Today’s Subject (and Object)

As mentioned in several posts already, the closest the modern world has to the biblical  understanding of the world comes from American Pragmatism and Phenomenology. For both the pragmatist and phenomenologist, that which is experienced is that which is real. For instance, in his seminal work and arguably the seminal work of phenomenology,  Sein und Zeit (Being and Time 1927), German philosopher Martin Heidegger argues that the central ontology of the individual (Dasein) is care (Gm. Sorge).

Care, for Heidegger, is being-ahead-of-itself in dasein’s existence. This is to say that Dasein is always projecting itself into possibilities (future), grounded in past (facticity) and engaged with the world (being-alongside). Care has three separate aspects. First there is its existentiality which is Dasein’s projection toward future possibilities (what it can become). Secondly, Dasein’s “thrownness” (Gm. Geworfenheit) which is the given conditions of its existence that it cannot fully control (I mention in the About Me section that Peter Manchester worked extensively on how this idea of throwness is a direct consequence of attunement (Befindlichkeit) which is one part of what lead me to this project). And finally, the active engagement with the present that Heidegger calls being-alongside.

All of this is wrapped up in his idea of what care means for humans. To bring it down to its most simple form, a human being is defined as a being which cares. Now, you can say that humans are living on an insignificant rock which is orbiting a medium sized star in a small galaxy which is one of nearly two trillion galaxies in a cosmos so vast it cannot be conceptualized at all. And you can say, as many postmodern thinkers do, that this points to our ultimate insignificance. Astronomer, grifter and famous moron Carl Sagan (1934-1996) would be the first to tell you that you are merely an insignificant spec on an insignificant spec and in the end “the rocks do not care about your consciousness.”

That is all well and good for Carl Sagan and most sixteen year old angst ridden children, but for adults there is something far more complex at hand. In the end, the response to the line “the rocks do not care” which every single college philosophy student will hear a dozen times a year is simple. Who the fuck cares what the rocks think? I mean really? They don’t think. We think. And even if human consciousness is insignificant in a grand cosmological sense (though I do not believe it to be the case at all) that doesn’t matter because our consciousness isn’t insignificant to us. So yes, if you hit Carl Sagan with a ball peen hammer in the knee caps the rocks will not care….but I bet Carl Sagan will. That this actually matters is something that, like the phenomenologists, the biblical authors believe.

So what is the point of all of this?

It has to do with the distinction between subjective and objective truths.

I want to clear some things up here because people, for a variety of reasons, use these very technical philosophical terms colloquially to the point that no one seems to know what they mean. The colloquial understanding of “objective” seems to be something like unchanging, eternal or constant. A colloquial idea of “objective” says that 2+2=4 is an objective truth. On the other hand, the colloquial idea of “subjective” is something more akin to how you feel about something. The colloquial idea of “subjective” is something like “this hamburger is delicious.”

Because of these weak definitions we get some kind of idea that subjective thinkers are those who believe there is no such thing as objective truth and people who believe in objective truth see no value in subjective truth. If you are recognizing yourself in this description take a moment to your self, take a deep breath and just forget what you think you know about this. It is not your fault. You have been educated by a mix of idiots and resentful monsters who are systemically trying to dehumanize you.

The reason this is important to us is because we need a proper understanding of what “subjective” means in order to even begin reading the Bible because it is written by people who saw the primacy of subjectivity even if those aren’t words they would have used to describe it. Further, the distinction between objective and subjective knowledge is key for the project taken as a whole because the scientific revolution and the enlightenment era philosophy is the root of our modern idea that objective truth is truth and subjective truth is, like, just your opinion man.

In order to read the Bible we have to have a much more intelligent and nuanced understanding of what truth is.

Let’s begin with some very simple definitions. We can say that something is a subject when it has a conscious first person narrative perception and something is objective when it does not. So I am a subject. The keyboard I am typing on is an object.

An objective truth is a truth about an object. The way you get at objective truths is by weighing, measuring and analyzing the properties of the object. A regulation basketball rim is ten feet off the ground. This is an objective truth. Objective truths are intensely powerful. Once you have objective truth along with math and science you can send a man to the moon, eliminate poverty and build high rise buildings. But objective truth is not relevant without a subjective value laden overlay. There are an infinite number of objective truths in the world. An attempt to focus on them would leave you paralyzed. Subjective value and goal orientation needs to be mapped onto the landscape of objective truths immediately making the vast majority of them irrelevant.

A subjective truth is a little more complicated. While a subjective truth can be an opinion or taste this does not nearly exhaust the category. A subjective truth is a truth for a subject in the way that an objective truth is a truth for an object. Now. you can argue all you want that subjective truth’s aren’t real truths but does that account for pain? Try and argue yourself out of the idea that pain is not a real thing because it is not an objective truth while you are in pain. It simply doesn’t work. Pain will always be relevant and never be objectively true.

The authors of the Bible were interested in the lived experience of the conscious individual. What the world is made of and what we ought to do are two very different questions and the answers are obtained by two very different methods. The stories of the Bible are not a geometry textbook, they are stories pertinent to the lived subjective experience of people in the world.

