How Is the Paradox of Blackmail Paradoxical?

Abstract

The main aspiration of the present article is to elucidate what it would mean for the paradox of blackmail to be solved rather than dissolved . We begin by increasing the sense of paradoxicality of blackmail. To this end, we formalize the paradox. We demonstrate that it relies on a certain prima facie plausible principle of closure (what we call disjunctive closure ). This principle is quite unlike the principle which holds that the permissibility of action A and the permissibility of action B render doing A and B together permissible. On the principle of disjunctive closure, the paradox of blackmail seems to breed a genuine contradiction. Having adequately formulated the paradox, we turn to a normative point: What would count as a satisfactory solution to the paradox of blackmail? Informed by the treatment of paradoxes in logic, we argue that to take the sting out of the paradox of blackmail, we must embrace its core commitments and still explain how apparently contradictory verdicts might nevertheless arise. The upshot of the above considerations only strengthens our contention that what we proposed as a solution to the paradox of blackmail in Dominiak and Wysocki (2026) is indeed an adequate solution rather than a mere dissolution .