SOLOMON once said,"Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou be made like unto him."
But in the aphorism directly following, oddly enough, he is found to be saying, "Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be made wise in his own conceit." Proverbs 26:5
And what is anyone to think--or do, if one were minded to be taking advice of Solomon?
As to the first of the two, it serves to affirm the view (mythologically speaking) that anything given to the Devil is a charity not contemplated by Virtue. A person could save a lot of time and misdirected attention adhering closely to the teaching of Solomon in this, but only for so long as it would take to move on to that next proverb, where you are faced with perhaps the most mystifying paradox (or glaring contradiction) to be found in the entire text of the Hebrew Scriptures.
One can hardly, with respect to reverence, argue for the superior wisdom of the one aphorism over the other, to suggest that if there is anything that characterizes the nature of a fool it is that he is already "wise in his own conceit" and no answer could make him the moreso. On the other hand, if you were of a mind to follow after the wisdom of the second proverb--do you then not make of yourself a "fool" according to the wisdom of the first?
The dilemma would seem to be insurmountable, until upon closer contemplation of the phrase, "according to his folly" it begins to hint of a resolution.
When you don't answer a fool "according to his folly" this does not mean you are giving no answer at all. Rather, it allows for the answer that is not "according to folly."
What the fool in his conceit expects is for you to accept the terms of his foolhardy (negative, churlish, slanderous, born-in-a-barn) characterization as the terms for your answer. Take him up on that and it buries you in his folly, to the foolish, futile, onerous, distasteful task of vainly trying to dig your way out with the dull, shoddy tool he lends you--his terms. Though the temptation is great to return coarseness for coarseness; to be quick to deny, refute or return in kind any low, no class remark--this is precisely what is meant by "answering a fool according to his folly," and he's got you down in the muck right with him, just where he wants you.
Foolishness is obvious to any eye that beholds it, it is self-evident, just as any pile of trash needs no sign posted in it, saying "pile of trash." To waste your time and effort trying to expose the obvious is to insult the intelligence of anyone looking at it. They know what it is, and only wait to see if you know any better than he who has dumped it, not to be jumping in and thrashing about in it, all the time shouting, "This is not me! Not what I said! What a lie! Not what I meant!" Do that and you have answered the fool according to his folly, to be made like unto him.
As the first proverb stands forever to teach, so long as you are not answering according to the folly of the fool, you are not pausing from forward, positive motion, long enough to take hold of his mucky tools, and in this way only may you win, by driving the fool all the more to his folly, until it is revealed in its extremity, perhaps even to the fool, to be nothing else.
True to the second proverb, the fool is thus deprived of feeling wise in his own conceit, being denied the triumph of claiming your silence as victory for his folly. Indeed the second wise saying is here to show that there is always at least one answer you can give that is not according to the fool's folly, but strictly, magnificently, if even miraculously according to the wisdom of the wise, as it acknowledges, in compassion that even a fool deserves some sort of answer, though it need be nothing other than telling him this . . .
"Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou me made like unto him."
To offer that, the first proverb for your answer resolves the seeming contradiction, as it satisfies the requirement of the second . . .
"Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be made wise in his own conceit."
He is given an answer completely in accord with his folly because just like the effect of his folly upon another, it has the effect on him of addressing no part of what he would have expected for his answer, or any comment. And the tit for tat could not be more soundly accomplished.
This is the revelation of the wisdom of Solomon in both proverbs, how they can seem to be perfectly in contradiction one to the other, and yet not be more highly complimentary.
"The opposite of a trivial truth is false; the opposite of a great truth is also true."
--Niels Bohr
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