There is a common thread of thought that says that subjective and objective thought are at odds (much like the false claim that religion and science are at odds). While this can be true it is not always the case and it is not the case at all for the biblical stories.

Where we see objective and subjective at odds is really in modern philosophy. Determinism, a school of philosophy which states that the future is predetermined as the world is nothing more than objects and objects have physical principles which follow the laws of nature, is objectivity seen as the only worthwhile knowledge. The idea is that if you know the location of every particle in the universe and all the laws which govern motion you could accurately predict all future states of affairs and retrodict all previous ones.

On the other hand, subjectivity lends itself to the idea that things like morality or law are, like all other things, human constructs and it is only our fears and the top down authority of those with power that force our adherence to a status quo which is intended to cement that power.

The authors of the biblical library are far more sophisticated than either of these two. We see in the biblical stories that there is an understanding that there is an objective world — a world populated by inanimate things which follow some basic rules and a deeply pattered cosmos none of which are conscious. However, humans pose a problem to this orderly objective world in that we are conscious. That consciousness sets us apart from an objective world as subjects. Because we are subjects in an objective world we must overlay that subjectivity onto the objective world as we are forced to constantly make decisions on how to move forward. This is what is at the heart of the Adam and Eve story in the early parts of Genesis.

The unique subjective nature of humans in an otherwise objective world presents questions about why we are here, what we should do, how we should behave and how can we mitigate suffering and imbue our limitation and mortality with meaning enough to make the journey worthwhile.

These are the questions that the Bible seeks to answer and they are different questions than what the world is made out of and, as such, they require a different mode of analysis.

So here are a few things I would like you to take away from today’s post. The first is, “subjective” is not just a catch word for “opinion.” Rather “subjective” means having to do with a subject and a subject is an entity with a cognitive

structure which exists in the world through first person narrative consciousness. Likewise, “objective” does not mean “true” or “true for everyone” but rather is simply a truth about an inanimate object. Arguing for the primacy of one over the other is like saying you want all of your coins to have only heads. Subjectivity outside of an objective world is not grounded in reality — it is just a dream — and objectivity without a subjective value laden overlay is meaningless. Subjective value and objective truths coexist in the same way that a script and a set design coexist in a play.

The stories of the Bible are written by and for people who are in some ways transcendentally homeless. Conscious entities with free will who, as Heidegger notes, care. They are stories about how tragically mortal and suffering entities like us can find a mode of being which attunes us properly to that world and gives it meaning enough for justification of the suffering. They are stories about what to do when thrust into history as Adam and Eve were after the fall. The exile from paradise has lead to an eternal struggle to find our way home. This home is Eden, it is the kingdom of God, it is the eternal covenant, it is the ark which sustains us — it is the logos.

I know I am entering the second week of essays discussing the Bible and we haven’t even got to the first sentence of Genesis, but there is a lot of bad information that requires unlearning before proceeding in a way that can actually be meaningful.

So, as we read the biblical stories keep in mind that while they were written by very different people in a very different place with a very different epistemic framework and cognitive organization and very different languages, they are stories about conscious people in an unconscious world trying to mitigate the ensuing tragedy of their lives and as such they are stories about us.

Finally, I will note that to think objectively is the purview of the scientists. But scientist’s don’t just think objectively. The objective scientific rational mindset requires a structure which subverts our humanity. That is the scientific method.. Scientist’s do not think like scientists outside of a lab setting where they are following incredibly strict procedural rules intended specifically to sidestep the native subjectivity of their humanity. That IS what we call science. The fact that science is able to drive technology such that it becomes a juggernaut is largely responsible for the colloquial thinking that scientific truths are the only truths when, in reality, in order for humans to learn scientific truths they have to mute the manner in which they necessarily enter the world.

In reality, when scientists leave the lab they feel love and pain and anger and hunger and a million other things — they think subjectively. All humans do. It is, in effect, the definition of humanity. It will always amaze me, as I have mentioned before, that a species who is incapable of seeing the world in any way other than subjectively would think somehow that objective truth is not merely the gold standard of truth, but the only real contender.

With all of the gains in terms of science and engineering in the last 500 years we have all but lost our ability to think in a truly human manner. This is, I believe, the cause for the transcendental homelessness and alienation that modern man feels so deeply. This is the crisis of meaning. Without meaning, without profundity, without beauty and without heroism in the face of tragic mortality we are simply another object. The problem is that we aren’t. We are all acting in ways counter-indicated by our natures and as such we are no longer merely alienated from the world, but alienated from ourselves as well.

The twentieth century’s legacy of mass murder and destruction on a scale previously unimagined stands in silent testament to the dangers of attempting to leave subjective value behind. Here, at the end of the first quarter of the twenty-first century, we see that the annihilation of the value and profundity of human life and experience over the last hundred years has left us a broken species who no longer understand even basic truths anymore. We have become strangers to ourselves.

With the epoch eclipse I will eventually argue happened in 2020 I believe we are, maybe out of necessity, evolving backwards to a biblical understanding of the world — an understanding where human subjectivity is the most important thing there is. An understanding that will require the guidance of the stories which sit at the foundation of our civilization and represent thousands of years of collected wisdom by people who understood that consciousness was both unique and important not merely on an individual level but a cosmic one.