“The paradox is really the pathos of intellectual life and just as only great souls are exposed to passions
it is only the great thinker who is exposed to what we call paradoxes.”
The above is a quotation from Soren Kierkegraad,a Danish philosopher,theologian and psychologist.The
paradox is a thought containing contradiction which can and should be untied,and it is only the business
of great thinkers to do so.Great souls are related to passions in the same way.It is their business to chase
a passion and ultimately become its master.

The history of paradoxes dates back to the fifth century B.C.In Greece,Zeno,the disciple of
Parmenides,challenged the mathematics of that time which was based on ‘deductive logic’,with a series
of clever arguments,designated as paradoxes.These arguments conflicted with the expectations and
fascinated common people for quite a while.Many puzzles based on paradoxes came into being,and
they had the great thinkers,thinking hard.According to Kierkegraad,the human pathos or passion is the
most precious thing,though it’s not something which defines our status as existential beings.It only
helps in motivating and sustaining our actions,which in turn helps in getting through with our lives.Let
us now look at what the meaning of human existence is.According to Kierkegraad,there is no meaning
of human pain and suffering(which symbolizes human existence) unless passion,the emotions and will
of humans,have a divine source. For an existing individual, therefore, there is no objective truth “out
there.” An objective knowledge about the truth is precisely untruth.Kierkegraad also spoke about
Christianity being ‘inwardness’ and hence it is a paradox.Likewise,according to him,paradox requires but
one thing which is the passion of faith.Passion is closely related with faith.Faith as a passion can help a
man seek the truth in a transcendent world,even though the intellect might be against it.

A great thinker is always faced with paradoxes.The paradoxes show at once the strength of our
capacity to reason and the prevalence of unreason in reality.It is the duty of the thinkers to uncover the
unreason,but there is a possibility of getting to face many more paradoxes as one attempts to affirm his
understanding by trying to unravel the unreason.Human understanding should understand that there
are things which it cannot understand.If it tries to understand itself,it will understand that a paradox
cannot be understood,that it would simply have to posit the paradox.A person with a good memory can
never have paradox as the pathos of his life because he is not a thinker in true sense of the word.Only
the great thinkers are constantly exposed to paradoxes.The paradox is always in front of us. A paradox
occurs when the logic says something is impossible,but we can feel it with our senses.Just as our brain
is trained to see the right side up of the image formed by our eyes,we don’t see the paradox,because
our brain doesn’t believe in it.Great thinkers who believe in unbounded thinking see it.Unbounded
thinking is not the killing of logic and switching over to the world of paradox,rather it is a nice balance
of both. Not being able to think about a paradox doesn’t mean there is no paradox.Maybe,it’s the
new thing,something which transcends the outer limit of reality and something that may replace the
usual ‘logic’.
-Mayank Kashyap