metanoia

Noun

metanoia (countable and uncountable, plural metanoias)

1. A fundamental change of mind.
   • Sadly behind the great age of rowdy self-advertisement in which their lot has fallen, they seem not to have advanced one whit beyond John the Baptist and the Apostles, 1800 years ago, in their notions of the way in which the metanoia, the change of mind of the ill-doer, is to be brought about.1890 December 9, Thomas H. Huxley, “Letter to the "Times" on the "Darkest England Scheme"”, in Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays
   • Metanoia is the knowledge that there can be totalities in this world totally different from what we thought. This is the sense in which metanoia is the most radical form of poiesis.2017, Armen Avanessian, Anke Hennig, Metanoia: A Speculative Ontology of Language, Thinking, and the Brain, Bloomsbury, →ISBN, page 162

   Synonyms:

   metanoete

2. A spiritual or religious conversion.
   • There is therefore enthusiasm no less than resignation in an enlightened metanoia. You give up everything in the form of claims; you receive everything back in the form of a divine presence.1948 December, George Santayana, “A Change of Heart”, in The Atlantic
   • Ecstatic seizures are rare—they only occur in something like 1 or 2 percent of patients with temporal lobe epilepsy. But the last half century has seen an enormous increase in the prevalence of other states sometimes permeated by religious joy and awe, "heavenly" visions and voices, and, not...2012 December 12, Oliver Sacks, “Seeing God in the Third Millennium”, in The Atlantic
3. A fundamental change in the human personality.
4. (rhetoric) A device used to retract a statement just made, and then state it in a better way.
   • Two months after Obama’s autocue mishap, his vice-presidential running mate Joe Biden raised a laugh when he used metanoia in his speech to the Democratic convention:
     “You know, folks, that’s the America that George Bush has left us. And that’s the America we’ll continue to get if George – excuse...2015 April 28, Martin Shovel, “I'm sorry, I'll say that again – the rhetorical trick of metanoia”, in The Guardian, →ISSN

   Synonyms:

   correctio, epanorthosis