Impersonal Reflections upon the Personal

Abstract

This piece of writing consists of brief thesis statements, each of which is followed by closer examination and interpretation, in order to enquire into the possibility of postulating impersonal, i.e. objective knowledge. As it appears nonsense to suggest the existence of knowledge without the holder (i.e. subject) of that knowledge, the correct point of departure for our investigation is not the question whether there is such a thing as objective knowledge; rather, we should focus on the potentials for disregarding the knowledge creator/ holder’s subjective personality. Several different aspects may be combined to define these potentials, which, following the arguments of various philosophical currents (e.g. scepticism, nominalism, post-empiricist philosophy of science, among others) that deny the possibility of subjective knowledge, also allow for the existence of an extreme, non-transferable form of solipsistic knowledge. Nevertheless, since such a form of knowledge is entirely useless, it is worth reversing the traditional approach: instead of starting with some putative objective knowledge (usually still stained with subjective elements) independent of the knowing subject, we should recognize that the various individualized bodies of knowledge can be connected along various dimensions, and this makes communication possible.