Objectivity and Subjectivity

In philosophy, an objective fact means a truth that remains true everywhere, independently of human thought or feelings. A subjective fact is a truth that is only true in certain times, places or people. For instance, 'That painting is good' may be true for someone who likes it, but it is not necessarily true that it is a good painting pure and simple, and remains so always no matter what people think of it. If the painting could claim this, someone who thought the painting was bad would be completely wrong, in the same way someone who says the sun goes around the earth is wrong. So the reliability of mathematics is an objective truth, whereas the beauty of paintings is probably a subjective one.

"Reality is one of the few words which mean nothing without quotes." ~Vladimir Nabokov  (Afterword to "Lolita")

He was arguing that any event is channeled, distorted enriched by our perspective - that there's no objective reality - really.

"It was my most difficult book — the book that treated of a theme which was so distant, so remote, from my own emotional life that it gave me a special pleasure to use my combinational talent to make it real." ~Vladimir Nabokov discussing his work, Lolita

(Martin Amis, essay on Stalinism 'Koba the Dread' proposes Lolita is an elaborate metaphor for the totalitarianism that destroyed the Russia of Nabokov's childhood (though Nabokov states in his Afterword that he "[detests] symbols and allegories" Amis interprets it as a story of tyranny told from the point of view of the tyrant "All of Nabokov's books are about tyranny", he says, "even Lolita. Perhaps Lolita most of all".)

In the strict sense of western philosophy, there are levels or gradation to the nature and conception of reality. These levels include, from the most subjective to the most rigorous:

phenomenological reality, truth, fact, and axiom.

"Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, exhibit number one is what the seraphs, the misinformed, simple, noble-winged seraphs, envied. Look at this tangle of thorns."   ~Vladimir Nabokov

"She was like the composition of a beautiful puzzle —its composition and its solution at the same time, since one is a mirror view of the other, depending on the way you look. ~Lolita (1955novel by Vladimir Nabokov)