Proust's Swann is obsessed by what he doesn't know about Odette. His anguish has no remedy; finding out more only adds to what he does know about her. Since Kant, lots of philosophers have suffered from a generalised and aggravated form of the same complaint. They want to know what the world is like when they aren't thinking about it; what things are like, not from one or other point of view, but 'in themselves'. Or they think that maybe that's what science aims to know, and wonder whether it's a project that makes any sense. They are thus worried about 'the possibility of objectivity'.

LRB 30 October 1997 | PDF Download