Exoteric refers to knowledge that is outside and independent from a person's experience and can be ascertained by anyone (related to

common sense ''Common Sense'' is a 47-page pamphlet written by Thomas Paine in 1775–1776 advocating independence from Great Britain to people in the Thirteen Colonies. Writing in clear and persuasive prose, Paine collected various moral and political arg ...

). The word is derived from the comparative form of

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

ἔξω ''eksô'', "from, out of, outside". It signifies anything which is public, without limits, or universal. It is distinguished from internal

esoteric Western esotericism, also known as esotericism, esoterism, and sometimes the Western mystery tradition, is a term scholars use to categorise a wide range of loosely related ideas and movements that developed within Western society. These ideas ...

knowledge. "Exoteric" relates to external reality as opposed to a person's thoughts or feelings. It is knowledge that is public as opposed to

secret Secrecy is the practice of hiding information from certain individuals or groups who do not have the "need to know", perhaps while sharing it with other individuals. That which is kept hidden is known as the secret. Secrecy is often controvers ...

cabal A cabal is a group of people who are united in some close design, usually to promote their private views or interests in an ideology, a state, or another community, often by intrigue and usually unbeknownst to those who are outside their group. T ...

istic. It is not required that exoteric knowledge come easily or automatically, but it should be referenceable or reproducible.

Philosophical context

Most philosophical and religious belief systems presume that reality must be independent of what an individual makes of it. However, even before the days of

Plato Plato ( ; grc-gre, Πλάτων ; 428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) was a Greek philosopher born in Athens during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. He founded the Platonist school of thought and the Academy, the first institution ...

, a prominent alternate

theory of knowledge Epistemology (; ), or the theory of knowledge, is the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge. Epistemology is considered a major subfield of philosophy, along with other major subfields such as ethics, logic, and metaphysics. Ep ...

insisted that the perceived outside reality is merely an internal fabrication of the observer and that it has no existence or substance outside the imagination of the observer. The Buddha's statement: "All that we are arises with our thoughts" ( Dhammapada 1.1) is reminiscent of this. In his book entitled ''

The Book of Five Rings is a text on ''kenjutsu'' and the martial arts in general, written by the Japanese swordsman Miyamoto Musashi around 1645. Many translations have been made, and it enjoys an audience considerably broader than other martial artists and people ac ...

'', the Japanese swordsmaster

Miyamoto Musashi , also known as Shinmen Takezō, Miyamoto Bennosuke or, by his Buddhist name, Niten Dōraku, was a Japanese swordsman, philosopher, strategist, writer and rōnin, who became renowned through stories of his unique double-bladed swordsmanship a ...

noted that when he teaches people martial arts, "since egenerally makes them learn such things as have actual relevance to addressing eeper principles there is no such thing as a distinction between the esoteric and the exoteric."

Religious context

In the same way as the term "esoteric" is often associated with esoteric spirituality, the term "exoteric" is mostly used in discussions of religion and spirituality, as when the teachings shift the believer's focus away from an exploration of the inner self and towards an adherence to rules, laws, and an individual God. The term "exoteric" may also reflect the notion of a divine identity that is outside of, and different from, human identity, whereas the esoteric notion claims that the divine is to be discovered ''within'' the human identity. Going one step further, the pantheistic notion suggests that the divine and the material world are one and the same. The Ismaili interpretation of

Shia Islam Shīʿa Islam or Shīʿīsm is the second-largest branch of Islam. It holds that the Islamic prophet Muhammad designated ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib as his successor (''khalīfa'') and the Imam (spiritual and political leader) after him, m ...

operates in the framework of a co-existence between the exoteric ('' zahir'') form and the esoteric ('' batin'') essence. Without the esoteric, the exoteric is like a mirage or illusion with no place in reality.

Government

The exoteric form of government is one where all actions taken by the government must be both publicly disclosed and ratified by the public. This is often referred to as transparency of governance.

Societies

Many societies are divided into 2 sections—the ''exoteric'' or "public face" and the ''esoteric'' or "behind closed doors". Such are many fraternal organizations, such as

Freemasonry Freemasonry or Masonry refers to fraternal organisations that trace their origins to the local guilds of stonemasons that, from the end of the 13th century, regulated the qualifications of stonemasons and their interaction with authorities ...

, which are at some level accessible to the uninitiated but which have higher and higher levels of initiation as one progresses.

References

External links