Apologia
A formal defence of one's beliefs or conduct — an explanation, not an apology.
An apologia is a reasoned defence. The Greek apologia meant a speech made in answer to a charge, and the word entered English keeping that legal shape. It is not an apology in the modern sense: an apologia concedes nothing and instead sets out the grounds on which the speaker acted or believed.
The founding text is Plato's Apology, Socrates' defence at his trial. The tradition runs through early Christian apologetics to Cardinal Newman's Apologia Pro Vita Sua (1864), written to answer Charles Kingsley's accusation of dishonesty, and into modern memoir, where a chapter explaining why the author did the controversial thing is doing the same work under a different name.
Apologias generate quotations that are easy to strip of their defensive context. A sentence written to answer a specific accusation reads, out of context, as a general philosophical claim. Editors quoting from an apologia should signal the occasion — the charge being answered is part of the meaning.
Common mistake: labelling any self-justifying text an apologia as a slur. Used precisely, the term is neutral; used as an insult it just means 'an argument I disagree with', and the word loses its usefulness.
“The unexamined life is not worth living.”
Keep reading the glossary
A personal or institutional statement of belief — the 'I believe' quotation.
A formal public speech — the original setting for many of the most-quoted lines in history.
A formal, weighty statement issued as if from authority.
A short, weighty statement of general truth used to close or crown a passage of argument.