Following Socratesreligious imagination demanded this something else. And one
way of pursuing it – I suspect the richest at this point of history
for those formed by Christianity – is via an agnosticism that is
linked into the Christian tradition. It turns on whether God can
be imagined, encountered, as the question, in all the different
contexts we’ve explored – in meditation, theodicy, mystical the-
ology, cosmic religion. However, there’s this further element that
can be brought to the table. Agnosticism as a way of reaching
towards the unknown, reaches back before Christianity. It rests
on the shoulders of Socrates. And he can provide a complemen-
tary resource to the Christian one.
It is not uncommon for thinkers, some Christian, to turn to
Socrates for inspiration in this way. Philosophers as diverse as
Hegel and Nietzsche, Kierkegaard and Montaigne have done so;
as Cicero put it: ‘Socrates was the fi rst to call philosophy down
from the heavens and compel it to ask questions about life and
morality.’ He is often associated with scepticism on account of his
modus operandi – namely, inquiry. But the agnosticism that I fi nd
in him is scepticism of a particular sort. It is not like some forms of
modern scepticism that, since Descartes, have practised the habit
of doubting everything. This hyper- speculative doubt is somewhat
akin to hyper-speculative banking: it’s speculation for speculation’s
sake, not for human sake, and so it loses touch with reality, until
reality comes crashing down on it. Socrates, though, was not solip-
sistic, as if he thought we are only ‘brains in a vat’, or the empty
vessels that will be snuffed out with nirvana. As I see it, he was
not sceptical about existence, nor the value of questioning reason,
nor crucially that life can be about, or for, something. Quite the
reverse. It’s not even clear that you can literally doubt everything:
with what capacity, what assumptions are you doubting? Doubt
needs some minimal scaffolding to lower you into its darkness.
He was sceptical about what human beings can know for
sure, on account of their in-between status between the animals
and the gods. This is both a burden, inasmuch as the individ-
ual can become conscious of their ignorance. But it is also a
blessing. Socrates’ agnosticism meant that while using reason to