How To Be An Agnostic
That said, Hume believed that the mystery of things meant
the best strategy was to stop chasing after that which is beyond
us. ‘A correct judgement,’ he wrote, ‘avoiding all distant and
high enquiries, confi nes itself to common life, and to such sub-
jects as fall under daily practice and experience, leaving the
more sublime topics to the embellishment of poets and orators,
or to the arts or priests and politicians.’ He advised sticking to
the humdrum of which we can be sure and, while ignoring the
‘sublime’ refl ections of priests and politicians may on occasion
feel quite sensible, he’s also advising you give up on poetry and
the arts too. That is to cut out a large part of life.
So there’s a different kind of agnosticism I’m advocating:
the mystery is not simply an impasse. It is a quest. Meaning
is not found by dwelling in the regions that one believes one
understands, and erecting walls around them, material or meta-
physical, in order to pretend they are all that is. Paradoxically
perhaps, the desire for meaning is satisfi ed by dwelling on the
thresholds of ignorance.
Not that any old mystifi cation will do. The tradition that
began with Socrates offers a way that is practical as well as con-
templative. Here was a man who though claiming to know
nothing could never have been accused of having a black hole
at the heart of his life. No one was wiser than he, not because
he was wise, but because he loved more powerfully and pen-
etratingly what most only long for to a degree. He stirred those
around him into life by irony, argument and example, and
mostly by the encounter with his passionate spirituality.
X/Y/Z – is for You
‘Know thyself!’ – the Delphic inscription, with which we began.
For as Jung noted, it’s only when you’re not afraid to grope
in the dark that you’ve a chance at insight, love, hope – even
faith.