OBJECTIVISM. – A tendency or approach, common to even different philosophical systems, according to which knowledge does not merely attain phenomena or modifications of the subject (q.v.), but refers to and measures itself against reality as it is in itself, in its actuality. From the strictly epistemological field, this tendency extends to the scientific, ethical, aesthetic, religious, etc., and indicates the conception according to which science, ethics, art, religion, etc., are founded upon reality and being, and upon their ontological values.
Further determinations of objectivism depend on the meaning attributed to objectivity. Objective, in the most common sense, is that which belongs to the object as actual reality (to the ontological-transcendent object [q.v.]), and thus is valid and must be universally valid. It is therefore opposed to what is subjective, both in the sense of "belonging to the pure modalities and conditions of knowledge" and in the sense of "individual and relative." It should be noted that objectivity is neither referred to nor can be referred to reality as it is in itself independently of knowledge, for such a reality would be unattainable: objectivity is therefore, in the ontological sense, that which presents itself and asserts itself in knowledge as real, actual, and thus universal; in the epistemological sense, it is the correspondence of knowing to what is real, actual; a correspondence that reveals itself in the characters of necessity, universality, and absoluteness that accompany intellectual judgment (q.v.).
In the empiricist tradition, objectivism is identified with the immanent content of knowledge, that is, the very idea (q.v.): "the objects of human knowledge are ideas"; "the object and sensation are the same thing, and therefore one cannot be separated from the other" (Principles, Italian trans. by G. Papini, Bari 1925, pp. 27-28; cf. Siris, § 292). A similar meaning is found in Hume (Treatise of Human Nature, Part IV, Section 2). In Kant, there is no lack of use of objectivism as actual reality: "Spacium non est aliquid obiectivi seu realis... sed subiectivum et ideale" (De mundi sens. atque intell. forma et princ., § 15); but later, in the Critique, objectivism is the cognitive representation (phenomenon [q.v.]), distinct from the thing in itself, though related to it through empirical intuition (q.V. OBJECTIVISM). In Fichte (q.v.), objectivism is the absolute Subject itself as the term of its own representation: "The I represents itself... and only then is it Something, an object"; "The I originally and absolutely posits its own being, by which 'the I is necessarily the identity of Subject and Object'" (Wissenschaftslehre, Italian trans. by A. Tilgher, 2nd ed., Bari 1925, pp. 57-58). Schopenhauer (q.v.) also distinguishes objectivism from the thing in itself: "The I is not the thing in itself; but it is, as empirical object, real"; "all that exists for knowledge, therefore this entire world, is merely object in relation to the subject, intuition of the one who intuits: in a word, representation" (Die Welt, etc., II, ch. 2; Italian trans. by G. De Lorenzo, II, Bari 1930, p. 29 and I, ibid. 1928, pp. 3-4). N. Hartmann (Metaph. der Erkenntnis, I, ch. 8) distinguishes four meanings of objectivism: "that which is actually known (objectum); that which is yet to be known (objectum); that which is not in fact known (trans-objective); and finally that which is unknowable (irrational or trans-intelligible). From objectivism understood in these four senses, the creation [the representation] realized in consciousness must be distinguished."
In a realistic conception of knowledge, a fundamental distinction of objectivism seems to be required: immanent objectivism (internal, epistemological, actual) and transcendent objectivism (external, ontological, potential). Immanent objectivism is the intrinsic content of the cognitive representation: in this sense, it coincides with the "given" of knowledge; transcendent objectivism is the reality in itself to which the immanent objectivism may relate. Knowledge admits purely immanent objectivisms, which, as such, have no actual consistency outside consciousness (pure imaginings, logical entities, etc.). But in its entirety, human knowledge relates to a transcendent ontological objectivism: reality in itself, the sensible-intelligible world. However, due to the limits, historicity, and relative imperfection of human knowledge, it does not entail, for any real-ontological objectivism, a full adequation and coincidence between immanent and transcendent objectivism (q.V. COGNITION).
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