What Cuts Through the Mind

 The line between good and evil cuts through the heart of man, and the line between true and false cuts through his mind.

There are many good forms of neutrality; neutrality in listening to another person's views i.e. bracketing one's own beliefs for the moment so as to better attend to what they say, this is good since it allows the truth of another person's view to arise more clearly in one's mind. Neutrality is also an essential step in phenomenology, it is the 'epoche' of the reduction, likewise a bracketing of one's views so that as unbiased a description of phenomena as possible can arise. Once again, neutrality in forming one's arguments, that is, by appealing to premises which one knows (or at least, has good reason to believe) are common ground between one's interlocutor and one's self, rather than appealing to premises which one knows (or again, has good reason to believe) one's interlocutor shall dispute; this too is a good form of neutrality, and perhaps there are many others.

However, what all these forms of neutrality have in common is a neutrality taken for sake of truth, be it for sake of gaining the truth or for sake of communicating the truth. Correspondingly though, there can be nothing good in being neutral 'to' the truth; which is more or less what certain forms of postmodern takes pretend to be.

There is a certain wisdom in attending to the subjectivity of other people; but 'subjective' does not, in and of itself, exclude the objective. Truth, after all, is just conformity of mind to reality i.e. of the subjective to the objective; and knowledge is a sort of firm grasp of the truth, and so too deals with the unity of the subjective and the objective. So likewise nuance, if it be good nuance and not splitting hairs; also serves to unite mind to reality on small points and many of them. Even when dealing with aspects of one's perspective which are incommunicable to other persons, things dealing with one's first person subjective experience, with one's own history, with the unique way in which things present to one's mind; as opposed to those things in common with others; still it is a matter of fact that one's mind is either reflecting reality or not, and so that one's perspective is accurate and true or not. One may not yet know whether or not one's perspective is accurate and true, and so in that sense have a kind of neutrality, and so indeed, practice the above-mentioned forms of neutrality (and perhaps others) so as to gain knowledge on the matter; but it is still a fact of the matter that one's perspective is either true or not.

Hence again, the line between true and false cuts through the mind of man; and on this account and in this sense, there can be no neutrality to it.

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