Relation to certainty

Against sophistic relativism, Platonism holds that a true science, epistēmē (stable scientific knowledge of the true, opposed to mere opinion, doxa), of the Forms is attainable, distinct from mere opinion. The wise can reach stable and certain knowledge of what is eternal, a markedly dogmatic stance in the classical sense.

Plato, Theaetetus, 201d-210a, knowledge and opinion · Plato, Republic, 477a-480a

Science (epistēmē) is demonstrative knowledge: a knowledge of the necessary, derived by syllogism from true, immediate first principles better known than the conclusion. This confidence in a certain, grounded knowledge places Aristotle on the side of dogmatism, tempered by his admission that the practical domain admits only an approximate exactness.

Posterior Analytics, I.2 · Nicomachean Ethics, I.3 (1094b)

Berkeley takes scepticism to be the disease to cure, and immaterialism to be its remedy. Modern doubt, he says, springs entirely from matter: once one posits real things hidden behind our ideas, one can never know whether our ideas resemble them, hence the veil of perception into which the sceptic rushes. Remove that unknowable matter, and the gap vanishes: things are no more than what we perceive, immediately and with certainty. Far from the rationalist dogmatism of Descartes, who grounds certainty on reason, Berkeley relocates it in sensible perception itself, made secure because there is no longer anything outside it to miss.

Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous, Preface and III · Principles of Human Knowledge, §§86-88

Faced with the relativism that psychologism brought to bear on logic, and the historicist scepticism of his day, Husserl sets philosophy the demand of a rigorous science: not one more opinion, but knowledge possessed of an apodictic, indubitable evidence. For this he takes up the founding move of Descartes, the search for an absolutely certain ground, but displaces it: that ground is not a thinking substance, it is the self-evidence of lived experiences themselves, given in person to the gaze that describes them. The phenomenological reduction suspends not in order to doubt, but to reach what resists all doubt, the field of consciousness as it shows itself.

Philosophy as Rigorous Science (1911) · Cartesian Meditations, First Meditation

Against the skepticism of the New Academy, the Stoics are dogmatists: they hold that certain knowledge is possible through the kataleptic impression, an impression so clear and distinct that it grasps its object and can come only from what is real. It is the criterion of truth and the foundation of the sage's science.

Cicero, Academica · Diogenes Laertius, Lives, VII, 46

Husserlian phenomenology means to be a rigorous science, able to ground knowledge against psychologism and skeptical relativism. Its gesture is the epoché: suspending the naive thesis of the world in order to return to the things themselves, as they give themselves to consciousness. There lie apodictic data, indubitable because grasped without intermediary in intuitive self-evidence, the bedrock of a certain knowledge. This quest for an absolute foundation brings Husserl close to a Cartesian-inspired foundationalism, even if his heirs, Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty, will abandon that ideal of apodicticity.

Husserl, Philosophy as Rigorous Science · Husserl, Cartesian Meditations

Roused from his dogmatic slumber by Hume, Kant rejects both opposing paths: dogmatic metaphysics, which claims to know the unconditioned, God, the soul, the world as a totality, loses itself in the antinomies, where reason contradicts itself; yet Humean skepticism, dissolving necessity into habit, is just as untenable. The critical path settles it: there is indeed an apodictic certainty, that of synthetic a priori judgments, but it holds only of appearances, objects as they appear to us under the forms of the subject, not of things in themselves. A necessary and universal certainty, then, but paid for with an impassable limit.

Critique of Pure Reason, Prefaces and Transcendental Dialectic · Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics

Confident in reason's power to demonstrate (God's existence, the principles of morality), Thomas takes the side of dogmatism: science proceeds from self-evident first principles to certain conclusions, and systematic doubt has no place. This assurance is nonetheless tempered by an awareness of the limits of the finite mind, which does not grasp God's essence and must receive by faith what exceeds its reach.

