Welcome to Wildly Subjective by me, Laura K Field.
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At the risk of sounding a bore: the title of this thing is tongue-in-cheek. I believe deeply in truth, and curiosity, and knowledge, and in certain kinds of objectivity, and certainly in ever more comprehensive and rich modes of understanding. I also think that our understanding of the world is always mediated, fractured, incomplete, and so also ultimately subjective. Hard science is mediated through human minds and processes and institutions, as are whatever metaphysical and revealed truths that we might uphold. Social and political truths are refracted all the more. This is not cause for alarm or despair: it means that there will always be room for serious arguments and contestation, for study, testing, thinking, and growth, and for all the activities that make life interesting and bring us towards greater understanding.
You can read more about me and my writing at www.lkfield.com.
My plan in the coming year or so is to keep writing about liberalism and reactionary conservatism. I am also working on a book about the epistemic crisis, with a particular focus on the politics of moral/normative knowledge. The book aims to provide a defense of moral relativity against the charge of nihilism, as well as to articulate fresh parameters for values-based reasoning and action within tolerant, multiracial liberal democracies. It delineates the terrain between unthinking relativism and blind self-certainty—the only space conducive to authentic political engagement and healthy democratic contestation.
