrine to his own personal experience....Teresa of Avila continually implores her nuns to meditate on the humanity of Christ, to gaze at his beautiful face, to witness his suffering for their sakes...such a practice counters selfish reluctance to do his will. Shantideva similarly harnesses the imagination when he counsels that one plagued by lust should imagine the object of one's lust as a sack of excrement.'

 'Religiously motivated self-transformation texts sometimes describe argot of the idiom of detachment and union. That paradox can foster detachment from disfavoured affections and judgments and /or promote identification with a wider perspective, explains why religious texts sometimes seem to revel in paradox...'

 'Cognitive ascetics harness the discomfort of cognitive dissonance and hitch it to an ascetic regimen...in their hands paradox becomes a tool of ascetic self-transformation....a second type of religious response to paradox (is) mysticism...a mystic purports to attain ineffable superknowledge on the far side of paradox. For a mystic, paradox does not mark the limits of human cognition; rather, paradox opens out onto a plane of exceptional cognition...Mystical apprehension serves to refashion the perspective and attitudes composing the self...'

 'Reactions to paradox gain emotional force from their basis in attitudes toward social relations. To a thinker who feels his group threatened by outsiders, paradox will offend and horrify. If this thinker uses cognitive dissonance ascetically, these affects exacerbate the discomfort. To a thinker invested in bringing outsiders across the external boundary of the group, paradox will evoke awe and reverence. The mystic’s belief that he has attained ineffable superknowledge dispels the cognitive dissonance attendant in paradox, while these strong affects lend the doctrine that begat the paradox the vivacity to impel a change in his volitional complex….’

 ‘The very concept of absolute transcendence generates paradox. To characterise the transcendent as beyond all limited and describable things is to limit it and describe it as something in relation to all other limited things. The absolutely transcendent must, therefore, paradoxically be within all things as well as beyond them.’

Bagger, M. (2007). Ch1: 'Paradox Without Piety', The Uses of Paradox (Religion, Self-Transformation, and the Absurd), New York: Columbia University Press, p 1 - 14.