For the pursuit of validity to be an entirely congruent activity two things are required, one that the goal exists and can be determined to exist, that what claims to be valid really is so, and two that some essential connection can be found between the goal and the seeker. Taken together, these are impossible, if not meaningless demands, or rather, they may be individually consistent but mutually contradictory. The drive that motivates the seeker is a social and hence a mutable one. It can intend what is valid independently of its enabling contingencies only in an asymptotic sense. A process of sublimation of motives needs to be applied, and concretely this means a refinement of the social milieu that hosts the quest. A concomitant of this is that the spiritual element, the metaphysical self-revelation of the seeker must be purged away. The idiom of the refined social milieu comes to bear an uncanny resemblance to pure objectivity. Beginning at the other pole short-circuits this process, but the impasse it soon comes upon is essential and paralysing.