Dogmatic Definition

The adjective dogmatic (from the Greek dogmatikós) refers to that person who affirms their opinions as unquestionable universal truths, without the need to substantiate them. The dimension of universality is important to understand dogmatism: if someone claims that something seems to him “pleasant”, you will not need to justify such appreciation; however, we would not affirm that it is a dogma. To speak of dogmatism, there must be a statement that transcends private perceptions and is equally valid for anyone else. The religious use of the term “dogmatic” refers to everything that is related to the dogmas of religion as well as who is dedicated to dealing with said dogmas.

dogmatic theology

Theology is the study of the divine. A dogmatic theology is one that deals with divinity, its attributes and perfections, taking as its starting point the revealed principles —namely, religious dogma—, which are accepted as a matter of faith.

It should also be noted that, in a thought such as that of Saint Augustine of Hippo (354 AD – 430 AD), faith does not consist of mere dogmatism, but rather there is a mutual relationship between faith and reason, insofar as both constitute complementary instruments in the search for truth. In this sense, he will say that “faith seeks, understanding finds.” The intellect does not occupy the role of founding the existence of God, but it is a means to approach him and accept the truths of faith, as revealed data.

Philosophy and dogmatism

The passage from the Critique of Pure Reason is well known in which Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) affirms that the empiricist David Hume “woke him up from his dogmatic sleep”. In philosophy, “dogmatic” is understood as the type of thought that aspires to establish a necessary and, therefore, universal knowledge, independently of the physical world, strictly speaking, metaphysics. He “dogmatic dream“To which Kant refers is the dream of reason to know immediately (without resorting to sensitivity) the essence of all things.

What the philosopher points out is that this type of intuition is only possible for a divine being, but not for knowledge within the limits of human cognitive faculties. Men, as finite beings, do not have an infinite intuition of the world, but rather, in order to know, both concepts and sensible (ie empirical) intuitions are needed. A metaphysics that suppresses the empirical dimension of knowledge is, then, dogmatic, because without experience it cannot base its concepts; therefore, it cannot be constituted as a science.

science and dogmatism

As we have seen, there are relationships between reason, faith and philosophy, which could call into question a sharp division between dogmatism and argumentatively based thought. What difference, then, to the dogma of science, if in none of the cases is it possible to base ultimate truths?

In science, certain “truths” that do not require justification are usually accepted as starting points. We call these postulates “axioms”. However, what differentiates these baseless truths from dogmas is that the axioms of a theory are determined arbitrarily and conventionally, that is, they can always be replaced by other axioms. This makes the edifice of science entirely revisable, since if part of a theory is proven false, it can be eliminated.

On the other hand, what characterizes the dogma is its unquestionability, while the dogma rejects any verification. While the truths of science are provisional truths, which are accepted based on a pragmatic interest, because they are useful for a certain purpose, dogmatic truths are accepted as revealed truths, whose permanence over time is never threatened, with the exception of the case in which the totality of the doctrine that is based on such dogmas is rejected.

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