PY Core Course 08/09
PY - Autumn Term
Objectivity
In the first paragraph of his autobiography, Charles Darwin wrote: “I have attempted to write the following account of myself, as if I were a dead man in another world looking back at my life.” It is a striking appeal to the idea and ideal of objectivity, which the great scientist wants to apply to his own life. For many, the principle of objectivity is what defines science, especially modern science, which strives to acquire knowledge that, as a recent book puts it, bears no trace of the knower. Can we know what things are in themselves, free of everything that belongs merely to us and our perception of them, of all our biases and distortions? It would seem to be the only knowledge worth striving for. In this core class, we try to understand what objectivity means, how the idea has been defended and attacked, and how it changed the world.
It is far from being merely a scientific idea, even if in science it is much less often combined with other ideas and goals. Great novelists and storytellers like Flaubert and Chekhov talked about their ambition to write objectively and dispassionately, to create a narrative voice that remains detached from every character and every event. And painters and sculptors have struggled, above everything else, with the question of how much of their own personality should be expressed in their works.
One might even say, as one famous scientist did, that the problem with objectivity is that it cannot capture what is most important for us: for instance, it cannot explain the beauty of a flower or why an old song will move us to tears. More generally, a scientific worldview is often presented as void of all aesthetic and moral value. Does not the sphere of value fall on the subjective side of the old distinction between values and facts? Or maybe there is a sphere of objective value, provided we know where to find it.
In the world of politics, again, many decisive questions are almost inevitably framed in terms of what is particular to one perspective and cannot provide a basis for state coercion and what is impartial, neutral, objective, and just. Here too there the critics will be less enthusiastic. Does objectivity disguise the exercise of personal power, presenting it as the rule of reality, anodyne and irresistible? Does it deliver us from democratic rule into the hands of mechanical experts and powerful bureaucracies? We all yearn for objectivity, but when we get it, or seem to get it, the feeling is that something terribly important has been lost. Darwin, after all, went on to add: “Nor have I found this difficult, for life is nearly over with me.”
PY Core Syllabus Autumn 08-09
PY - Winter Term
Objectivity
In the second semester PY core course we will trace the way in which the concept of objectivity has been understood in relation to different forms of subjectivity. From this perspective we will examine the reasons why traditional conceptions of objectivity have often been seen as insufficient with respect to many philosophical, aesthetic and religious phenomena.
PY Core Syllabus Winter 08-09
PY - Spring Term
Objectivity
In the spring semester the PY core will meet for only the first half of the semester so that the second half will be free for working on the individual PY projects. At this time of the year, the PY projects should be at a level were students are able to present their research programmes in some detail. The classes will be structured around student presentations of their projects where the task will be to clearly present their work and to defend their research in terms of their chosen methodology. The guiding theme of this semester will be the role of methodology in academic research. Particular attention will be given to questions regarding the advantages (and disadvantages) of the interdisciplinary approach. PY project supervisors are invited to attend when their students are presenting.
