Socrates’ Questof self-confi dence – ‘my heart, or my soul, or whatever you
want to call it, has been struck and bitten by philosophy’, he
continues. Again, a clear message about Socrates is being given.
Socrates’ daemon calls into question every part of life. In this, it
is intimately connected to his philosophy.
Socrates in conversation
Bertrand Russell called himself an agnostic, though one who
was ‘atheistically inclined’. This is different from the agnosti-
cism of Socrates. If Russell’s agnosticism made him tend towards
atheism, on the assumption that not knowing is a comment
about the probable non-existence of gods not the nature of
humankind, Socrates’ agnosticism made him want to hold onto
God-talk and religious practice, as he took it to be mostly a
refl ection of his conviction of the in-between status of human
beings, and helps summarise some of the characteristics of
Socrates’ approach that we have been examining.
In a magazine called Look, published in 1953, Russell clari-
fi ed what agnosticism meant for him. He was asked a series of
questions. There is, perhaps, some benefi t in juxtaposing excerpts
from some of the actual answers he gave with ones Socrates might
have given, had he been asked too. A virtual conversation defi nes,
as it were, two poles on the continuum of agnostic belief.
What is an agnostic?
RUSSELL: An agnostic is a man who thinks that it is impossi-
ble to know the truth in the matters such as God and a future
life with which the Christian religion and other religions are
concerned. Or, if not for ever impossible, at any rate impos-
sible at present.
SOCRATES: I too have never found anything but uncertainty
in divine matters, but that is a bad reason for unbelief. The
same could be said about most matters we enquire into. My
agnostic is someone who is religiously minded, as you might
put it, but who, unlike the believer who speaks of his gods