BIBLIOGRAPHY
Two extensive discussions are in Robert Flint, Agnosticism
(London, 1903); and in R. A. Armstrong, Agnosticism and
Theism in the Nineteenth Century
(London, 1905). See also
James Ward, Naturalism and
Agnosticism (London, 1899).
The central works from Hume and
Kant relevant here are
David Hume, Enquiry concerning
Human Understanding
(1748), and Dialogues
concerning Natural Religion (London,
1779); Immanuel Kant,
Kritik der reinen Vernunft (1781),
and Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen
Vernunft
(1793). For the paradigmatic nineteenth-century
statements
of agnosticism see T. H. Huxley, Collected
Essays, 9 vols.
(London, 1894), Vol. V; and Leslie Stephen,
An Agnostic's
Apology and Other Essays
(London, 1893), and English
Thought in the Eighteenth
Century (London, 1876).
The following works are central to the nineteenth-century
debate over
agnosticism: Sir William Hamilton, “Philosophy
of the
Unconditioned,” The Edinburgh Review
(1829); H. L.
Mansel, The Limits of Religious
Thought (London, 1858);
J. S. Mill, Three Essays
on Religion (London, 1874); and
Herbert Spencer, First Principles (London, 1862). Noel
Annan, Leslie Stephen (London, 1952); William Irvine,
Thomas Henry Huxley (London, 1960); John Holloway,
The
Victorian Sage (New York, 1953); Basil
Willey, Nineteenth
Century Studies (London,
1950); and J. A. Passmore, A
Hundred Years of
Philosophy (London, 1957), provide basic
secondary sources.
For material carrying over to the twen-
tieth-century debate see R. Garrigou-Lagrange, Dieu, son
existence et sa nature; solution thomiste des
antinomies
agnostiques (Paris, 1915); and J. M. Cameron,
The Night
Battle (London, 1962). For some
contemporary defenses of
agnosticism see Ronald W. Hepburn, Christianity and Para-
dox (New York, 1966); Bertrand Russell, Why I am Not a
Christian (London, 1957); H. J.
Blackman, ed., Objections
To Humanism (London,
1963); Religion and Humanism, no
editor, various
authors—Ronald Hepburn, David Jenkins,
Howard Root, Renford
Bambrough, Ninian Smart (London,
1964); William James, The Will to Believe and Other Es-
says... (New York, 1897), attacked agnosticism.
The following books by contemporary philosophers or
analytically
oriented philosophical theologians make argu-
ments relevant to our discussion. A. J. Ayer, Language, Truth
and Logic (London, 1935); Axel
Hägerström, Philosophy and
Religion, trans. Robert T. Sandin (London, 1964); John Hick,
Faith and Knowledge, 2nd ed. (Ithaca, 1966); R.
B.
Braithwaite, An Empiricist's View of the Nature of
Religious
Belief (Cambridge, 1955); Diogenes Allen, The Reasona-
bleness of Faith (Washington and Cleveland, 1968);
Ninian
Smart, The Teacher and Christian Belief
(London, 1966);
idem, Philosophers and Religious
Truth (London, 1964);
idem, Theology,
Philosophy and Natural Sciences (Bir-
mingham, England, 1962). Alasdair MacIntyre, Secular-
ization and Moral
Change (London, 1967); idem and Paul
Ricoeur, The Religious Significance of Atheism (New York,
1969); H. H. Price, Belief (London, 1969); L. Susan
Steb-
bing, “Critical
Notice, Language, Truth and Logic,” Mind,
new series, 45
(1936); Kai Nielsen, “In Defense of Athe-
ism,” in Perspectives in
Education, Religion and the Arts,
eds. Howard Kiefer and
Milton Munitz (New York, 1970);
Paul Holmer, “Atheism and
Theism,” Lutheran World,
13
(1966); Alvin Plantinga, God
and Other Minds (Ithaca,
1967); George Mavrodes, Belief in God (New York, 1970).
Some good critical and historical commentary on Hume
occurs in Bernard
Williams, “Hume on Religion,” in David
Hume: A Symposium, ed. D. F. Pears (London, 1963);
in
the essays by James Noxon, William H. Capitan, and George
J.
Nathan, reprinted in V. C. Chapell, ed., Hume: A Collec-
tion of Critical Essays
(New York, 1966); and in Norman
Kemp Smith's masterful and
indispensable introduction to
Hume's Dialogues. See David Hume, Dialogues Concerning
Natural Religion, ed. and
introduction by Norman Kemp
Smith (Edinburgh, 1947). For Kant see W. H.
Walsh, “Kant's
Moral Theology,” Proceedings of the British Academy,
49
(1963).
KAI NIELSEN
[See also
Gnosticism; God; Positivism;
Skepticism.]