Summa Theologiae, Ia, q. 1, a. 2; q. 2

Like every Stoic, Epictetus is dogmatic against Academic skepticism: a criterion of truth exists, the cognitive impression (phantasia katalēptikē), and the wise person (sophos) can grant or withhold assent advisedly. He openly mocks those who claim nothing can be asserted.

Discourses, I.5 (Against the Academics) · Discourses, I.27

Against skepticism, Epicurus holds that all sensations are true: sensation, infallible because irrational and memoryless, never errs; error arises only from the judgment that opinion adds. This confidence in a secure criterion of truth is a dogmatism, even if grounded on the senses rather than reason.

Diogenes Laertius, Lives, X, 31-32 (all sensations are true) · Lucretius, On the Nature of Things, IV, 469-521 (defence of the truth of the senses)

Liberating knowledge (vidyā) is not a probable opinion but a definitive certainty which, once ignorance is removed, can no longer be contradicted, as the rope once recognized dispels the snake forever. Doubt belongs to the domain of ignorance, not to the knowledge of the self, which is immediate and self-evident. Śaṅkara argues moreover as a dogmatist against the skeptics and rival schools, taking it as settled that an ultimate truth is accessible and demonstrable.

Upadeśasāhasrī · Commentary on the Brahma Sūtras, II.2

Aristotelianism is dogmatic in the noble sense: genuine science, epistēmē, is demonstrative knowledge proceeding from indemonstrable first principles, themselves grasped with certainty by the intellect. Scientific knowledge bears on the necessary and the universal, which excludes sceptical doubt about its foundations, even as practical wisdom acknowledges the inherent uncertainty of the domain of action.

Aristotle, Posterior Analytics, I, 2 and II, 19

Advaita is dogmatic in the sense that it holds a final liberating truth to be certain: the identity of the ātman (the Self) and brahman, attested by scripture (śruti) and confirmed by direct realization. Far from any skepticism, the knowledge that liberates is held to be indubitable and irreversible, since it coincides with the very nature of the knowing subject.

Śaṅkara, Commentary on the Brahma-Sūtras (Brahma-Sūtra-Bhāṣya), I · Muṇḍaka Upaniṣad

Against the skeptics who suspend all assent, Lucretius holds the senses to be a secure criterion and rests the whole of physics on their testimony: whoever declares them uncertain thereby ruins the reason that contests them, and will no longer be able even to tell true from false. Sensation taken in itself never deceives; error arises only from the opinion added to it. This confidence in a firm ground of knowledge is a dogmatism, sensualist though it be.

On the Nature of Things, IV, 469-521 (refutation of skepticism)

Plotinus builds an affirmative, architectured metaphysics, confident of reaching the true through the intellect: there is a science of the intelligible, and the Intellect possesses an infallible knowledge of its objects, which are its own thoughts. This confidence sets him on the side of dogmatism. It is tempered, however, regarding the One, by an almost skeptical reserve: of the supreme principle nothing can properly be said, and discourse approaches it only through negations.

Enneads, V, 5 · Enneads, VI, 9, 3-4

Against the scepticism of the Academy, Epicureanism asserts a clear dogmatism: all sensations are true, and to deny that anything can be known refutes itself. Nature gives us firm criteria, sensations and preconceptions, on which secure knowledge can be built. Radical doubt is held to be an untenable stance, even though the school admits several possible explanations for distant celestial phenomena.

Epicurus, Letter to Herodotus, 37-38 · Diogenes Laertius, Lives, X, 31-32

As a Stoic, Marcus takes it as settled that a true knowledge of the good and of nature is possible, and in that sense he is a dogmatist, not a sceptic. But his refrain that « everything is judgment » (the value we add to things) and his tone of humility temper the doctrine: he asserts a system less than he exhorts himself to see straight.

Meditations, IV, 3 · Meditations, VIII, 47 · Meditations, XII, 8

Against speculative idealism as much as against utopian socialism, Marx claims for his analysis of capital the standing of a science uncovering the objective laws of social movement: a certain knowledge of historical reality is attainable. Whether thought reaches the real is, moreover, not a theoretical question but a practical one, settled in praxis, by transforming the world. Doubt is therefore no dwelling but a stage that practice lifts, which sets Marx clearly apart from skepticism and contemplative resignation.

