Objectivism

OBJECTIVISM. - A tendency or orientation, common to philosophical systems that are otherwise different, according to which knowledge does not grasp merely phenomena or modifications of the subject (v.), but refers to and is measured by reality in itself, actual reality. From the strictly gnoseological field, extended to the scientific, ethical, aesthetic, religious, etc., it indicates the conception according to which science, ethics, art, religion, etc. are founded on reality and on being, and on their ontological values.

Further determinations of objectivism are a function of the meaning attributed to objectivity. Objective, in the most current sense, is what belongs to the object as actual reality (to the ontological-transcendent object [v. OGGETTO]), and therefore holds and must hold universally. It is opposed therefore to what is subjective, whether in the sense of "belonging to the pure subjective modalities and conditions of knowledge," or in the sense of "individual and relative." It should be noted that objectivity is not referred, nor can it be referred, to reality as it is in itself independently of knowledge, since such a reality would be unattainable: objectivity is therefore, in the ontological sense, what presents itself and asserts itself in knowledge as real, actual, and therefore universal; in the gnoseological 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 apperception and affirmation (v. GIUDIZIO).

In the last sense indicated, the philosophy of Plato, of Aristotle, and, in its principal currents, Scholasticism (v.) is objectivistic. In modern philosophy objectivism is defended particularly by Descartes, who holds that reason, by virtue of its divine derivation, is of itself conformable to reality. The system of Spinoza is also objectivistic: "ordo et connexio idearum est idem ac ordo et connexio rerum"; "id quod in intellectu obiective continetur debet necessario in natura dari" (Ethica, part 2, prop. 7; part 1, prop. 30). In Kant the proper object of knowledge is only what is given in intuition (v.), and since only sensible intuitions are possible for human knowledge, only representations in space and time (phenomena) are objects of our knowledge. Concepts, on the other hand, or categories of the understanding (contrary to what rationalism held) "are mere forms of thought without objective reality": "they acquire objective reality, that is, application to objects that can be given to us in intuition, but only as phenomena" (Kritik der r. V. Transzend. Logik, I, 1, ch. 2, §§ 23, 24). The objectivity of intellectual knowledge is therefore, for Kant, not its conformity to an order of real intelligible values, but solely its referability and applicability (a priori and therefore universal and necessary) to sensible intuitions as phenomena. In Hegel (v.) objectivity has a double sense: a) "standing over against the concept as self-subsistent," b) "being what is in itself and for itself": in the first sense the objective is the world as distinct from the I, which the I in infinite struggle absorbs and resolves into itself; in the opposite sense "the objective means that which is in itself and for itself, that which is without limitation and without opposition," that is, "the being in itself and for itself of the concept" (Wissenschaft der Logik, III, sec. 2; Ital. trans. by A. Moni, Bari 1925, p. 185). In this sense Hegelian idealism, by its absolute resolution of the real into the concept, is absolute objectivism. Similarly G. Gentile: "The actualist wants the binomial subject-object in their absolute opposition; but... he wants, beyond the opposition, the unity of the two terms" (Introduzione alla filosofia, Milan-Rome 1933, p. 262). "The assertor of actualism is more objectivist than his critic" (ibid., p. 263), insofar as he recognizes the totality of the object in the concreteness of its principle (the act) and not, abstractly, torn away from it. In Windelband and generally in the theory of values (Russell,

Scheler) objectivism indicates not the reference of knowledge to an actual reality in itself (realism), but to the pure ideality of values, which nevertheless have an "objective" consistency independent of individual subjects.

Ugo Viglino