Consider what is at stake in taking on subjectivism as Parfit has done. Mathewes, in his book, Evil and the Augustinian Tradition writes: "Insofar as our thought remains in the thrall of subjectivism, we cannot adequately respond to evil's challenge to us, and any subjectivist response to evil's challenge will be vexed by the challenge's complexity; we either take it too seriously, and think of evil as a natural reality; or we do not take it seriously enough, and assume that, since it is due to us, we can straightforwardly change our actions and simply overcome it. That is, modern thought cannot handle evil because of its essentially subjectivist tenor..."Subjectivism" here means an account of human existence which gives priority to the human intellect, and/or the brute fact of human action, over against some mute and inert reality, material or otherwise."(pg. 52) It seems in this passage that Mathewes is assuming that we agree that certain things a...
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