Objectification

“ As the derivation of the term indicates, an object is something placed before or opposite; it is anything that can be apprehended intellectually. Through objectification the object is de-individualized and therefore made replaceable for the purpose of study by any other object with the same properties. ”

“ First, there is nothing in the removal of humans from the centre of analytical, interpretive and methodological frameworks that also attributes a negative value to those humans or else vacates value from the human. Second, accusations of the objectification of humans simply miss the theoretical content of the ontology that is proposed. As Harman elaborates on the matter,
the objects of object-oriented philosophy have nothing to do with objectification. ”

“ It is a further step in the direction of more defined situation, when we find in such any particular purpose already represented in it, an activity which stands in definite [Pg 270] relation to something external, and the self-subsistent figure itself expressed as within the sphere of such purpose or activity. Even objectification such as these, however, which have no real disturbing influence upon the tranquillity and cheerful blessedness of the figures represented, are rather to be regarded as particular modes of presentation incidental to this very quality of cheerful contentment. ”

“ The character of each individual man, so far as it is thoroughly individual, and not entirely included in that of the species, may be regarded as a special Idea, corresponding to a special act of the objectification of will. ”

“ But one may remark that he reaches his views of the actuality of universals through analysis of the processes of thought. Sense-perception occasions the Idea in us; there must exist some objective correspondence to our general concepts, as there must also be in things some objective correspondence to our perception of them as individuals, whereby they become to us this or that individual thing. Such individual objectivity is constituted by the thisness of the thing, its haecceitas which is to be contra-distinguished from its general essence, to wit, its whatness, or quidditas. ”

“ The data of experience are not mere feelings, not mere subjectivity, as is maintained by the idealist; nor are they mere objectivity, as is maintained by the ingenuous realist; the data of experience are states of subject-objectness, they are feelings of a certain kind possessing objective significance, and the ideas subject as well as object are abstractions made in a late stage of mental development from this one inseparable whole of subject-objectness (see The Monist I, No. 1, pp. 78-79) . ”

“ But this does not help us, for we are quite unable to distinguish such an object from the idea; we find that they are one and the same; for every object always and for ever presupposes a subject, and therefore remains idea, so that we recognised objectivity as belonging to the most universal form of the idea, which is the division into subject and object. ”

“ The reader knows no object which he does not represent to himself by preference as in some typical attitude, of some normal size, at some characteristic distance, of some standard tint, &c., &c. But all these essential characteristics, which together form the genuine objectivity of the thing and are contrasted with the subjective sensations we may happen to get from it at a given moment, are themselves sensations pure and simple, susceptible of being fully given at some other moment. The spontaneity of the mind does not consist in conjuring up any new non-sensational quality of objectivity. ”

“ Might not an illusion lurk in the highest interpretation of the word objectivity? We understand by it a certain standpoint in the historian, who sees the procession of motive and consequence too clearly for it to have an effect on his own personality. ”

“ Instead of starting from an original pure subjectivity of sensation, and seeking how this could possibly have acquired an objective signification, we must, on the contrary, begin by the possession of objectivity by the sensation and then show how for reflective consciousness the latter becomes interpreted as an effect of the object, how in short the original immediate objectivity becomes changed into a remote one. ”

“ That their ambiguity illustrates beautifully my central thesis that subjectivity and objectivity are affairs not of what an experience is aboriginally made of, but of its classification. Classifications depend on our temporary purposes. For certain purposes it is convenient to take things in one set of relations, for other purposes in another set. ”

“ As a first attempt to explain how our struggle to mould our experience into conformity with our desires is compatible with the ‘objectivity’ of that experience, the above may perhaps suffice, though I do not flatter myself that it will at once implant conviction. Indeed I expect rather to be asked indignantly—‘Is there not an objective nature which our experiments do not make, but only discover? Is it not absurd to talk as if our attempts could alter the facts? ”

“ The objective statement, however true, is no measure of subjective fact, but this twisting of subjective fact to correspond with objective order is so embedded in language and common thought that it will perhaps always remain the form of ordinary thinking, like common-sense realism and geocentric appearance. ”

“ That paradox of ordinary experience and of scientific inquiry by which objectivity is given alike to matter of perception and to conceived relations—to facts and to laws—affords no peculiar difficulty because the test of objectivity is everywhere the same: anything is objective in so far as, through the medium of conflict, it controls the movement of experience in its reconstructive transition. There is not first an object, whether of sense perception or of conception, which afterward somehow exercises this controlling influence ”

“ The same disposition to give objectivity to a law of the mind--to suppose that what is true of our ideas of things must be true of the things themselves--exhibits itself in many of the most accredited modes of philosophical investigation, both on physical and on metaphysical subjects. ”

“ But the objective plus the subjective constitutes such a unit or minimum: because if the objective part be entirely removed from the object of our knowledge, and if the mind be left with no thing or thought before it, it can have no cognition—so if the subjective part, or itself, be entirely removed from the mind's observation, the cognition equally disappears, to whatever extent we may suppose the mere objective part of the presentation to be still before us. ”

“ But we have found that this objective, or the whole external universe, cannot become a thought at all, unless we blend and identify with it the subjective, or the whole mind of man. And we have also found that this subjective, or the whole mind of man, cannot become a thought at all, unless we blend and identify with it the objective, or the whole external universe. So that, instead of the question as it originally stood, What is the nature of the connection which subsists between the mind of man and the external world? in other words, between the subjective and the objective of perception? ”