Theses on Feuerbach, II and XI · Capital, Afterword to the Second Edition

As a Stoic, Seneca takes it as settled that a true knowledge of the world and of the good is possible: nature is rational and wisdom is attainable. Yet he claims freedom from the schools, judging opinions for himself and binding himself to no master, which tempers the Stoic dogmatism with an eclectic mind.

Letters to Lucilius, XII and XLV (judging for oneself, swearing by no master)

Some propositions ("here is a hand", "the earth existed long before my birth") are neither objects of knowledge nor of doubt: they are the hinges on which the door of inquiry turns, the riverbed in which the rest of our thoughts flow. Doubt presupposes them (the game of doubting itself presupposes certainty), so that radical skepticism destroys itself. Yet they are not a dogmatic knowledge grounded on reasons, and can shift over time: neither dogmatism, nor skepticism, nor fallibilism, but a framework-certainty that this axis can only approximate.

On Certainty, §§341-343, §§94-99, §115 (posthumous notes)

Scientific socialism sets itself against utopian socialism by claiming knowledge of the objective laws of historical development: social reality is intelligible and certain, not given over to doubt. The truth of a thought is, besides, proven in praxis, by transforming the world, and not in mere theoretical contemplation. Marxism thus sets aside skepticism and resignation, entrusting to critique and practice the power to dispel ideological illusions.

Engels, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific · Marx, Theses on Feuerbach

Bacon rejects at once the skepticism that despairs of knowledge and the dogmatic assurance of systems, which "decide" too quickly. His way is gradual ascent: rising from facts to axioms by sure degrees, without leaping to premature generalities. Certainty is not a starting point but the term of a patient, correctable march, in which one posits nothing one has not tested. It is less a fallibilism than a certainty slowly won, by the exclusion of errors.

Novum Organum, I, §19-20 and §104

Against all relativism, Sartre insists that there must be an absolute starting point, and that there is none other than the cogito: consciousness grasping itself, immediate and within everyone's reach. But this certainty is narrow: it yields the subject's existence, not an essence, a human nature or values, all of which are wanting, since existence precedes essence. Foundationalist on this single foothold yet stripped of any other given certainty, Sartre stands near the divide, on the side of assurance through the cogito, on the side of vertigo for all the rest.

Existentialism Is a Humanism · Being and Nothingness, Introduction (the pre-reflective cogito)

The inaugural gesture is critical: against the dogmatism of school metaphysics and revealed truths, the task is to measure reason against its own limits. But this distrust is not the destructive scepticism of Pyrrho: Hume tempers his doubt into a mitigated, workable scepticism, and Kant turns it into a critique that bounds knowledge the better to ground it. Certainty now aims at what withstands examination, not at what imposes itself by authority, a fallibilist stance.

Kant, Critique of Pure Reason (preface) · Hume, Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, sect. XII

To name is to carve reality into opposed categories (great and small, true and false), yet the dao 道 (the Way) is the undivided ground from which those distinctions proceed: no word can grasp it without betraying it. Language fits bounded things, never the source that engenders them all. Zhuangzi draws from this a radical perspectivism: every judgment speaks from a situated standpoint, disputation merely sets two partialities against each other with no judge above them, and to claim a universal verdict is to mistake one's perch for the center of the world. Hence a skepticism that aims less to deny than to dissolve the claim to certain knowledge and to free one from the need to be right.

Laozi, Dao De Jing, ch. 1 · Zhuangzi, ch. 2 (On the Equality of Things)

Every judgment is made from a standpoint, and each standpoint has its "this" and its "that": what one party holds true the other holds false, and no neutral tribunal can settle them without itself being a party. Zhuangzi draws from this a scepticism about discursive knowledge: the controversies of the Confucians and the Mohists cancel out, dream cannot be securely told from waking, and one does not even know whether one knows anything. Yet this doubt is not the Greek suspension aimed at tranquillity: it is therapeutic and liberating, dissolving the anxiety of having to be right so as to leave room for a supple knowing attuned to the course of things.

