Countless hours have been spent searching for, arguing for, and defending objective truth. I believe in objective truth, and in some capacity, objective truth can be known. I believe God to be an objective truth. He can be known by me, and by anyone else, not through mere objectivity, but a subjective search of this objectivity.
Let me establish clarity to prevent mass confusion. There is objective truth. Whether humanity can know all objective truths, and know them wholly, is another question. I believe there is an objective truth to humanity’s most profound metaphysical quandaries. In this fallible and limited world in which humanity lives, knowledge of these objective truths is not certain, but rather an issue of possibility.
Yet in every endeavor to know an objective truth, two factors are at play: subjective and objective factors. The objective factor constitutes what is known. To quote Louis Pojman, the objective factor states “all that is known must be known in a mode appropriate to the thing known.” For example, if I desired to master the field of mathematics, I must come to know whatever logical formulas, structure, and principles that mathematics requires of me to know its subject. The objective factor demands one to engage in its feature required for one to know the subject matter.
The subjective factor varies much from the objective factor. Whereas the objective factor requires one to conform to normative features required for mastery, the subjective factor necessitates (and embraces) one’s personal and existential conditions. The particulars of individuality are of extreme importance in this arena of knowing. Capacities, choices, situations, cognitive framework, and virtues (I would argue both the epistemic and the moral) constitute an understanding of a subject. All knowing is relative insofar as different subjects experience and know an object. I believe in the Christian God. So do many others. While myself and another individual may adhere to the same theological framework down to the most minute detail, I will never know what it is like to know God through the understanding of the other individual. I am not him (or her). The other is not me. In the same respect, not even God – the perfect, omniscient Being that God is – cannot know a subject like I know a subject. His reality is different than mine inasmuch as mine is different from another individual. It might even be logical that the entirety of objective reality from God’s objective perspective is itself a subjective perspective because it is God’s personal perspective. The point being here that despite the objective facts that point to an objective truth, each individual has subjective capacities which point the individual to the objective thing.
Why does this matter? Because as individual Selves, each Self has the ability to freely pursue a subject in his or her own manner. This is not to claim that all routes of knowing are valid or appropriate routes of knowing. Some may be wrong and lead not to knowledge, but to falsity. Furthermore, what is essential to the Self, issues of ethics, religion, and reality, are intimately associated with each Self. There is no disenchanted or disconnected passion to these issues. One searches for answers to these because these issues matter; one is passionate about these issues. The degree and variance of passion with be distinct with each individual and therefore the subjective knowledge weighs heavily on the pursuit of the objective truth.
Former Aspiring Philosopher 