Doxa

Doxa (δόξα; from verb δοκεῖν) is a common belief or popular opinion. In classical rhetoric, doxa is contrasted with episteme ('knowledge'). The term doxa is an ancient Greek term (δόξα) that comes from the verb dokein (δοκεῖν), meaning 'to appear, to seem, to think, to accept'. Between the 3rd and 1st centuries BCE, the term picked up an additional meaning when the Biblical Hebrew word for 'glory' (כבוד) was translated by the Septuagint as doxa. This translation of the Hebrew scriptures was used by the early Church, causing the term to be frequently used in the New Testament. The term is also used in the worship services of the Greek Orthodox Church, where the glorification of God in true worship is also seen as true belief. In that context, doxa reflects behavior or practice in worship, and the belief of the whole church rather than personal opinion. It is the unification of these multiple meanings of doxa that is reflected in the modern terms orthodoxy and heterodoxy. This semantic merging in the word doxa is also seen in Russian word slava (слава), which means 'glory', but is used with the meaning of praise or worship in words like pravoslavie (православие), meaning 'orthodoxy' (or, literally, 'true belief', 'true way of worship') deriving more from the verb 'славить' - to praise. In his dialogue Gorgias, Plato presents the sophists as wordsmiths who ensnared and used the malleable doxa of the multitude to their advantage without shame. In this and other writings, Plato relegated doxa as being a belief, unrelated to reason, that resided in the unreasoning, lower-parts of the soul. This viewpoint extended into the concept of doxasta in Plato's theory of forms, which states that physical objects are manifestations of doxa and are thus not in their true form. Plato's framing of doxa as the opponent of knowledge led to the classical opposition of error to truth, which has since become a major concern in Western philosophy.