Virtual Reality

Abstract

The subject of this work is subjectivity. Not the relativist subjectivity that describes the postmodern condition; but subjectivity as practical, concrete, sensual human activity, the way in which it expresses itself, the limits to that expression and the way in which those limits are transcended and reconstituted. That is, absolute subjectivity: my social being in a real world that can be known — and understood. This is the most fundamental question for any examination of modern society, re-solving and dis-solving all other questions, e.g., the problem of order and theories of action. It is out of this matter that modern social thought has developed and sought to define itself as social science. But the concept of subjectivity designed by modern social thought, and in particular by modern sociology, the discipline within which this work is situated, has proved inadequate to the task. The various rationalisms within which modern sociology has sought to compose and recompose the notion of the subject have been exploded by the very subjectivity it has sought to define, not through a superior hegemonic discourse, but through the subject’s concrete activity in pursuit of its concrete aspirations.