PHILOSOPHICAL REFLECTIONS ON OBJECTIVE AND SUBJECTIVE MEASURE

Abstract

The article attempts to analyze the problem of the correlation between objective and subjective measure as a form of human attitude toward the world, as well as the value orientations on which one must rely in the course of life activity. Practice shows that theoretical and practical activity can be successful only if it corresponds to a certain objective measure or to the order and regularities of the world itself. On the other hand, a person’s absolute adherence to the objective measure leads to passive adaptation and excludes purposeful cognition, creativity, and the creation of the new. When a person relies exclusively on the subjective measure, they fall into the opposite extreme, plunging either into mythological superstitions or into reason-abandoned arbitrariness. If we speak of free will as an expression of subjective measure, this freedom is quite relative. A person may confidently believe that they act on the basis of their free will, but the negative results of their actions will soon reveal the fallacy of such assumptions. External reality, with all its insistence, will force a person to rebuild their strategy in accordance with objective reality if they wish to achieve the desired result. Most likely, only when a person’s subjective measure comes into a certain resonance with the objective measure of the world does something new emerge – something previously unseen in nature.

Having received reason and free will, a human being brings their subjective measure into any form of activity, transforming the world according to their interests and aims. Although their actions do not always yield the desired result, they have no other scale or mode of action except acting in accordance with their subjective measure. If we are to be consistent, we must acknowledge that in order for humanity to preserve itself and continue to move along the path of progress, it is necessary to maintain a balance between the objective and subjective measure and to make this principle the foundation of one’s worldview and the methodology of practical activity aimed at transforming the world. There are serious grounds to believe that nature exists independently, absolutely indifferent to humans, their interests and needs – alien and hostile to reason and life in general. Entropy in the world as a whole increases. However, in certain segments of it, order increases, and a person – endowed with reason and subjective measure – must comprehensively sustain and develop this order, seeing in this their highest purpose and the meaning of life.