Zhuangzi, ch. 2 (On the Equality of Things) · Zhuangzi, ch. 2 (the butterfly dream)

No belief rests on a first, indubitable foundation: it is the error of dogmatism, and of Cartesian doubt, to seek outside inquiry a bedrock that would secure it from without. Peirce reverses the order: one never starts from scratch but from a fabric of inherited beliefs that only a real doubt, sprung from a concrete difficulty, can unsettle, never a feigned doubt posited on principle. Hence fallibilism: our best-assured opinions stay correctable by future experience, none escaping revision by right. The position thereby parts company both with the rationalist quest for a certain starting point and with the skepticism that, lacking such a point, would suspend action: one inquires from within revisable beliefs, with no outside to ground them.

Peirce, 'The Fixation of Belief' (1877) · Dewey, Logic: The Theory of Inquiry (1938)

Drawing all knowledge from experience forces one to accept its precariousness: what comes only from the senses cannot carry the necessity of a demonstration. Locke therefore confines certain knowledge to a narrow domain and files the rest under mere probability, and Hume strikes the decisive blow by showing that matters of fact rest on induction, which presupposes without being able to prove that the future will resemble the past. This lucidity about the limits of understanding sets the school against the rationalist claim to a complete deductive system, yet without lapsing into radical doubt: its skepticism stays mitigated, corrective rather than destructive.

Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding, book IV · Hume, Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, sections IV and XII

The human mind demands unity, clarity, ultimate certainties; the world answers with an unreasonable silence. From this divorce springs the absurd: the absolute truths reason craves lie beyond its reach, and any thought that promises them, religious or systematic, performs a leap away from the evidence. Yet Camus guards against wholesale skepticism, which refutes itself in asserting itself: at least two things remain certain, the absurd itself and the bare fact of existing. Lucidity holds to this middle ground, refusing both metaphysical hope and the surrender of knowing.

The Myth of Sisyphus, An Absurd Reasoning

After the Delphic oracle declared no one wiser than he, Socrates, convinced he knew nothing, set out to refute the god, and found that men reputed wise knew no more than he but believed they did. His superiority lies wholly in not imagining he knows what he does not: this learned ignorance is no skepticism that gives up on truth, but the mainspring of the elenchus, which dissolves false certainties to reopen the inquiry.

Plato, Apology, 20e-23b (the oracle and the inquiry)

Locke bounds the understanding: certain, demonstrative knowledge is rare, confined to mathematics and a few moral or metaphysical truths. About existing things and matters of fact we have only probable knowledge, resting on experience and testimony. Without lapsing into skepticism, he urges a measured distrust of our claims to certainty.

Essay Concerning Human Understanding, IV, ch. 2-3 (degrees and extent of knowledge) and ch. 15-16 (probability)

To silence an opinion presupposes that one knows it false, hence that one believes oneself infallible: yet no one is, and history is full of truths first persecuted. From this fallibility Mill draws the demand for debate: suppressing an opinion may rob us of a truth, and even a false one sharpens, by contradiction, the received truth, which without it decays into a dead dogma professed without grasp of its meaning. Doubt for him is thus no paralysing scepticism but the condition of living knowledge, which ranks him, without surrendering truth, on the side of fallibilism.

On Liberty, ch. 2 (the argument from fallibility and the dead dogma)

The ambiguity of the human condition is to be taken up, not fled: this is exactly what the spirit of seriousness refuses, reassuring itself by treating values as fixed truths inscribed in things. Yet nothing is given in advance, neither meaning nor the good: they take shape in the free project, always revisable and without guarantee. Hence a principled wariness toward absolute certainties, which mask an abdication, without thereby lapsing into skepticism, since freedom grounds values that are real though not founded in any nature.

