Publication Details

Abstract

The relation between subject and object is studied from the viewpoint of their univocal employment in philosophical explication of social regularities as forms of determination of subjects' activity. Subject and object are comprehended as categories of the relative discontinuity of practice, the latter being understood as their continuity. Practice is a purposeful activity which transforms object and constitutes subject. Objectification of subject, externalization of the inner (act, the result of activity) is the way in which subject exists. Therefore, the regularity of subjects’ activity is objective, since it is the relation of activities which are an objective expression of subjects. Objectification of subjects, their relation is objectivity as a special creation of their mutual activity. Since the creation of a certain subject — an expression of its „essential power“ — is not immune against other subjects, it may become an instrument of ascendancy over the originator. The so-called rule of social objectivity or regularity has always the form of the rule of certain people over the others. Objectivity becomes an alienated form of the relation of subjects. Objective conditions determine subject in such a sense that it has to acquire, assimilate the creations of the preceding generations purposefully, as if the creators operated by means of them. (The purpose is namely the human dimension of a creation). In such a way, the activity of predecessors continues in the activity of contemporaries, a continuity of community is being formed. By means of practice, subject overpasses its determination by objective conditions and, in the same way, it changes object as well as itself. Exaggerated emphasis laid on the objectivity of social relations lies in a naturalistic comprehension of the category of object, which negates the subjective dimension of the objectivity of subjects.