How To Be An Agnostic
face up to the central Socratic insight that nothing of importance
in life can be known with certainty and that a way of life is key
to embracing the intuitions that come with that agnostic spirit.
Those that wore the badge of the Cynic were the most
extreme. Their approach was to reject those things that people
might regard as necessary in life, such as the need to be clean or
the need to be courteous. One might say that cynicism was the
radical refusal of all certainties, no matter what, because they
were all considered delusional – things like cleanliness and cour-
teousness being mere conventions. The Cynics disturbed many
people and are infamous for doing everything from masturbat-
ing in public to being rude to kings.
Pyrrhonian suspicion of what people think of as necessary in
life manifested itself in a different way. Rather than rejection,
this school cultivated indifference. Pyrrho, the individual the
founders cited as their inspiration, sought to doubt anything
that was not immediately and obviously the case in any par-
ticular situation – something that is far harder than it may fi rst
seem. He believed that to hold to views, opinions or beliefs –
which is what one does when one tries to articulate principles,
no matter how vague or general – is a recipe for unhappiness:
they are bound to prove uncertain.
Stoic agnosticism manifests itself in a different way again. In
short, Stoics thought that life becomes tragic because people
struggle to shape things that are external to them and over
which they have no control and little understanding. To be
stoical is, therefore, to actively embrace one’s fate. This does
not mean one cannot be morally good: moral goodness is
doing what is right in line with fate. The role of reason within
Stoicism is to work on a rule of life that is harmonious within
itself and with the world as it comes to one.
Then there were the Epicureans. The insight they had about
uncertainty is that it leads to fear. However, since uncertainty
cannot be done away with, the key is to dissipate the fear.
Epicurus argued that people are free to face anything that
leads to uncertainty in life without fear – the likelihood of bad