11.10.2026 Diary XLI Aporia: where the path ends

11.10.2026 Diary Page XLI

Knowing that you do not know is not an end. It is the name of stopping in the right place.

Sunday. Today's concept is a word that sits underneath most of what I wrote this week: aporia.

In Greek, poros means road, passage. The a prefix in front of it signals absence. Aporia is a place without a passage: a place where a river or a mountain pass is closed. In philosophy, it is the moment when thinking stays closed. Two answers stand side by side and both are defensible; or no answer holds. You want to keep thinking but no road to walk can be seen.

Where Socrates' dialogues end

Most of Plato's early dialogues end in the same place. In the Euthyphro the question is what piety is. In the Laches, courage; in the Charmides, temperance; in the Lysis, friendship. In each of them the speakers propose a definition, Socrates brings that definition down with an example or a question, a new definition comes, and that one collapses too. At the end of the dialogue no one knows what courage is. And at the beginning everyone thought they did.

When reading, the first reaction is often disappointment: all this talk, no result. But Plato writes this on purpose. Ending the dialogues always in the same place is a design decision.

The torpedo fish

In the Meno, Meno says this to Socrates: you are like the sea torpedo fish, the electric ray. Whoever touches it goes numb. And I too, talking with you, went numb in mind and tongue, I do not know how to answer. Yet I had spoken about virtue many times before, in front of crowds, very beautifully.

Socrates' answer is subtle. If the torpedo fish passes its own numbness to others, then yes, I am like it. But I do not leave others bewildered without being bewildered myself. The reason I bewilder them is that I am bewildered too.

I think this answer is the most honest defence of aporia. Socrates is not creating an impasse as someone who holds knowledge. As someone aware of his own not knowing, he shows that what another person thinks they know is brittle.

The slave boy

Further on in the same dialogue there is a scene, and here Socrates says plainly the value of aporia. Meno's slave boy is asked a geometry question: how do you draw a square with double the area of a given square? The boy first gives the easy answer: the side doubles. Wrong, because the area becomes four times as large. Socrates shows him the mistake. The boy is puzzled, makes his second guess, and that collapses too.

Here Socrates turns to Meno and asks: is this boy now in a worse state than before? Before, he thought he knew; now he knows that he does not, and he wants to look into it. That is progress.

What Socrates says is simple: thinking you know is the biggest obstacle to learning. Aporia removes that obstacle.

Aristotle's knot

Aristotle begins the third book of the Metaphysics by listing aporias. He gives his reason too: someone who wants to untie a knot must first see where and how the knot is tied. Someone who sets out to resolve a difficulty without knowing it is like a person walking without knowing where they are going.

The same philosopher says in the first book that philosophy begins with wonder, with thaumazein. The one in bewilderment thinks they do not know, and that is why they want to know. Wonder and aporia feed from the same place: noticing that something is not as we thought.

Aporia and ignorance are not the same

A distinction has to be made here, otherwise this idea can be misused. In ignorance the person is not aware of what they do not know. In aporia they are aware, and that awareness means some work has been done: there is a question, two answers clash, both seem incomplete. Aporia is the place someone arrives at after taking a question seriously.

And there is a difference between aporia and giving up. Socrates does not give up; the dialogue starts again the next day. Aporia is not a closing, it is a pause, and a pause is part of thinking.

Law cannot bear aporia

For a lawyer this subject tightens from an interesting place. Philosophy can leave a dialogue in an impasse; a judge cannot.

The first article of the Turkish Civil Code says exactly this. If there is no applicable provision in the law, the judge decides according to customary law. If there is none there either, the judge decides as they would have made the rule had they been the legislator. So a judge cannot say “this question is unanswered.” Law treats aporia as a gap that has to be resolved.

This has a cost. Because a decision has to be made, the resolution sometimes comes independent of how sure the answer is. Philosophy can stay honest because it can leave the question open; law has to close it, so it has to write out the reasons for closing. I think this is exactly why legal texts have long reasonings: to account for building a bridge to close the aporia.

Carrying the impasse

In daily life aporia comes in a less noble form. Two options look equally weighted. Two worries clash. To start a task you need to know something, but to know it you need to start the task.

I recognise this state in ADHD: the freeze of deciding, being stuck between the two ends of all-or-nothing thinking. Looking at aporia tells me this: not every impasse is the same kind of impasse.

Some impasses are a lack of information and open when you gather information. Some are really the impasse of equal options, and there the choosing itself matters more than which one is chosen. And some come from asking the question wrongly, and when the question changes the road opens. The first job is to tell which one I am in. In the phronesis entry I wrote the decision side of this, and in the sorites entry the side of not being able to find the boundary. Aporia is the more general state beneath both.

The comfort of not knowing

I am noting one more thing. Being able to say you do not know brings a relief. The sentence “I have no answer to this question” feels like losing something but is actually putting down a load. The effort spent on making up an answer can be set aside for solving the question itself.

The impasse that ends Plato's dialogues is not a failure. It leaves the reader something: that the question is in your hands.

A piece next to the concept

Arvo Pärt: Fratres.

The piece dates from 1977 and the same musical material was later adapted for very different ensembles: violin and piano, cello and piano, string instruments, a group. The same sequence of harmonies repeats nine times and a short pause enters between each repetition. The piece does not go to a new place, it returns to the same place each time in a slightly different light.

This is how I connect it to aporia: returning to the same question may not mean going backward.

Toward tomorrow

Tomorrow is Monday. One more concept: hexis, that is, the philosophy of habit. Today I wrote that even an impasse can be of use; tomorrow I will look at what is left in our hands as we come out of impasses.