DOGMATISM. - From δόγμα, opinion, judgment, dogmatism in its primitive meaning is any tendency or system that defends, at least in general and within certain limits, the possibility and the fact of certainty. Understood thus, the word has a favorable sense and even in antiquity was opposed to skepticism (cf. Diogenes Laertius, IX, 74; Sextus Emp., Pyrrh. Hypot., I, 3). The primitive sense is altered in Kant, who indeed preserves the antithesis dogmatism-skepticism, but understands dogmatism in a pejorative sense, as "the procedure that follows pure reason without a preliminary critique of its power" (Critique of Pure Reason, Ital. trans. by G. Gentile, Bari 1940, p. 31).
To this dogmatic procedure, which according to Kant is the cause of metaphysical skepticism, he opposes, as the only path to true science, criticism (ibid., p. 53). From the Kantian usage derives the meaning current today; in fact, dogmatic procedure is for the most part synonymous with uncritical procedure, and dogmatism is any system or method that is founded on gratuitous assertions. Even essentially negative systems, and indeed skepticism in some of its partial forms, can thus be reduced to dogmatism, when they proceed upon undemonstrated presuppositions. Still in relation to this general acceptation, dogmatism is sometimes said of the aprioristic method that proceeds to systematic constructions knowledge begins with the prior affirmation of one
or more fundamental truths.
Also linked to Kantian criticism is the moral d. of
Laberthonnière (Le dogmatisme moral, Paris 1898),
which grounds the affirmation and the knowledge of reality
on the demands of the spirit and of human action (v. SCEPTICISM).
Bibliography3 works
Ugo Vigilio