Peirastic definitions and example sentences on Wordnik

“

It enables us to claim one who has been hitherto regarded as belonging to a merely speculative and peirastic school as the willing and deliberate champion of vital Christianity, and of an orthodoxy the more sincere because it has worked upward through the abyss of doubt; the more mighty for good because it justifies and consecrates the aesthetics and the philosophy of the present age.

—Literary and General Lectures and Essays

View all »
Definitions (2)

American Heritage Dictionary

Century Dictionary (1)

Fitted for or pertaining to trying or testing; making trial; tentative: as, the peirastic dialogues of Plato.

GNU Webster's 1913 (1)

WordNet

Elsewhere on the web

Examples (2)

In the lowest subdivision, indeed, the word maieutic is a metaphor of another kind, fully explained in Plato's Theaetetus: the maieutic dialogues, however, were supposed to resemble giving the rudiments of the art; as the peirastic were, to represent a skirmish, or trial of proficiency; the endeietic were, it seems, likened to the exhibiting a specimen of skill; and the anatreptic, to presenting the spectacle of a thorough defeat, or sound drubbing. — Introduction to the Philosophy and Writings of Plato
It enables us to claim one who has been hitherto regarded as belonging to a merely speculative and peirastic school as the willing and deliberate champion of vital Christianity, and of an orthodoxy the more sincere because it has worked upward through the abyss of doubt; the more mighty for good because it justifies and consecrates the aesthetics and the philosophy of the present age. — Literary and General Lectures and Essays