Literature
Objectivism
Objectivism is a literary movement that emerged in the 20th century, emphasizing the use of precise language and objective reality in writing. It promotes the idea that art should reflect the world as it is, without subjective interpretation or emotional bias. Objectivist writers strive for clarity, directness, and a focus on concrete details in their work.
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6 Key excerpts on "Objectivism"
- Elizabeth M. Dowling, W. George Scarlett, Elizabeth M. Dowling, W. George Scarlett(Authors)
- 2005(Publication Date)
- SAGE Publications, Inc(Publisher)
Objectivism Objectivism refers to a philosophy developed by the Russian-American author Ayn Rand. Literally, objec-tivism means “to be objective.” Thus, Objectivists assert that truth exists in the external world and is not relative to each individual. Rationality is the tool by which individuals apprehend truth. In objectivist philosophy, then, there is always a “right” and “wrong” answer. When two people have conflicting perspectives, for example, objectivists do not dismiss the argument as a “difference of opinion.” They insist either that only one is correct or that both are incorrect. There can only be one truth, and it is the person with a greater command of rationality who perceives truth. The most controversial aspect of Objectivism is its implications for ethics. Much of Rand’s philosophy rebelled against the religious and communist institu-tions of her time. Rand felt that both these institutions wrongly stressed self-sacrifice and altruism over the needs of the individual. Doing so, she argued, pro-moted a “moral crisis” because a functioning society can only exist if its individuals take their own survival and vitality as their primary moral concern. However, for Rand, survival did not refer to just the bare essen-tials needed to exist. Survival also referred to the development of personal values and the achievement of personal goals. While communism and religion wished to subjugate personal values and goals under “greater” societal values and goals, Rand believed that societal goals and values are oppressive unless indi-viduals make them their own. However, irrespective of whether they are societal or personal, from the objectivist perspective, goals and values must be ratio-nally attained. Thus, if two people have conflicting personal values, one must have the correct values and the other incorrect values or both have incorrect values.
eBook - PDF- Henri Maître(Author)
- 2023(Publication Date)
- Wiley-ISTE(Publisher)
Objectivism shares these premises with realism, but Objectivism allows itself recourse to transcendence. The term was reclaimed, since 1950, by Ayn Rand, to cover a radical form of Objectivism applied to politics and society, which aimed to establish libertarian governments and preached rational self-interest. This acceptance of Objectivism became highly popular in the United States since the publication of the highly successful Atlas Shrugged in 1957. We do not speak here of Objectivism as Ayn Rand used it, but of aesthetic Objectivism. We reject two expectations that she added: “humans’ ultimate goal is their well-being” and, “the best political-economic system is liberal capitalism”. 6 Plato (428-348 BCE) wrote two Theories of Beauty, one in Hippias Majeur and the other in Phaedre (Plato 2011). 7 Socrates left behind no text and is only known through what other authors wrote about him: Plato, Aristophanes, Xenophone, Aristotle, Plotinus. 8 Aristotle expressed his views on aesthetics in his Poetics, written around 335 BCE, which focused chiefly on tragedy and the epic (Aristotle 1996). 9 Augustine of Hippo (Saint Augustine) chiefly speaks about aesthetics in his work The Origin of Good, written around 554 CE, but this theme was also explored in many of his other texts. 4 Aesthetics in Digital Photography Renaissance, flourishing in the Classical period and remained dominant until the middle of the 19th century in the world of art, if not in philosophy. The objectivist approach declares that Beauty is a quality of the concerned person, object or music. This Beauty is the reflection, in the observed object, of the universal properties of harmony in proportion and shape, properties that we do not completely understand, but which exist prior to our observation and influence our judgment. 10 For this reason, Beauty is perceived equally by any observer 11 at any time and any place.
