Given that “objective” to me is primarily a Marxist term dealing with the historical realities accessed by proper theory, I find insistence on “objectivity” to be a feature of Radical dialectics, with liberals differing from this only insofar as they are eager to appease their guilt over their lack of “objective” virtue in ways suited to them, i.e., by the means of expiation made available to them within the economy of their class (liberals are an upper-class white Anglo-American phenomenon, in the relevant sense, just as socialists and Communards were Anglo-French).

Ironically, the continuing conflation of “subjectivity” with “subjectivism” with “relativism” with “pluralism” on Left and Right alike, as the flabbergasting flip-flop of “liberal,” “libertarian,” “conservative” and virtually every OTHER term in the American political vocabulary within the last century, has made this irritatingly hard to sort.

Suffice to say that “objectivity” being incoherent, inconceivable, impossible, or bad (depending on whether you use a sociolinguistic, philosophical, pragmatic, or theoretical definition) makes it intrinsically odd that the liberals want it for journalists but conservatives don’t, and so many conservatives want it for theology or constitutional law but liberals don’t.

What people fail to consider is the intersubjective, and God’s having always already spoken Himself into any conceivable interpretive community.

Conservatives don’t fit in the diversity equation because we are hateful, bigoted, racist, homophobic war mongers.

Didn’t you get the memo?

“What people fail to consider is the intersubjective, and God’s having always already spoken Himself into any conceivable interpretive community.”

How utterly frivolous of them to have overlooked this. I was just berating my pool guy the other day for this very fault. Wait, that was more about chlorine levels. What the hell are you talking about?

Joe!

I was wondering when I’d see ya again. What’s shakin’?

I’ve been really busy with work and family issues, having a hard time keeping up with all the goings-on around here.

I’m heavily involved in the Illinois Carry movement (to get concealed carry), so I try to write a letter or two a day to elected people all over the state and that takes a big deal of my time as well. Speaking of which, I can’t believe the positions of some of our elected officials, the virulent hatred for guns is so strong it’s sickening… We just passed another bill that would revoke your rights to own firearms if your kid used one of your guns unlawfully. This is akin to a kid stealing his fathers car, crashing it, and then the father losing his drivers license. I just don’t know anymore. We have more and more communities passing handgun bans, strengthening restrictions on firearms, I don’t know how in the world 48 other states have some form of concealed carry. Chicago represents 57% of the population in our state and has the majority voice in congress, and we’re not making any progress for the better.

Jay, some of the stuff you write goes way over my head. Nice job!

put differently, a truth is “objective” as opposed to “subjective” only where the “subjective” must be actively disbelieved, as otherwise “objective” is at best a mode of representation or rhetoric, epistemically identical (that is, describing the same knower/known relationship & relata) to “subjective.” In other words, when I must attempt to believe what I do not believe, to profess with real conviction the truth that does not appear so to me.

he loved Big Brother

Now, in a larger sense, even this “objective” truth does not cohere; if I do this willingly and sincerely, as for example when I accept the authority of another over my own perceptions, I nonetheless do so because it appears to me that his authority conveys truth more fully than my perception; this is still subjective, and intersubjective, and “objective” only as a manner of speech concerning this (inter)subjectivity of knowing….and if I speak “objectively” under coercion, I do so with only the semblance of real conviction (eppur si muove) or in a state of insanity, which Foucault will tell you I wish to exclude from the discourse to hide its groundlessness, which in fact Derrida will turn on its head by demonstrating that Foucault’s founding of Western philosophy on the exclusion of madness fails with regard even to the cogito, and is moreover of a piece with that which it critiques (see “founding of”) by virtue of the exemplarity of Foucault’s madmen.

Where was I?

Oh, yes, so “objective” is either a way of speaking or a delusion, or a speech about an illusion, or something which does not have the smack of reality about it. This in spite of the subtle “theory hope” of modern empiricist and structuralist thought, which amounted to an effort to dig a basement for a houseboat.

But if it once appears to me that God has spoken, I had better think carefully about whose interpretations of my behaviors and relationships and perceptions really matters (full force on those words).

Peace,
PGE

In case you want some OED on my usage:

3. Philos.
{dag}a. Existing as an object of thought or consciousness as opposed to having a real existence; considered as presented to the mind rather than in terms of inherent qualities. Opposed to SUBJECTIVE adj. 2. Obs.
For a discussion of the change of meaning between this sense and sense A. 3b, see note at SUBJECTIVE adj. 2.

b. That is or belongs to what is presented to consciousness, as opposed to the consciousness itself; that is the object of perception or thought, as distinct from the subject; (hence) (more widely) external to or independent of the mind.
This sense is occasional in writers of the later 17th and early 18th centuries, these early examples being more or less transitional from sense A. 3a. The established use appears to be derived from Kant, occurring rarely in the late 18th cent., and more frequently from the early 19th cent. onwards (see quot. 1817). From the later 19th cent. onwards, this sense extends into more widespread general use, while retaining its specialist use in philosophical contexts.

Note the dates of the shift in meaning. My point lies right in there where the meaning changed. As a political term, it’s Marx who makes the application from Hegel’s reworking of Kant. Coleridge and his ilk give us the English language context.

sorry, that all amounts to “why I criticize people for dishonesty, not for apprehending truth subjectively.”