How To Be An Agnostic

Following Socrates

between teacher and pupil, in joint pursuit of the subject,

suddenly, like light fl ashing forth when a fi re is kindled, it is

born in the soul and straightway nourishes itself.

Plato probably followed the not unreasonable belief of the
Pythagoreans who sought to understand the order and harmony
of the cosmos as a matter of spirit as well as maths, an early
form of cosmic religion.
That this is the spirit within which Plato sought truth may be
thought to be undermined by the fact that his philosophy can
and has been taken as dogmatic. However, what is overlooked
here is that any theories he proposed himself, such as that of
the Forms, were always hedged with heavy critique and irony.
It is as if he is saying, ‘Good idea, but one cannot be sure: at
best they are pointers’. Again, for him, it is an agnostic spirit
that leads to insight, not any crude rational dogmatism. That
the ideas which circulated within the Academy were not treated
dogmatically is also supported by Aristotle’s profound disagree-
ment with Plato on proposals like the Forms or the nature of
the soul, a debate that was taken on by the two individuals who
immediately succeeded Plato as head too: there was plenty of
room for disagreement since diverse ideas have more chance
of precipitating profounder perceptions. The period of the
Academy’s existence from about 250 to 150 BCE, the so-called
Middle Academy, was known particularly for its scepticism,
though after that a more dogmatic Platonism does seem to have
taken hold. It was not until long after his death that anyone
talked of Platonism as if it were a closed system.

Socratic exercises

Spoken dialogue played a central part in the life of the Academy,
partly because being skilled at rhetoric was a natural skill for
any citizen of the ancient city-state. However, Plato was wary of
oratory for its own sake. In arrogant hands, he thought, it could
breed a relativism of the wrong kind, the relativism which acts as