How To Be An Agnostic
intended is some general purpose. I do not think that life
in general has any purpose. It just happened. But individ-
ual human beings have purposes, and there is nothing in
agnosticism to cause them to abandon these purposes.
SOCRATES: When death hangs over your head, the meaning
of life is not academic, believe me. What is important is not
life but a good life. But even that takes us only so far. For
myself, I have the blessing of a keen sensibility that strives
to understand how we are ignorant. If we can get that right,
I think we might get lots of other things more right too.
Is faith in reason alone a dangerous creed?
RUSSELL: No sensible man, however agnostic, has ‘faith in
reason alone’.
SOCRATES: We can agree on that.Unlike the orthodox believer, Socrates’ uncertain attitude
undermines any certain beliefs. Unlike the committed atheist
(or near atheist), his questioning sensibility remains open to
what God-talk might reveal about the in-between human condi-
tion. Socrates is religious because he is a committed passionate
agnostic.
Last words
He achieved something that only a handful of thinkers in
history achieve; he changed the consciousness of a civilisa-
tion. ‘We cannot fail to see in Socrates the one turning point
and vortex of so-called world history,’ said Nietzsche, who, as
frequently, wished he could fail to see Socrates at the vortex
of history. The purpose of putting the fi gure of Socrates at the
beginning of this book is that the subtle inspiration behind his
philosophy is often forgotten today. The rich ambiguities that
characterised his way of life are belittled by the hard-and-fast
demands of the rationalist outlook. Its subtle colours are lost
amid the blacks and whites of thought abstracted from life.