“ The value which rises to consciousness in the situation is made more complete by eliminating from consideration the originating factors, the plural agents of admiration or approval, and incorporating the whole product abstractly in the object. In thus calling attention to the social or personal character of the æsthetic or moral object it is not intended to minimize that factor in the judgment which we properly speak of as the universalizing activity of thought, much less to overlook the importance of the judgmental process itself. ”

“ It is ‘objective;’ and this means that it does not stand over against the outer world as mere ‘subject’ confronted by mere ‘object.’ In that sense of the words it is neither merely ‘objective’ nor merely ‘subjective;’ but it is that real identity of subject and object, which, as we have seen, is the only thing that satisfies our desires. ”

“ They deal either with the objectified world, with objects of consciousness which are describable and explainable, or with the subjectivistic world of real life in which all reality is experienced as will and as object of will, in which everything is to be understood by interpretation of its meaning. In other words, we deal in one case with phenomena and in the other with purposes. ”

“ The objectivity of our cognition consists, therefore, in this, that it is not a meaningless play of mere seeming; but it brings before us a World whose coherency is ordered in pursuance of the injunction of the Sole Reality in the world,—to wit, of the Good. ”

“ The self of the full moral consciousness, however,—the only one which can claim acceptance or authority—is born only in the process of considering real conditions, of weighing and choosing between alternatives of action in a real world of nature and persons. Its judgments are more than subjective. Objectivism in its absolutist and abstract forms assumes a standard—nature, essence, law—independent of process. Such a standard is easily shown372 to be free from anything individual, private, or changing. ”

“ What in truth does objectivity then mean, since “existence,” per se and apart from being apprehended by intelligence, is not really thinkable? — what is it for a judgment, whether perceptive or reflective, to be “objective”? Thus an essential part of the theory is its new doctrine of the nature of objectiveness. This it finds in the essentially social character of that self-defining consciousness in which it fixes the real existence of each personal being: each is by its own self-certitude self-correlated with others, so that its reality carries theirs ”

“ Objectivism and Subjectivism. It always has been, and still is, the firm conviction of unbiassed men,—a conviction which irresistibly forces itself upon us,—that in our intellectual perception and thought we grasp an objective, exterior order of things, an existence distinct from our thought; of this objective reality we reproduce an image in our minds, and thus grasp it intellectually. Cognitio est similitudo rei, says the old school; that is, Knowledge is [pg 034] the reproduction of an objective reality, which thus becomes the criterion of cognition. ”

“ To apprehend is to bring into relation, and the relation is very easily attributed to what is purely unrelated, to pure subjectivity. Thus here in the interpretation of merely subjective facts knowledge tends to stand in its own way. It is only objectively that the objectifying can appear causative of feeling, subjectively sense of object must always be taken as subsequent to a pleasure-pain psychosis. ”

“ Now, whoever sees an object from one side only does not see it as it comes to him, and whoever refuses to think of objections, has already subjectively colored his objects and no longer sees them as they are. ”

“ The nature of given facts is subjectivity, while the character of inferred facts is objectivity. The latter having grown out of the former will nevertheless, so far as they are states of consciousness, always remain subjective ”

“ If finally the question be pressed, how there can be an interest of this seemingly self-contradictory type in human nature, the answer can only be that we must take 304 the facts as we find them. Is such a conception inherently more difficult than the view that all ramifications and developments of human interest are concretely predetermined and implicit a priori? To ignore or deny palpable fact because it eludes the reach of a current type of conceptual analysis is to part company with both science and philosophy. ”

“ Overmining, in turn, is best represented by the correlationist ensnarement of objects in the human-world correlate, although it may also be explained as any position that sets up the experience or manifestation of the object in the mind as that which is of primary significance. Empiricists, for example, may overmine objects as bundles of qualities that are brought under concepts in the mind. [26]
Third, the human-world relation loses all priority. ”

“ Many influences went to shape the general conviction that mere presentation was the final function of criticism, but perhaps the chief of these was the curious contagion of a scientific terminology. The word 'objectivity' had a great vogue; it was felt that the spiritual world was analogous to the physical; the critic was faced, like the man of science, with a mass of hard, irreducible facts, and his function was, like the scientist's, that of recording them as compendiously as possible and without prejudice. ”

“ You can now judge for yourself what significance belongs to the objection, that we base our science upon contemplation, and how far those who do raise such an objection can have any claim to scientific culture. ”

“ There remains to the Notion no distinction, no content; for all determinate content is lost in that negativity. This empty existence is for us pure thought generally, what the French call être suprême, or if represented objectively as existent, and as in opposition to consciousness, it is matter. Absolute Being is therefore determined as matter, as empty objectivity, through a Notion which destroys all content and determination, and has as its object this universal alone. ”

“ One of the most striking facts about our modern literature is the preponderance of the "subjective" over the "objective." The interest in external events, as the subject of imaginative work, quite pales before the interest in analysis of mental and moral impulse. ”

“ Only when I occupy the standpoint of philosophy can I draw the conclusion that I am active in this thinking.
9. To state the main point in a few words: All being signifies a limitation of free activity. Now this activity is regarded either as that of the mere intelligence, and then that which is posited as limiting this activity has a mere ideal being, mere objectivity in regard to consciousness.—This objectivity is in every representation (even in that of the Ego, of virtue, of the moral law, &c., or in that of complete phantasms, as, for instance, a squared circle, a sphynx, &c.) ”