on subjectivity and objectivity

[Hugh Williams]

‘On changing my religion’:

‘object and subject’ as modern philosophical problem

In the more intense moments of our discussions, certain questions arise which can be understood as philosophical problems or issues.

For example, we asked – ‘what is nature?’ We’ve at one time or other considered ‘diversity, knowledge, truth, and doctrine’ … and so on.

There is a special issue for me that surfaced during the August heat of the summer of 2024. It is the issue and question of ‘objectivity and subjectivity’ especially in its relation to what, after Lonergan, we at times call ‘human authenticity’.

Now in the history of philosophy, especially in its modern period, it is Hegel with his extraordinary work “The Philosophy of Spirit” who, at least in the West, oriented the modern mind in general and for the most part in its treatment of this question. Technically speaking, Hegel after Descartes and Kant, was to incorporate what is called transcendental philosophy into the guts of European philosophy and beyond …

Transcendental philosophy has come to affect Catholic thought and culture as well, through the likes of Joseph Marechal, Karl Rahner, and Bernard Lonergan (all Jesuits by the way …). This has meant that, gradually over time, considerable philosophical energy has had to come to grips with transcendental philosophy’s critical dissolution of the bonds, at least in the intellectual realm, of the (naïve) commonsense realism of human custom and practicality.

The irksome question of this philosophy can be expressed as ‘on what basis does the object have any reality in itself independent of the subject?’ There is a temper in the legacy of this transcendental philosophy that almost can make this question seem meaningless by asking further – ‘how is it possible to speak of a reality beyond consciousness, … as a reality unknown to consciousness with no intentional relation to the subject? Is this not something on which we are rendered speechless, … on which we can say or do nothing about?’

Here, most of us would recognize Kant’s famous, albeit banished, thing-in-itself of his own transcendental philosophy. There, as well, is a reading of Hegel that arguably sees his entire magnificent philosophical edifice as in great part a herculean effort in human thought to overcome this inherent ‘contradiction’.

It seems to me that we have in both Rahner and Lonergan, albeit in various and significantly differing ways, serious versions of this fundamental struggle at the center of modern Western philosophy so described above.

In both, we have reality presented (or at least considered as presented) to consciousness as representation of the world so that our phenomenological work and its philosophical account must recurrently clarify the evidence for the ‘otherness’ of the object, and as not somehow ultimately being reducible to the subjective or mental realm.

Hugh Williams

[John Raymaker]

Hugh, in your final sentence, beginning with "In both", you summarize one of the core problems philosophers and theologians have been addressing in Greece, India, Europe, the US etc, Yes, "recurrently", John 

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[Hugh Williams]

John,

thank you for acknowledging what is only

an expression or brief formulation of what I now believe 

to be a real philosophical problem for 'us' 

as moderns ... 

Hugh

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[Doug Mounce]

Hugh, you refer us to several features each of which might deserve an entire conversation and study.  I recall one of my favorite questions about whether a tree falling in the forest makes a sound if no one is there to hear.  Lonergan might say that there could be whole universes of objects without subjects, but they wouldn't have any meaning.  At a deeper level, however, is the question of whether there can be any object without a subject nature or a subject without objective foundation.

Kierkegaard, in suggesting that subjectivity is truth, on the other hand, implies that reflecting on our concepts of objectivity only detracts from actually acting in authenticity.  Lonergan, I think, does usefully describe a difference between subject and object where scientific method illustrates how the two are combined in dynamic operations and outcomes - at least insofar as that explains what we are doing when we are knowing.  I recall that our study of Rahner sort of stalled at the point of his explanation about consciousness in terms of the interplay of sense, mind and imagination.

Did you mean anything specific about naming this as "representation of the world" given that representationalism is sometimes used to describe consciousness?  I agree that these relations recurrently resist reduction to a mental world or a material one for that matter.

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[Hugh Williams]

Doug,

shooting from the hip a little bit here ....

if one's philosophy has an adequate participational ontology as arguably Rahner does,

then 'representation' does not have to be the source of plaguing noetic difficulties

that it has become for most moderns it seems.

But then there is the issue of how a credible participational ontology actually can be articulated

in our day ... Charles Taylor seems to think it does mean a return to Aristotle (and in some cases Thomas) and the ancients

(by way of Hegel and Heidegger especially). See Taylor's "Retrieving Realism" (2015) with the Heideggerian, Hubert Dreyfus.

As for reading Rahner (a great experience by the way ... thanks again!), as I recall there was a 'stalling' at some point 

but for me it meant returning to his early section on 'foundation'

where I did eventually catch a momentary glimpse of why, for catholic thought at least, his Spirit in the World has been received by some 

as an extraordinary breakthrough, and that this was because of his efforts to establish a more contemporary participational ontology,

which again requires engagement with the doctrine of being as 'esse' .... philosophical territory most philosophers avoid for good practical reasons ...

(Lonergan at one point referred to this area of enquiry as otiose ... it seems after Insight, he felt he was on to something much more productive.)

and so it is from that point of philosophical privation that Heidegger's phenomenological ship set sails ...

capturing the imagination of Taylor and many others, including the other half of the 'Jesuit house of studies' (see way below) ...

Hugh

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[Doug Mounce]

Thanks Hugh, I am still several weeks away (if not months!) from returning to Taylor.  One of those standing-in-line is Rahner and I mean to at least complete the chapter on phantasm.  

I did have time to read the NDPR on  "Retrieving Realism", but the review wasn't as interesting as the reference to conversations between Taylor and Rorty in Vol. 34, No. 1, Sep., 1980
The Review of Metaphysics.  If readers here are able to access the JSTOR online then I would say it looks interesting.  

https://www.jstor.org/stable/i20127453

PS - I would add that I continue to find great value in studying Gilson on ens, essence and existence.  A recent reading of matter in terms of composites, for example, has become a permanent part of my answers to common questions. regards, Doug

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