Objective Truth

So, for the last few years I have taken an arm-chair interest in phenomenology. The self-proclaimed motto of this school of thought is "To the things themselves", an idea i like very much. As best I can make of it - phenomenology is trying to do away with the deep-seated western idea that there is the 'world out there' and then the ideas in my head about this world; Rather - My consciousness is inter-dependent on the world. Following this is the idea that when we claim something to be true, it actually IS true of the thing - it is not just an approximation, or a subjective interpretation: The world we speak of IS the world we live in. This is an idea i really like, and in my most critical reflections, seems to be the most truthful analysis.

Then, I realized the other day that in my simplistic interpretation - this philosophy maintains the idea of objective truth, that is - truths about objects ARE True, capital T. Now, the idea of "objective truth" has been systematically shat upon from the day I entered college, causing me to hate all notions of it, and throw away all my apologetics books proving the existence of God.

And then i thought - 'hold the phone, why has objective truth gotten such a bad rap?' and some pieces came together:

It seems to me that what happened among educated evangelicals is this - we had some notions of truth - about the world, God, etc. usually some form of platonism, and then when we realized, that, wait - we CAN'T prove objectively that God exists - we threw the whole notion of 'objectivity' out the window. But wait a second- God is not an object! I don't mean in the theological sense, i mean, literally - 'god' has none of the properties of an object. so OF COURSE we can't have objective truth about him/it/whatever idea we are defending.

But then, why did so many give up the whole game and assume the super-dumb-sounding worldview of "we can't really know the truth about ANYTHING" or in it's more refined versions, "Post-modernism has shown us that we need to be more humble in our epistemology".

Lame!

My rebuttal is in these words from Heidegger (from his essay The Origin of the Work of Art):

"Occasionally we still have the feeling that violence has long been done to the thingly element of things and that thought has played a part in this violence, for which reason people disavow thought instead of taking pains to make it more thoughtful."

hells yeh.

Side note:

This ball was getting rolling in my head - bolstering my affection for phenomenology, and then i stumbled across 'Objectivism' a school of ideas spread by Ayn Rand and her followers... Ewwwwww. It seems to be making many of the claims I want to make about the nature of the world (although oddly - doesn't dialogue with, or use any of the language of phenomenology) but 1) self-proclaimed 'objectivists' seems to be maniacal creepsters, and 2) the leaps from the nature of existence to how political structures should function seem rather arbitrary. I shall explore this more and maybe will have a follow-up post -Perhaps a manifesto of my own on the nature of existence? ...borrrrrring :)