eBook - ePub- Frederic Neyrat(Author)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
6 Materialism and realism On literary realism, naturalism, and objectivist poetry Literature and the existential profusion of the real We would like to hunt, catch, and brandish reality like a trophy, in saying: “Look, this is reality, take a picture.” But reality’s materiality is startling, as soon as we think we have caught it, the prey vanishes like an illusion, escapes like a ghost, or changes its form and reveals itself as completely different from what the hunter thought it was. Reality is so unreal sometimes, that we need a materialism able to be commensurate to the incommensurability, to the excessiveness of reality. To identify what I shall call in this chapter a materialism of the excess, I will show that literature offers an account of reality that does not exactly fit what speculative realism and object-oriented ontology argue: Reality, literature demonstrates, cannot be reduced to an object, reality divides objects, overwhelms them, revealing in the objects an obscure insideness striving to escape any objective limitations. To show this, I decided to study what might be seen, wrongly, as the three literary genres the closest to speculative realism and object-oriented ontology: Literary realism, naturalism, and objectivist poetry. The paradox is that the more realist literature and naturalist novels try to depict reality, the more reality reveals an excess that cannot be ontologically grasped; the more poetry strives to identify an object, the more the object rebels and claims its multiple, enigmatic relationship with the world
- Lisa M. Given(Author)
- 2008(Publication Date)
- SAGE Publications, Inc(Publisher)
Objectivism is humanism, and antiObjectivism and antirealism is antihumanism. Carl Ratner See also Postmodernism; Subjectivism Further Readings Bunge, M. (2001). Scientific realism. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books. Bunge, M. (2004). How does it work? The search for explanatory mechanisms. Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 34, 182–210. Dilthey, W. (1985). The rise of hermeneutics. In Hermeneutics and the study of history (pp. 235–258). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1900) Einstein, A. (1954). Ideas and opinion. New York: Bonanza. Merton, R. (1972). Insiders and outsiders: A chapter in the sociology of knowledge. American Journal of Sociology, 78, 9–47. Niiniluoto, I. (1999). Critical scientific realism . New York: Oxford University Press. Ratner, C. (1997). Cultural psychology and qualitative methodology: Theoretical and empirical considerations. New York: Plenum. Ratner, C. (2002). Cultural psychology: Theory and method. New York: Plenum. Ratner, C. (2006). Cultural psychology: A perspective on psychological functioning and social reform. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Ratner, C. (2006). Epistemological, social, and political conundrums in social constructionism. Forum for Qualitative Social Research, 7 (1), article 4. Available from http://www.qualitative-research.net Searle, J. (2006). Reality and relativism: Shweder on a which? hunt. Anthropological Theory, 6, 112–121. O BJECTIVITY Objectivity , a term that is commonly associated with quantitative research, can be broadly described as the extent to which research projects are undistorted by the biases of researchers. The validity, reliability, and gen-eralizability of most (classically defined) empirical research projects—those that are rooted in the tradi-tional principles of the scientific method—are described as being dependent upon their objectivity (among other factors).
eBook - PDFDanièle Huillet, Jean-Marie Straub
"Objectivists" in Cinema
- Benoît Turquety(Author)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- Amsterdam University Press(Publisher)
The three of them represent the core of what is at stake, and through the very large panorama their works present beyond shared principles, they expose a vast variety of possibilities of fered by the Objectivist conception of poetry. The others should not be neglected—some of the poems of Rakosi, Niedecker, and Bunting count among the masterpieces of 20 th -century English-language poetry—but their great theoretical and/or concrete distance leave less room for them here. 44 See Penberthy, Niedecker , containing many of Niedecker‘s letters to Zukofsky. 45 Oppen, Selected Letters , p. 46. 46 Oppen, Selected Letters , p. 224. 47 Williams, “Objectivism”, p. 582. 48 Zukofsky, Prepositions + , p. 189. 49 Ibid. , p. 189. 50 DANIèLE HUILLET, JEAN-MARIE STRAUB Objectivist Poetic Theory The Eye and the Object Since the beginning, it has been unclear what texts described as “objectivist” are, what they say, and what they accomplish, or what they desire. This is not unrelated to the density of Zukofsky’s essayistic writing—a feature connecting him to Mallarmé: never managing to decide to use “average” French or English in the name of accessibility. The compactness of Zukofsky’s style has provoked great divergences in the interpretation of his texts—and the term “objectivist” as well. An initial direction emphasized the presence in the poem of the “real”, perceived object (most often visually): the poem is an “objective” description, without com-mentary, without symbolism, of this object. This tendency takes Objectivism back to a poem by Williams of considerable historical importance, number XXII in Spring and All (1923): so much depends upon a red wheel barrow glazed with rain water beside the white chickens 50 The poem presents an object or an ensemble without any commentary— except that “so much” depends on it.
eBook - PDFPoetic Obligation
Ethics in Experimental American Poetry after 1945
- Matthew G. Jenkins(Author)
- 2008(Publication Date)
- University Of Iowa Press(Publisher)
part 1 objectivist poethics juliet: And yet I wish but for the thing I have. My bounty is as boundless as the sea, My love as deep; the more I give to thee, The more I have, for both are infinite. ( Romeo and Juliet II.ii) In his seminal 1931 essay, “Sincerity and Objectification: With Special Reference to the Work of Charles Reznikoff,” Louis Zukofsky defines the terms through which Objectivist poetry, the movement he inaugurated that year in Poetry magazine, has come to be judged and interpreted. It has also provided the genesis of ethical approaches to avant-garde poetry since 1945 , which is why the essay deserves some introductory examination, despite the fact that I do not include a separate chapter on Zukofsky for reasons that should become clear. Although more than mere literary criticism, Zukofsky’s essay is not a manifesto (none of the other contributors had a say in its con-tents and only later a few actually endorsed its claims), but it seems to func-tion like one, at least in terms of the way it was later received by critics eager for some hermeneutic with which to read this mysterious poetry. If not a manifesto, it certainly can be read as a statement of poetics, one that exhibits the unmistakable penchant for the elegance of totality fancied by many Mod-ernists at the time. For example, in a 1932 issue of Contact, William Carlos Williams writes, “I cannot swallow the half-alive poetry which knows nothing of totality,” a sentiment echoed in other totalizing Modernist gestures, such as Pound’s Imagist dicta from his essay “A Retrospect.” 1 To clear the ground for poetry’s new objective, Zukofsky begins his essay in Poetry by advocating a total correspondence between poetry and historical, existential reality: An Objective: (Optics)—The lens bringing the rays from an object to a focus. That which is aimed at. (Use extended to poetry)—Desire for what is objectively perfect, inextricably the direction of historic and con-temporary particulars.
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