Second, I reconstruct the subtle chain of reasoning underlying his various theodical arguments, including a skeptical theist position that bears affinities with the views of some contemporary analytic philosophers of religion. First, I emphasize the crucial theodical role of the “psychic entity,” Sri Aurobindo’s term for the evolving, reincarnating soul within each of us. While a number of scholars have already discussed Sri Aurobindo’s theodicy, I highlight the significance of three aspects of his theodicy that have been largely neglected. This essay reconstructs Sri Aurobindo’s multifaceted response to the problem of evil. For those who have not yet reached those levels of consciousness, agnosticism may be the only honest intellectual standpoint. In The Life Divine he wrote about the Unknowable and about philosophical agnosticism, saying that “a certain kind of Agnosticism is the final truth of all knowledge.” The only way to get beyond this was to rise to gnosis or supermind. He discussed the idea of the unknowability of the Brahman in commentaries on the Upanishads. Sri Aurobindo wrote about the Unknowable and agnosticism in some of his exegetic and philosophical works. Some linked the idea of the Unknowable to philosophical agnosticism, the view that certain knowledge of things beyond the reach of the senses is impossible.
He also became interested in the idea of the ‘Unknowable’, a term popularized by Herbert Spencer and much discussed in philosophical circles at that time. As a young man in England, he rejected religion and adopted the agnostic position. He was a theist who wrote on the value of atheism, a gnostic who understood the utility of agnosticism. Many readers of Sri Aurobindo consider him a theist and many of his writings seem to support this view, but it does not do justice to the complexity of his position.
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