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One of Jaakko Hintikka's many brilliant contributions to the history of ideas and of logic is his study of the famous κυριεύων or "Master Argument' of Diodorus Cronus.¹ The literature on this argument is vast and continues to grow. I shall here contribute to it with yet another paper. My interest in the argument was roused by reading Hintikka's essay many years ago. My treatment here, unlike Hintikka's, will be "unschol-arly'. The only serious reference to sources will be to the wording in which the argument has survived. I shall sometimes say of things which seem to me to make good sense that "it is plausible to think' that Diodorus accepted them, and of certain other things that "we have no reason' to doubt that Diodorus would have disagreed. If a reader finds such statements annoying because of lack of supporting evidence, I advise him to ignore them. My aim is not primarily to reconstruct a piece of past history but to say something of interest about things which continue to puzzle us.

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-009-9860-5_18

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