aporia (plural: i), Greek term meaning ‘puzzle’, ‘question for discussion’, ‘state of perplexity’. The aporetic method – the raising of puzzles without offering solutions – is typical of the elenchus in the early Socratic dialogues of Plato. These consist in the testing of definitions and often end with an aporia, e.g., that piety is both what is and what is not loved by the gods. Compare the paradoxes of Zeno, e.g., that motion is both possible and impossible. In Aristotle’s dialectic, the resolution of aporiai discovered in the views on a subject is an important source of philosophical understanding. The beliefs that one should love oneself most of all and that self-love is shameful, e.g., can be resolved with the right understanding of ‘self’. The possibility of argument for two inconsistent positions was an important factor in the development of Skepticism. In modern philosophy, the antinomies that Kant claimed reason would arrive at in attempting to prove the existence of objects corresponding to transcendental ideas may be seen as aporiai. See also ELENCHU. R.C.