Objectivity is historical and exists only in relation to man.

Evidence

The basic innovation introduced by the philosophy of praxis into the science of politics and of history is the demonstration that there is no abstract “human nature”, fixed and immutable (a concept which certainly derives from religious and transcendentalist thought), but that human nature is the totality of historically determined social relations, hence an historical fact which can, within certain limits, be ascertained with the methods of philology and criticism. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 617 (#expands, via linked claim)

One may well say that antiquity lacked both the broadest and purest conception of objectivity and the deepest and most precise conception of subjectivity. The concept of natural law as an absolutely substantive, universal rule, indifferent to all “values,” was as foreign to antiquity as the real concept of the ego, with its productivity and its freedom, its problematics, and its value that outweighs the world. The psyche neither went so far beyond itself nor so deeply into itself as it later did via the synthesis—or also the antithesis—of the Christian ethos with modern natural and historical sciences. This cannot have been without internal and at least indirect connection with the sociopolitical structure of the Greek world. The enormous internal prerogatives of the narrower state circles bound the individual by and large to a certain intermediate image of life and the world that fell between universality and ultimate personality; and the whole form of existence inherent in these restrictions had to be abolished in order to make room for development toward those two extremes. — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 697 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Man is a historical bloc of subjective and material elements; Human nature is the totality of historically determined social relations, not a fixed essence. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 617; Antiquity lacked both full objectivity and full subjectivity in thought — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 697 (+4 more)

Related

• Objects are studied as social relations, not physical things (similarity 0.85)
• Objectivity is constituted in relation to historically situated humanity, not apart from it (similarity 0.85)
• Human nature is the totality of historically determined social relations, not a fixed essence. (similarity 0.84)
• Antiquity lacked both full objectivity and full subjectivity in thought (similarity 0.82)
• Human nature is the ever-changing complex of social relations, not a fixed essence (similarity 0.82)
• Knowledge and objectivity are only knowable in relation to humanity (similarity 0.81)
• Objectivity of concepts rests on a collective historical subject (similarity 0.80)
• Lukacs’s dialectic is historically monist, not dualist between nature and humanity (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Human nature is the totality of historically determined social relations, not a fixed essence. #expands (0.85) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 617
• Antiquity lacked both full objectivity and full subjectivity in thought #corroborates (0.80) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 697
• Racisms are only intelligible through their specific historical context, not a universal essence. #exemplifies (0.80)
• Racism has no universal structure but only historically specific forms #exemplifies (0.80)
• Common sense is historical and plural, with religion as only one fragment of it #exemplifies (0.78)