The main question of philosophy - is this world knowable? Can we get objective data about this world with the help of our sense organs? There is a theoretical doctrine that answers this question in the negative - agnosticism. This philosophical doctrine 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 any 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 get objective information, which will be knowledge in its purest form. In practice, it turns out that any phenomenon, fact, observation is subject to subjective influence and can be interpreted from completely opposite points of view.
History and essence of agnosticism
The emergence of agnosticism officially dates back 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 beginninghistory of knowledge of the world, it was found that the picture of the universe can be interpreted in different ways, and each point of view was based on various facts, had certain arguments. Thus, agnosticism is a rather ancient doctrine, which fundamentally denies the possibility of 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 teaching about Ideas, "things in themselves" that are outside of human experience, is characterized by an agnostic character. He believed that these Ideas, in principle, cannot be fully known with the help of our senses.
Hume's Agnosticism
Hume also believed that the source of our knowledge is experience, and since it cannot be verified, it is therefore impossible to assess the correspondence between the data of experience and the objective world. Developing Hume's ideas, we can conclude that a person does not simply reflect reality as it is, but processes it with the help of 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 towards the idea of the cognizability of the objective world. Consequently, representatives of various philosophical trends can be agnostics. criticizedagnosticism is primarily the supporters of materialism, such as Vladimir Lenin. He believed that agnosticism is a kind of hesitation between the ideas of materialism and idealism, and, consequently, the introduction of insignificant features into the science of the material world. Agnosticism is also criticized by representatives of religious philosophy, such as Leo Tolstoy, who believed that this trend in scientific thinking is nothing more than simple atheism, the denial of the idea of God.
