SCIENCE, RELIGION AND LIFE

A CRITIQUE AGAINST THE SCIENTIFIC OBJECTIVISM AND THE RELIGIOUS SUBJECTIVISM

Abstract

In this paper we present a critique of the objectivist perspective of science, as well as the subjectivist view of religion. We will see in what sense objectivism can be understood as the contradiction of objectivity with itself and how subjectivism can be understood as the contradiction of subjectivity with itself. In the first part, we approach the problem of scientific objectivism taking as a starting point the traditional understanding of scientific objectivity. We then emphasize the distinction, which goes back to Popper, between objective truth and subjective certainty. We show that there is confusion in science when objective knowledge is treated as peremptory certainty. This is the basic characteristic of objectivism. In the second part of the work, we analyze the problem of religious subjectivism from the point of view of the distinction between religious faith and ethicity, whose most complete expression is love. Using some of Feuerbach's insights, we show that, without love, religious faith comes into contradiction with ethicity, with the “subjective reality of the genre”, with the intersubjective essence that is the core of all individuality. Religious subjectivism is the exacerbation of the particular and exclusive character of religious faith. The subjectivity denies its original dimension, namely: intersubjectivity. We end by showing how scientific objectivism and religious subjectivism are important signs of a crisis in culture.