Catch-22 (logic)

A "catch-22" is a form of logical paradox that takes its name from the bestselling satirical novel Catch-22, published by American author Joseph Heller in 1961. The novel is set on a Mediterranean airbase during World War II (1939–45), and the term catch-22 is first stated, in a conversation between two central characters as a loophole in military regulations. It is explained that clinical insanity is grounds for exemption from flying missions. However, a pilot wishing to be exempted who uses this as a plea will automatically be deemed capable of reason and ordered back to duty. Later in the novel, the term is used to justify many other contradictions and absurdities. In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, "a catch-22 situation" came to denote any generic self-contradictory dilemma, particularly those involving authority or bureaucracy. As such, it gained currency as a paradox which can be readily applied to the lives of people everywhere.

Background

Hypothetical paradoxes of many types have been described since antiquity. Zeno of Elea, a Greek philosopher of the fifth century BCE, was celebrated for devising paradoxes framed as mathematical challenges. Seemingly paradoxical situations directly impacting human experience, especially within the context of power relationships, also supply a rich background for Heller's novelistic articulation of the idea. The process of testing for witches in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (up to the eighteenth century) is a prime example of the no-win dilemma that would come to be called a catch-22. In some variants of this trial-by-ordeal, a person suspected of witchcraft would be immersed in water to test their guilt. If they sank and drowned, they were deemed innocent; if they floated, they were judged guilty and executed.

Twentieth-century writers before Heller had explored the idea of human life as the experience of paradoxical futility. Franz Kafka (1883–1924) created nightmarish self-referential paradoxes imposed by a vast, faceless bureaucracy. His scenarios feature individuals who are perpetually referred by one official department to another, only then to be referred back to the first in an endless loop. Works by Existentialist writers, such as Albert Camus (1913–60), evoked the ludicrous predicament called "the absurd" as a way of juxtaposing people against cosmic meaninglessness. Heller's influential novel recast this fundamental situation in terms of a deliberately unequal power dynamic; the agency of oppression is still faceless, but it is human. In plot terms, catch-22 is initially invoked in reference to one specific case—exemption from flying missions—but is then applied to a spiralling number of situations, all involving the apparent abuse of authority. It justifies the need to obey an order at all costs, for instance, even if it contradicts other orders. Toward the novel's conclusion, catch-22 is used as a blanket vindication of absolutely anything, however brutal or senseless, inflicted on the powerless by the powerful. It is this feeling of helplessness, in any situation, which is captured by the term. Heller's achievement was to give it not only a simple formulation but also a name.

Impact

As an easily grasped expression of a classic double-bind, catch-22 has evolved into a way of describing many maddening dilemmas. A person applying for a job to acquire work experience, only to be told that they need work experience in order to apply for the job, is caught in a catch-22. If that individual, interviewing for another job, is then asked to unlock the door to a room containing the only key for that room, they have experienced a further catch-22. As these examples suggest, catch-22 often involves not only a pair of mutually exclusive conditions but also a climate of irresponsible or irrational authority. The many popular references to catch-22 situations in culture have arguably arisen from this twofold origin: First, catch-22 neatly sums up the logically unchallengeable nature of every paradox, benign as well as menacing, which has perplexed humankind from the classical era onward. Second, it derives its impact from a particular view of power, presupposing a trap set by omnipotent authorities to mock or frustrate individuals and rob them of free will. In the novel Catch-22, what tantalizingly appears to be a "get-out" clause proves to be the exact opposite—a cruel but logically watertight return to the starting point. As the novel proceeds, this basic idea is increasingly cited as a bureaucratic loophole of universal applicability.

Heller couched his famous paradox in the context of antiwar sentiment. In Catch-22, it is axiomatic that no airman would voluntarily fly missions if it were not necessary: the desire to do so is evidence of insanity, and the desire not to do so is evidence of sanity. In an insane world, logic is inverted, the notion of sanity itself is rendered meaningless or elusive, and the boundary between right and wrong is eroded. Since the novel's publication, however, that specific antiwar context was largely left behind, as the number of applicable real-world scenarios proliferated. Additionally, the seeming arbitrariness of the term—there is no logical reason why the catch should be numbered 22—has further popularised its usage in a world sometimes perceived as arbitrary.

Catch-22 is a designation that resonated with many people in the second half of the twentieth century and start of the twenty-first. For critics and commentators on issues of social inequality, it became a new means of describing victimhood. In that sense, catch-22 served as a memorable way of naming the skewed power balance between the "little people," perceived as powerless, and the forces of authority, perceived as all powerful. Beyond this, it was extended to cover a range of circumstances which appear to condemn individuals to a vicious cycle of frustration. Catch-22 has firmly established itself as a shorthand term for almost any problematic, self-contradictory conundrum. As such, it has become a cultural meme, conjuring an instantly recognizable problem type manifesting in an abundance of life experiences. Its simplicity, flexibility, and convenience, allied with the sheer number of familiar anecdotes to which it seems relatable, guarantee its widespread and continuing usage in popular discourse.

Bibliography

Algren, Nelson. "The Catch." Joseph Heller's "Catch-22": A New Edition, edited by Harold Bloom, Bloom's Literary Criticism, 2008, pp. 9–12.

Cuonzo, Margaret. Paradox. Massachusetts Institute of Technology P, 2014.

Goldstein, Laurence. "The Barber, Russell's Paradox, Catch-22, God, Contradiction, and More: A Defence of a Wittgensteinian Conception of Contradiction." The Law of Non-Contradiction: New Philosophical Essays, edited by Graham Priest et al., Oxford UP, 2004, pp. 295–313.

Hidalgo-Downing, Laura. "Negation as a Stylistic Feature in Joseph Heller's Catch-22: A Corpus Study." Style, vol. 37, no. 3, Fall 2003, pp. 318–41.

Perry, Nick. "Catch, Class, and Bureaucracy: The Meaning of Joseph Heller's Catch-22." Sociological Review, vol. 32, no. 4, 2011, doi: 10.1111/j.1467-954X.1984.tb00832.x.

Priest, Graham. "Contradictory Concepts." Logic, Reasoning and Rationality, edited by Erik Weber et al., 2014, pp. 197–216.

Sharpe, Matthew. "What is Catch-22?" Arena Magazine, no. 129, April-May 2014, pp. 38–42.

Ye, La-Mei. "Out of Absurdity: On the Ending of Catch-22." Journal of Literature and Art Studies, vol. 4, no. 6, June 2014, pp. 423–35.