How To Be An Agnostic
more or less in the best direction, though for us agnostics our exact
destination is never entirely clear. It aims at what is good, though
without having to know what is good ahead of time: that can’t be
discovered by deliberation but only by living itself. Simone Weil
put it this way. We need indicators of ‘gravity’ in life, the things
that would drag us down, and indicators of ‘grace’, the things that
lift us up. Like Hercules, who myth tells us came to a crossroads in
life when he had to make a choice, a sense of gravity and grace can
help us decide what to commit to in any particular moment.
Further, virtue ethics is not primarily interested in whether some
isolated action is good or bad in itself, but in what kind of person
someone is becoming as a whole – of which their actions are but a
product. It does not seek defi nite answers, but rather a way of life,
much like the musician who orientates their life around practice,
learning and performance. It seeks to understand how to nurture
good character, skills and habits. Happiness plays a part in this. So
does empathy. However, virtue ethics takes us much further.
Illus. 3.2: Aristotle, who articulated a way of thinking about how to live
known as virtue ethics.