DE Weekly: Zeno’s Paradox, Husserl, & Epoché
Below is an archived email originally sent on June 2, 2025.
Zeno’s Paradox, Husserl, & Epoché
As much as it owes to the millennia of philosophy that came before it, existentialism is a revolutionary philosophy in that it sought to view the world and existence in a different way than past philosophers had done. The concept that “existence precedes essence” is a pretty good example of how the existentialists aimed to turn Aristotelian metaphysics on its head.
The existentialists weren’t all contrarians, though, nor did they set themselves miles apart from every philosophical conclusion of the past. This holds true for pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Zeno of Elea.
Zeno is known for a series of paradoxes popularized through the works of Plato and Aristotle. He was a student of Parmenides, whose philosophy of monism posited that all existing things are singularly linked to one source, and that reality is singular, unchanging, and universal.
Because he was a monist, Zeno’s paradoxes were designed to challenge plurality (what we would now call Cartesian dualism, after René Descartes). He believed the notion of plurality was contradictory: if space, time, motion, etc. are all separate things, that would mean there are multiple existences; to Zeno, this was absurd.
Much of Zeno’s original work is lost, and what’s known of it (mainly, his “paradoxes of plurality”) is best known thanks to Plato. One of the few surviving paradoxes is called the “Arrow Paradox.”
The Arrow Paradox is as follows, described in Aristotle’s Physics:
“If everything when it occupies an equal space is at rest at that instant of time, and if that which is in locomotion is always occupying such a space at any moment, the flying arrow is therefore motionless at that instant of time and at the next instant of time but if both instants of time are taken as the same instant or continuous instant of time then it is in motion.”
Let me explain that in English.
Zeno uses the example of the arrow to state that at any one instant of time, the arrow is neither moving to where it is, nor is it moving to where it’s not.
The arrow cannot move to where it is, because it is already there.
The arrow cannot move to where it is not, because in that instant where it is not moving, no time has elapsed for it to move there.
In other words, at any given instant in time, no motion is occurring––the arrow is not moving. The conclusion Zeno draws, then, is that since “time” is composed entirely of singular instants (wherein the arrow is completely still), then motion is impossible.
What Zeno has done is divide time into points in space. The question is why did he do this? The answer is actually quite funny.
Other philosophers had tried to claim that paradoxes arise in the monism of Zeno’s teacher, Parmenides. So, Zeno took it upon himself to develop paradoxes to support his teacher’s philosophy––to prove monism correct, and to prove reality is one.
Zeno employed a method of proof called reductio ad absurdum, or proof by contradiction. Plato would later suppose Zeno’s argument to “show [the] hypothesis that existences are many, if properly followed up, leads to still more absurd results than the hypothesis that they are one.”
If we are to take Zeno’s arrow as a true representation of reality, then in that reality, change is impossible. Nothing ever changes––location, space, time––and, contrary to our senses, motion is nothing but an illusion. So is everything else, for that matter.
Let’s turn our attention to existentialism now. What does Zeno’s Arrow Paradox have to do with existentialism?
The implications of Zeno’s monist reality have a lot to do with our perception of reality and the nature of existence itself.
If we are to accept the reality of the arrow, from which we conclude that motion is an illusion, then what else is an illusion? Space, time, the universe? Perhaps we’d need to confront a much more unsettling possibility: our everyday experience is an illusion.
I’ll interject here to say that, for the record, I don’t believe this to be the case. It’s not just that it’s a disorienting idea, either; I believe the world is real and thus the way we perceive it is, too. (I know, how boring of me.)
Placing ourselves within the conceptual framework Zeno established is not for naught, however. In fact, it can help us better understand the philosophy of one of existentialism’s foremost influences: Edmund Husserl.
Husserl was an Austrian-German philosopher and the father of phenomenology. He blazed a trail that would be followed by Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, and many others.
Husserl developed a key methodological tool in the school of phenomenology called “epoché.”
Epoché refers to the suspension of judgment and the withholding of assent, particularly as it pertains to what we perceive and experience.
It asks us to “bracket” our beliefs, our judgements, and our life experience to better understand phenomena as they really are.
By suspending judgment about an experience, say… an arrow flying through the air, we might better understand the pure experience of that phenomenon.
You see, normally we’d watch an arrow fly from a bow to a target, and recognize it moved from Point A to Point B. However, if we “bracket” our perception of the arrow’s flight, we might understand a different phenomenon: the arrow might not be in motion at all, and motion is an illusion entirely.
By suspending our judgments and perceptions, we are able to explore the given nature of experience rather than our pre-conceived perception of it.
Here’s the funny thing, though… Zeno himself knew his paradox was a true paradox. He simply wanted to prove that no matter how you come at it, some concepts are just contradictory by nature. They can’t be resolved or reconciled in a way that makes sense to everyone, especially when our own perceptions are considered.
Much like the arrow, existence itself is full of contradictions. These contradictions limit our understanding of our own being and of the universe. This is why I think, past a certain point, we must trust our perception rather than discarding it. Trusting we know ourselves and the world are real is the first step toward a life of meaning.
“Philosophy wisdom is the philosopher’s quite personal affair. It must arise as His wisdom, as his self-acquired knowledge tending toward universality, a knowledge for which he can answer from the beginning, and at each step, by virtue of his own absolute insights.” –– Edmund Husserl, Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology
Thanks for reading.
Sincerely,
Brandon J. Seltenrich
P.S.––
I find using traditional philosophy as an example to juxtapose with existentialism is a useful way to understand both better. Hopefully I did a good job in helping you with that too.
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