Sergio Santos

Metaphysics Sergio Santos

The intrusive opinion persists against the increasing weaponization of the fact. As the sciences are getting ever stronger, one wishes everybody adopted the neutral position of objectivity and followed truth. The subjective should be kept to oneself. One is to find inner truth in the inner sphere of subjectivity and static truth in the outer sphere of objectivity. Einstein said in his 1952 letter that this was a period of such great external and internal insecurity and with such a lack of firm objectives that one should come out of the inner shell of subjectivity (with the corresponding lack of guarantee that this inner shell delivers) and speak out inner truths. To Einstein both the subjective and the objective were equally shaking. Still Einstein spoke from a metaphysics of subjectivity and therefore could not make it past the metaphysical barrier of the subject. This is something that both formal and informal spheres keep obviating as common sense tells us that it is of course true that there are two truths. The question for Einstein was: how is the scientist to seek truth? From here, Einstein spoke of the current situation of the scientist, i.e., one of despair and one where politicians and power structures have taken hold of both the scientists and of the truths that they deliver. Here I ask the question in its reverse form: how does truth seek us? How does truth stand with us? There has been a wave of negativity regarding the position of the so-called postmodernists regarding the status of truth. In 2020 the shaking of truth is evidenced more than ever in all spheres of life both formally and informally. Truth has become abstract. Scientific fact and evidence are invoked from both extremes of the many battlegrounds that are currently open. Even the saying "speak your truth" has become common now. But this saying still sees truth as the private property of the owner that can share but still own. Everybody is speaking of the weakness of truth in one way or another with sadness. Truth is hopeless in the eyes of many. While one has faith in truth, one is also pessimistic that some have given up the concept of truth borrowed from antiquity and one is sad and anxious that truth finds it complicated to impose itself on people. One insists and hopes that the fact itself will crack the human's subjective barrier open and transform their inner shell. The so-called "post-modernists" might have listened to what truth has to say more closely than suspected by the supporters of truth. Here I develop the concept of metaphysics of subjectivity to expose it as a metaphysics of truth. The metaphysical tradition exposes subjectivity and objectivity as a residue of theology that feeds from human concern. A concern that is neither neutral, subjective nor objective but rooted in anxiety in the face of existence. The appeal to ethical theories, or an ethical framework for science and technology, in both science and the judicial system is also rooted in the illusion that science, through its neutrality and objectivity, is freely moving in a direction that is independent of human existence. The history of philosophy has already interpreted world for us. We are the end product of the history of philosophy, and for this reason, our concern with reason, i.e. ratio and calculation as much as talking about subjectivity, objectivity, and fact, is entangled with a metaphysical conception of world. The current and common unattractiveness of theories, ideologies and the so-called subjective also results in contempt toward "philosophy" when in fact we are all following a metaphysical tradition. Nobody wants to philosophise but not because philosophy is confusing or meaningless but rather because we are incapable of it. When the human being speaks, and indeed in and through all its doing and busyness, the metaphysical tradition speaks. The split of truths itself is a metaphysics of truth that veils and obstructs the path to thinking.