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Dictionary of the History of Ideas

Studies of Selected Pivotal Ideas
  
  
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I

Agnosticism is a philosophical and theological concept
which has been understood in various ways by different
philosophers and theologians. T. H. Huxley coined the
term in 1869, and its first home was in the disputes
about science and religion, naturalism and super-
naturalism, that reached a climax during the nineteenth
century. To be an agnostic is to hold that nothing can
be known or at least that it is very unlikely that any-
thing will be known or soundly believed concerning
whether God or any transcendent reality or state exists.

It is very natural for certain people conditioned in
certain ways to believe that there must be some power
“behind,” “beyond,” or “underlying” the universe
which is responsible for its order and all the incredible
features that are observed and studied by the sciences
even though these same people will readily grant that
we do not know that there is such a power or have
good grounds for believing that there is such a power.
While the admission of ignorance concerning things
divine is usually made by someone outside the circle
of faith, it can and indeed has been made by fideistic
Jews and Christians as well.

Some writers, e.g., Robert Flint and James Ward,
so construed “agnosticism” that (1) it was identified
with “philosophical skepticism” and (2) it allowed for
there being “theistic agnostics” and “Christian agnos-
tics.” However, the more typical employment of “ag-
nosticism” is such that it would not be correct to count
as agnostics either fideistic believers or Jews and Chris-
tians who claim that we can only gain knowledge of
God through some mystical awareness or “ineffable
knowledge.” It surely was this standard but more cir-
cumscribed sense of “agnosticism” that William James
had in mind when he made his famous remark in his
essay “The Will to Believe” that agnosticism was the
worst thing that “ever came out of the philosopher's
workshop.” Without implying or suggesting any sup-
port at all for James's value judgment, we shall construe
agnosticism in this rather more typical manner. Given
this construal (1) “theistic agnosticism” is a contra-
diction and thus one cannot be a Jew or a Christian
and be an agnostic and (2) also agnosticism is neutral
vis-à-vis the claim that there can be no philosophical
knowledge or even scientific or common-sense knowl-
edge. We shall then take agnosticism to be the more
limited claim that we either do not or cannot know
that God or any other transcendent reality or state
exists and thus we should suspend judgment concerning
the assertion that God exists. That is to say, the agnostic
neither affirms nor denies it. This, as should be evident
from the above characterization, can take further
specification and indeed later such specifications will
be supplied. But such a construal captures in its char-
acterization both what was essentially at issue in the
great agnostic debates in the nineteenth century and
the issue as it has come down to us.