{"id":4901,"date":"2018-01-04T12:00:44","date_gmt":"2018-01-04T12:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2018\/01\/04\/doxastic-security-pyrrhonists-and-dogmatists\/"},"modified":"2018-01-04T12:00:44","modified_gmt":"2018-01-04T12:00:44","slug":"doxastic-security-pyrrhonists-and-dogmatists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2018\/01\/04\/doxastic-security-pyrrhonists-and-dogmatists\/","title":{"rendered":"On the Road with Peter Wust"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Peter<\/a>Both Pyrrhonists and dogmatists aim at and achieve a sort of psychological security: the former by ceasing to inquire and by living more or less adoxastos<\/em>, without beliefs; the latter by the rigid and unquestioning holding of contentious beliefs. The dogmatists hold on, the skeptics let go. The former live tenaciously, clinging to their tenets; the skeptics live or try to live without beliefs and tenets.  (The Latin tenere<\/a> means to hold.)<\/span><\/p>\n

What the two opposing groups have in common is that they cease inquiry. The dogmatist, secure in his dogmas, feels no need to inquire. "We don't seek the truth; we have the truth." The Pyrrhonian skeptic, despairing of finding truth, and sick of the agitation consequent upon discussion and debate, gives up inquiry. "We don't seek the truth; the truth is not to be had."<\/span><\/p>\n

Neither form of doxastic security is to be recommended.<\/span><\/p>\n

Peter Wust<\/a> in his excellent but largely forgotten Ungewi\u00dfheit und Wagnis<\/em> (1937), speaking of dogmatists and skeptics, writes that:<\/span><\/p>\n

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Beide wollen sich von dem Zustand des Unterwegsseins befreien<\/em> . . . (UW 236)<\/span><\/p>\n

Both want to free themselves from the state of being on the way . . .<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

. . . when man, here below, is and must remain homo viator.<\/em> <\/span><\/p>\n

In this world we are ever in statu viae<\/em>, on the road, coming from we know not where, headed for we know not where. The Whither and Whence remain shrouded in darkness, and the light  that guides us is but a half-light. On this road there is no rest from inquiry. Rest, if rest there be, lies at the end of the road.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Both Pyrrhonists and dogmatists aim at and achieve a sort of psychological security: the former by ceasing to inquire and by living more or less adoxastos, without beliefs; the latter by the rigid and unquestioning holding of contentious beliefs. The dogmatists hold on, the skeptics let go. The former live tenaciously, clinging to their tenets; … Continue reading “On the Road with Peter Wust”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,290,660],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4901","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ancient-skepticism","category-life-of-the-mind","category-wust-peter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4901"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4901\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}