I am accustomed to thinking of objectivity in ethical terms, as a kind of fairness and magnanimity. Thus it was a little shocking to learn that the original meaning of “to regard objectively” was “to regard as an object“. Etymologically it fits of course, but I am also used to the idea that we should not treat people as objects. I have pushed this further, and said in effect that we should not even treat inanimate objects as mere objects.
But it seems that the positive moral connotations of objectivity may in fact have arisen from a valorization of seeing things as objects, even though objective being was called a diminished being. Henry of Ghent, for example, apparently held that a pure intelligence would see everything purely as an object.
The pure object is something that is implicitly mastered in every respect. That is why we should not treat people as objects, and why we should not even treat objects purely as objects.
The Postmodern Peripatetic 