The Ethics of Ambiguity

"The Dao that can be named is not the constant Dao": ultimate reality eludes language and concepts, which carve up and fix what is fluid. Laozi mocks busy knowledge and exalts a "knowing not-knowing," but this is not the skepticism of suspended judgment: it is a higher, intuitive and silent knowledge, attuned to the Dao. The doubt bears on discursive knowledge, not on access to truth, hence a median position leaning toward distrust.

Dao De Jing, ch. 1 and 56 · Dao De Jing, ch. 48 and 71

The utilitarian temper is empiricist and anti-metaphysical: knowledge, moral as well as factual, derives from experience and observable consequences, never from a priori intuitions held to be indubitable. Mill draws from this a strong thesis on fallibility: no opinion is certain to the point of forbidding that it be contested, and it is on this very fallibility that the need for free discussion rests. Knowledge therefore stays revisable, made of probable and amendable truths rather than definitive certainties.

Mill, On Liberty, ch. II

In the empiricist line, Bentham grants reality only to what is observed and measured, and hunts down fictions, terms such as natural right that mimic the naming of a thing while no sensible fact answers to them. Certainty is therefore not won by an a priori reason laying down definitive truths, but by the recording of facts and by calculation; every metaphysical pretension to knowledge beyond experience stays suspect. The stance is measured: not the skeptic's doubt, but trust in empirical knowledge alone, fallible and correctable.

Theory of Fictions; Chrestomathia

Gautama urges not to believe on the strength of authority, tradition, or reasoning alone, but to test for oneself what leads to good and to peace: this is the famous counsel to the Kālāmas. This wariness toward dogmatic speculation and fixed "views", joined to the refusal to settle idle questions, marks a moderate critical reserve, without lapsing into thoroughgoing skepticism, since the path itself is held to be verifiable.

Kālāma Sutta, Aṅguttara Nikāya 3.65 (do not believe on authority alone) · Cūḷamālukya Sutta, Majjhima Nikāya 63 (the parable of the arrow, the undeclared questions)

Confucius teaches a measured epistemic honesty: to hold as known what you know, and as unknown what you do not, that is true knowledge. He refrains from pronouncing on the beyond or the spirits and admits he was not born knowing. Without lapsing into scepticism, he makes room for doubt and avowed ignorance, hence a slight tilt away from dogmatism.

Analects, II, 17 (to hold as known what you know, as unknown what you do not) · Analects, VII, 19 (I was not born knowing; I love antiquity and study it diligently)

The Buddha turns away from metaphysical speculation: to questions about the eternity of the world or the hereafter he opposes silence, just as the wounded man need not know the archer before the arrow is drawn from the wound. Truth is not established by authority, tradition or reasoning alone, but tested in direct experience, come and see. The stance is more pragmatic than skeptical: no certain dogma to embrace, but a path whose efficacy each verifies for oneself, the Dharma realized in meditative insight.

Kalama Sutta (Anguttara Nikaya) · Cula-Malunkyovada Sutta (the parable of the arrow)

Confucian wisdom rests on a measured epistemic humility: to know that you know what you know, and to know that you do not know what you do not know, that is knowledge. Confucius sets aside speculation about spirits or about death, not yet having understood life, and prefers to metaphysics the study of the texts, the rites and the example of the sages. Neither systematic doubt nor dogmatic system: a practical trust in the Way, proven in conduct rather than in theory.

Analects (Lunyu), II.17 and XI.12

A common trait beyond the movement's divisions: the refusal of the grand rational system that would claim to enclose reality within objective, impersonal certainties, in Hegel's manner. The truth that matters is not contemplated, it is undergone and appropriated in existence, truth is subjectivity (Kierkegaard). On the rest the figures diverge, from Kierkegaardian faith to the cogito that Sartre upholds as absolute truth, which forbids ranging the movement squarely on the skeptical side: it chiefly shifts the locus of the true, from the system to the subject.

Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript