Agnosticism is the doctrine of the unknowability of the world

The basic question of philosophy is whether we know this world? Can we obtain objective data about this world with the help of our senses? There is a theoretical teaching that answers this question negatively, agnosticism. This philosophical doctrine is characteristic of representatives of idealism and even of some materialists and declares the fundamental unknowability of being.

What does it mean to know the world

The goal of any cognition is to reach the truth. Agnostics doubt that this is possible in principle because of the limitations of human methods of cognition. To get to the truth is to receive objective information that will represent knowledge in its pure form. In practice, it turns out that any phenomenon, fact, observation is subjected to subjective influence and can be interpreted from completely opposite points of view.

The history and essence of agnosticism

The appearance of agnosticism officially belongs to 1869, the authorship belongs to TG Huxley - an English naturalist. However, similar ideas can be found even in the era of Antiquity, namely in the theory of skepticism. From the very beginning of the history of cognition of the world it was discovered that it is possible to interpret the picture of the universe in different ways, and each point of view was based on various facts, had certain arguments. Thus, agnosticism is quite an ancient teaching, which fundamentally denies the possibility of the penetration of the human mind into the essence of things. The most famous representatives of agnosticism are Immanuel Kant and David Hume.

Kant of knowledge

Kant's doctrine of Ideas, "things in themselves," which are beyond the limits of human experience, is characterized by an agnostic character. He believed that these Ideas in principle can not be fully understood with the help of our senses.

Hume's agnosticism

Hume thought that the source of our knowledge is experience, and since it is impossible to check it, it is therefore impossible to assess the correspondence of the data of experience and the objective world. Developing the ideas of Hume, we can conclude that a person does not simply reflect reality as it is, but exposes it to processing by thinking, which is the cause of various distortions. Thus, agnosticism is the doctrine of the influence of the subjectivity of our inner world on the phenomena under consideration.

Criticism of agnosticism

The first thing to note is that agnosticism is not an independent scientific concept, but merely a critical attitude toward the idea of the knowability of the objective world. Consequently, agnostics can be representatives of various philosophical trends. Critics of agnosticism are primarily advocates of materialism, for example, Vladimir Lenin. He believed that agnosticism is a kind of oscillation between the ideas of materialism and idealism, and consequently, the introduction of insignificant traits into the science of the material world. Also agnosticism is criticized by representatives of religious philosophy, for example Leo Tolstoy, who believed that this tendency in scientific thinking is nothing more than simple atheism, denial of the idea of God.