Dogmatic

Dogmatic (pronounced dawg-mat-ik or dog- mat-ik)

(1) Relating to or of the nature of a dogma or dogmas or any strong set of principles concerning faith, morals, etc., as those laid down by a church; doctrinal.

(2) Asserting opinions in a doctrinaire or arrogant manner; opinionated; forcibly asserted as if authoritative and unchallengeable

(3) In science (historically, especially medicine) the practice of pursuing the profession based on assumptions rather than empirical observation.

(4) Of a person, one prone to dogmatic statements.

1595-1605; From the French dogmatique, from the Late Latin dogmaticus and the Hellenistic Ancient Greek δογματικός (dogmatikós) (didactic), from δόγμα (dógma) (dogma), the construct being dogmat (stem of dógma) + ikos or ic.  In the 1680s, it came to be applied to persons, writings etc, "disposed to make positive assertions without presenting arguments or evidence" the use by 1706 extending to matters "pertaining to or of the nature of dogma".  The use of variations of the derived form antidogmatic (antidogmatical, antidogmatically etc) have apparently been in decline since the nineteenth century; "dogmatical" was attested from circa 1600.  The most frequently used related word is dogma (opinion, tenet (literally "that which one thinks is true"), from the Latin dogma (philosophical tenet), from the Ancient Greek δόγμα (dógma) (opinion, tenet), from δοκέω (dokéō or dokein) (I seem good, think); in the seventeenth & eighteenth century it was treated as Greek, with the plural dogmata; the ultimate root was the primitive Indo-European root dek- (to take, accept).  Dogmatic is a noun & adjective, dogmaticalness, dogmatism & dogmatician are nouns, dogmatical is an adjective, dogmatize is a verb and dogmatically is an adverb; the noun plural is dogmatics but the more commonly used is dogmatisms.

The suffix -ic was from the Middle English -ik, from the Old French -ique, from the Latin -icus, from the primitive Indo-European -kos & -ḱos, formed with the i-stem suffix -i- and the adjectival suffix -kos & -ḱos.  The form existed also in the Ancient Greek as -ικός (-ikós), in Sanskrit as -इक (-ika) and the Old Church Slavonic as -ъкъ (-ŭkŭ); A doublet of -y.  In European languages, adding -kos to noun stems carried the meaning "characteristic of, like, typical, pertaining to" while on adjectival stems it acted emphatically; in English it's always been used to form adjectives from nouns with the meaning “of or pertaining to”.  A precise technical use exists in physical chemistry where it's used to denote certain chemical compounds in which a specified chemical element has a higher oxidation number than in the equivalent compound whose name ends in the suffix -ous; (eg sulphuric acid (H₂SO₄) has more oxygen atoms per molecule than sulphurous acid (H₂SO₃).

Karl Barth, Kirchliche Dogmatik

Bedside table reading.

Those not content with a discursive existence and who think it might help to keep the same train of thought for a decade odd might care to read Kirchliche Dogmatik (Church Dogmatics) by Swiss Protestant theologian Karl Barth (1882-1968).  In English translation a fourteen-volume work of some six-million words and published between 1932 and 1967, Barth's purpose was to recover the proclamation of the word of God as the place where God's message of salvation meets sinful man.  Pope Pius XII (1879-1958; pope 1939-1958), a fair judge of such things, is said to have thought Barth the most important theologian since Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274).

Kirchliche Dogmatik explored four themes: revelation, God, creation, and atonement (or reconciliation) although Barth’s intention had been to complete the work by addressing the doctrines of redemption and eschatology.  That he died before being able to finish the project led to something of a theological cult in the 1970s as others speculated how Barth might have discussed such things and structuralists, from a number of disciplines, differed on whether the Dogmatics should be considered an unfinished work.  Perhaps wisely, nobody has ever attempted to write these final volumes.  Nine-thousand pages in German, a pleasing thousand fewer in English, Dogmatics is probably more readable in the digital age, hypertext links assisting those new to the densely referenced and highly technical language in which it’s written.

Albert Speer (1905–1981; Nazi court architect 1934-1942; Nazi minister of armaments and war production 1942-1945), who claimed to have read all the volumes, noted both the conceptual and textual difficulties; sentenced to imprisonment for twenty years by the International Military Tribunal (IMT) which in 1945-1946 sat at Nuremberg to try the leading Nazis in the first and best-known of thirteen such trials, more than most he had time to devote to the task.  In 1959, by the time he'd finished a sixth volume, he noted: “There is much that I still cannot comprehend, chiefly because of the terminology and the subject.  But I have had a curious experience.  The uncomprehended passages exert a tranquilizing effect.  With Barth's help I feel in balance and actually, in spite of all that's oppressive, as if liberated.”  Speer continued: “I owe to Barth the insight that man’s responsibility is not relieved just because evil is part of his nature. Man is by nature evil and nevertheless responsible.  It seems to me there is a kind of complement to that idea in Plato’s statement that for a man who has committed a wrong ‘there is only one salvation: punishment.’  Plato continues: ‘Therefore it is better for him to suffer this punishment than to escape it; for it sustains man’s inward being.’”

Guilty as sin: Speer in the dock at Nuremberg, 1946.

Those passages didn't appear until the publication of Speer's Spandauer Tagebücher (Spandau: The Secret Diaries) (1975), some eight years after Barth's death so he was never able to comment on the idea of his work lending a sense of liberation to someone who would have been hanged had the concealed evidence of the extent of his complicity in the war crimes and crimes against humanity been brought before the court.  Speer's rationalization that an authority as venerated as Plato could be interpreted as saying in serving his sentence he "paid his debt to society" is wholly consistent with both the approach he took at the trial (admitting the "collective guilt" of the regime of which he was a part while denying personal responsibility for any indictable offence) and his successful and lucrative post-war career as an author and celebrity.  Some six months before his observations on Barth, in another context he had noted: “Some time ago I noted that we always read such sentences too late.  That was wrong. What I meant was: We understand them too late.”  By the time he died it does seem likely he understood his guilt but the evasions and denials never ceased.