Based on what we learned in class, “doxa” refers to common belief and popular opinion, while “episteme” is portrayed as more of a justified, true belief. We briefly touched on the distinction between the two with some examples such as evolution, and how that shifted from a general knowledge of the creation of humans through the Bible (doxa) to a solidified idea that humans evolved from early primates through series of adaptations which can be justified scientifically (episteme). However, even after the examples we covered in class, the distinction was still really confusing to me as I tried to identify the respective terms in the context of my essay. After some careful research (aka a five minute google search), I have a clearer view on what doxa and episteme are in relation to each other.

To start off, doxa is like a foundation of knowledge or beliefs. A solid mass of common thoughts that may be shaky in some areas, but has enough following to be built upon later to create a substantial argument. An example of this would be “people with bad hygiene are unattractive.” There hasn’t been any scientific studies (that I am aware of) that attribute people’s perceived attractiveness to whether they smell good, which is subjective in itself. We don’t all like the same type of smells, some people like being natural and decide not to wear any sort of fragrance, while others (me included) love to bathe in our favorite scents because that is what we like as individuals. An important principle of doxa is that it is culturally contingent, it changes from culture to culture so it excludes some part of a general audience. Episteme differs from doxa in this sense, it deals with less subjective views and uses objective observations to make arguments more substantial.

In the building metaphor, if doxa is the foundation, episteme is the steel beam that makes up the frame work of the argument. Besides using basic reasoning skills to come to a conclusion, which is commonly done in doxa, episteme goes beyond that and reveals the actual process that lead to the conclusion. It demonstrates a deeper knowledge and understanding of the argument that allows the idea to become immutable, which is why science is a good form of episteme because it is observational, empirical, and sometimes inductive. An example of this would be the practice of law. If we saw someone blatantly breaking a law, our first impulse would be to say that the person is guilty! This is doxastic in nature, we are creating a judgment based on our personal belief that this is wrong and the social conventions of “laws” should not be broken. In contrast, a lawyer would use logos to view the situation, there’s a process that they must undergo to reach the conclusion on whether or not that person is truly guilty. What specific law did they break? Is there observable proof that a violation occurred? There is a methodical approach to episteme that sharply differs from the way conclusions are reached using doxa.