The main question of philosophy - is this world cognizable? Can we obtain objective data about this world with the help of our senses? There is a theoretical doctrine that answers this question negatively - agnosticism. This philosophical teaching is characteristic of representatives of idealism and even some materialists and declares the fundamental unknowability of being.
What does it mean to know the world
The goal of all knowledge is to reach the truth. Agnostics doubt that this is possible in principle due to the limitations of human ways of knowing. To get to the truth means to receive objective information, which will be pure knowledge. In practice, it turns out that any phenomenon, fact, observation is subjectively influenced and can be interpreted from completely opposite points of view.
The history and essence of agnosticism
The appearance of agnosticism officially refers to 1869, the authorship belongs to T.G. 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 found that it is possible to interpret the picture of the universe in different ways, and each point of view was based on different facts, had certain arguments. Thus, agnosticism is a rather ancient doctrine that 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 on knowledge
Kant's doctrine of Ideas, “things in oneself, ” which are beyond the limits of human experience, is characterized by an agnostic character. He believed that, in principle, these Ideas cannot be fully understood with the help of our senses.
Yuma agnosticism
Hume, on the other hand, believed that the source of our knowledge is experience, and since it cannot be verified, it is therefore impossible to evaluate the correspondence of the data of experience and the objective world. Developing the ideas of Hume, we can conclude that a person not only reflects reality as it is, but subjects it to processing through 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: agnosticism is not an independent scientific concept, but only expresses a critical attitude to the idea of the cognizability of the objective world. Therefore, agnostics can be representatives of various philosophical trends. Agnosticism is criticized primarily by proponents of materialism, for example, Vladimir Lenin. He believed that agnosticism is a kind of hesitation between the ideas of materialism and idealism, and therefore, the introduction of insignificant features into the science of the material world. Agnosticism is also criticized by representatives of religious philosophy, for example, Leo Tolstoy, who believed that this trend in scientific thinking is nothing more than simple atheism, a denial of the idea of God.
