The Purification of Doubt: Is It Better to Exist in Purgatory?

Abstract

Consider the metaphorical use of the word “Purgatory.” It is not uncommon to say, for instance, that one is “stuck in Purgatory” to describe a state of uncertainty or inability to achieve final fruition—the state between the falsity of Hell and the perfect truth of Heaven. That state of uncertainty, the skeptical epistemic position, is also, I argue, the state in which learning in most likely to occur. When we are at our least sure, we are most capable of adjusting our understanding of the world and drawing new schema of understanding. Thus, the surety that accompanies the “truth” of Heaven would then be a dangerous state, one in which learning is less likely to occur. The skeptical position, however, so often disparaged in epistemic circles becomes a state not just defensible due to the traditional argumentations regarding the inaccessibility of the true, but a desirable position that suggests one is actually far more capable achieving “truth” when one does not believe one does, or can, have truth. To be a skeptic, then, I suggest is to be in a state of Purgatory. It means to lack the comforts of certainty—the divine state of equilibrium afforded by Heaven. Conversely, then, one comes to wonder, if the analogy holds, if Heaven is as desirable as it seems. By developing a society that assumes, by default, that the best place to be is Heaven, a place without doubts, without suffering, without challenge, have we created a society resistant to growth?