 
                         20060702.01

     That subjectivity is the truth is all too easily
proclaimed.  If the scheme is to make sense at all,
objectivity also needs to be accounted for. If subjectivity
is the truth, is this always the case? Is subjectivity
_never_ mistaken? Is objectivity always false? Could it be
that there is some balance, perhaps even some interchange
between the truths of subjectivity and objectivity?

     Inasmuch as subjectivity is inwardness, and what is
inward is cut off and isolated from society, I have, for
purposes of my own accounting, identified subjectivity with
knowledge and experience which is exclusive and unique with
an individual, while objectivity might be that knowledge and
experience which is common to two or more persons.

     Having said as much, two limitations of the scheme
immediately come into view: a) all objective social
experience and knowledge, when it is perceived or acted upon,
must have as its final pathway the individual; and b) all
subjective inward experience develops only in a social
context, and whether in the Leibnizian presence or in the
Lockean absence of divine added value, cannot come into being
except through society.

     Two instructive examples: a) The individual cannot
intuitively anticipate his own death. Therefore subjectivity
instructs him that his soul is immortal. Objectively,
however, there is no evidence that anything but fleeting
reputation and evansecent fame survive him in death.  b) The
individual intuitively demands his freedom. He cannot
contemplate a psychology that tells him that his actions are
"nothing more" than elaborate and intricate conditioned
reflexes. If the generally held public opinion, if common
sense confirms the intuitive postulate of free will, how then
would it ever be possible for a contrary objective account to
become established?

     Inasmuch as the objective account is a communal, a
social one, the impetus for an objective opinion distinct
from the imperative of subjectivity is often, and perhaps
usually, societal and comes from the outside. But not in the
case of freedom of the will; for here the subjective
imperative appears to be supported by public opinion, by
common sense. And where the imperative of subjectivity and
common sense coincide, a modification of that imperative must
be endogenous and must arise by a spontaneous alteration of
the individuals understanding. I suspect such "spontaneous"
changes of insight to be not the exception, but the rule.

                      * * * * *
Copyright 2006, Ernst Jochen Meyer
