[Translated from Contradictio]
As soon as modern contemporaries start exchanging viewpoints, ones that stress a certain universality, either on talk shows, stage discussions or on a private level, it becomes absurd. Example:
A: "An impressive film! The screenwriter hits the nail on the head."
B: "How? Not at all! It was absolute nonsense."
A: "For me this film applies. Maybe not for you. In my opinion, it rings true to life."
"A" makes a mistake that in the theory of knowledge enjoys the honorable name "subjective truth". The mistake consists of not wanting to admit that the validity of a thought, an opinion, exists or does not exist apart from the reputation of the person. The first indication of this: would “B” otherwise have thought of beginning a quarrel? And what is doubtful: the mistake of “A” settles nothing at all; he is even happy to make it! He holds it in all seriousness to be an expression of his personality. The following is about the embarrassment connected with this.
The mistake consists of simply denying the objectivity of a thought. Every thought – here we talk about thoughts of universal interest, thoughts the general content of which are expressed in the form of an opinion – is objective. This is not a dogma, but a simple statement of the fact that the connection of a sentence subject with a predicate by a verb standing in the indicative – if it is the copula "is", it is a verb already partly containing the predicate – asserts no more or less than that the connection of the named contents exists universally. Arbitrary examples: "The element uranium is radioactive", "Sigmund Freud is the founder of psychoanalysis". Independently of who can be convinced of the truth of these thoughts, and independently of whether the person expressing the opinion really believes in it deep down: these thoughts, by the mode of the indicative, are objective, e.g. the facts that the mentioned old Mr. Freud and the founder of psychoanalysis are identical are set as identical contents. And nothing more is in this sentence: the person who is responsible for this sentence is in it neither with his taste nor with his understanding; he is not found at all.
So it is with every opinion. The subject who judges does not appear in his opinion, even when he might still strive so badly for this reason – he just judges, no more. Even if he talks about himself, then he is just the subject that judges about – here also his opinion has the form of generality, and it does not matter who says it. The idiots of modern communication would gladly have the reverse and cannot refrain from accommodating every opinion with an introductory phrase such as "I think, I believe, I feel it so, one could perhaps also see it this way ... " All efforts of this kind must remain unsuccessful and it does not save them from the always following objectivity: after these empty introductory phrases a “that”-phrase regularly follows – a sentence which contains – exactly – an opinion! And this opinion, about which it surely only works, again contains nothing of the subject.
Thus it is ironic that everyone, and even if he is so privately modest, hardly speaks about something before he stresses its objectivity, whether he wants to or not.
Now, of course, the fact that one formulates an opinion and announces it in a statement does not guarantee that it is also true. Ultimately, anyone can maintain something. Thinking is thus announced. In thinking not only sentence subject and predicate but their different determinations are set in relationship with each other. In this intellectual activity one becomes clear to oneself about what relations exist here in particular. Then the explanation for an opinion takes place on account of the knowledge about the condition of these relations. Again, in how one sees everything, the thinking subject comes far and wide not before but just insofar as he thinks it. The reason is objective. By the way, also if it is wrong. Then it is just objectively wrong.
Strangely enough, the supporters of subjective truth do not want to take this route – frequently difficult – as a way of thinking. Nevertheless, they call their thoughts true and valid, even if only for them -- simply due the fact that they think it and find it true. They reject the request to put such statements to the test of reason because their conviction is that they have a right to put into space their own observations not merely in order to whimsically dismiss a refutation, but to state as general what is private for them.
A peculiar right. Because first of all surely nobody wants to seriously take this right away from such people: everyone may imagine what they want. One would like to say to them: Think what you want as long as you do not bother others with it … Secondly, the will to enjoy this right is the will to a contradiction: they want to hold their views to be already valid, and believe in the fact that this is the way it is; but they do not want to know whether the striven after certainty is so. A partisan of subjective truth must always reproduce this hammer-hard contradiction anew. And it is an effort to again and again have to wrap up his just expressed thoughts, which are free for everyone to evaluate, in the vapor of the private, to re-do it as if it had not been – "I only meant ... ".
The fact that these people are not tired of maintaining that their thoughts are at the same time private and universal therefore stirs them to state that they have grown fond of their thoughts. But why is this actually? In the end they are neither nice, nor polite or beautiful. No, one can grow fond of them only because they are familiar, they represent a familiar view(!) of things. Because one can admittedly be familiar with the greatest nonsense. Whoever is no longer disturbed that his thoughts could be overgrown with imbecility does not want to undertake anything more with his understanding; to be nasty: thus somebody likely has (by himself) understood that in this beautiful country, according to the criterion of reason, the truth counts one hundred percent for nothing. Now, however, to actually execute again its own steps. Then one does not understand reason any more as the means for one’s own practical freedom in the strange world in which one lives, to know how to treat the living conditions according to how they benefit one, but as the instrument for an inspection of the world which should remain from the beginning inconsequential. In a different way: One regards reason not as a means to understand and change the world, but only to interpret it. Then of course it does not depend any more on whether one is mistaken when thinking or not, but on whether the inspection of the world becomes one’s self-worth and as such brings something to the subject. If the subject already has nothing from his examination, then he wants at least to enjoy it. Thus the formerly free thinker condemns himself to an existence as a beautiful soul.
In this respect, the beautiful soul who cherishes his subjective truth wants to know this as a truth about himself, the subject. While he has indeed said something, but wants to hold nothing objective, he does not offer the thought any more according to its contents, but to become interesting as its author. Opinions about the world and its principles become the expression of personality. This is already extremely irrational because "personality" has no other content than the sum of one’s views in this connection. He has even selected them himself – completely randomly in principle – and, nevertheless, these should constitute the source of his personality and have their measure in the same?!
The views become convictions and as an ideal rise to genuineness: the subject sees his value in the fact that he remains faithful to himself with the opinion and, otherwise, to nobody. And authenticity is a word in great demand.
What does one get from the right to subjective truth? First, an arrogant freedom: the freedom to be allowed to judge by mood. And secondly an arrogant responsibility: the loyalty of the subject to the business of remaining consistent to itself. Subjective truth does not have any more content than this.
By the way: this is still an understanding that he holds. And these are still opinions that he produces. Yet one treats knowledge here as a matter of taste!!
P.S. Is there then now objective truth? Of course not, because the pure contradiction of a mistake is surely only another one. Objective or absolute truth is the fitting idiotic counter-image to the subjective, namely the image of an existing truth fixed independently on human reasoning. This then would be higher nonsense …