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subjectivity

UK/ˌsʌbd͡ʒɛkˈtɪvɪti/US/ˌsʌbd͡ʒɛkˈtɪvɪti/
nounC1Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #13,794 of 15,258leans written

Other forms: subjectivities

Subjectivity is judging from your own feelings and position. Pure subjectivity, the subjectivity of taste, admit the subjectivity.

It is not the same as bias: bias is a distortion you could in principle remove, where subjectivity is the fact that all judgement comes from somewhere. Philosophy takes it seriously as the condition of having a point of view at all. Note objectivity opposite it.

Definitions of subjectivity

  1. 1nounsubjectivityJudging from your own feelings and position.C1

    “Judging art always involves a degree of subjectivity, since people's tastes differ.”

subjectivity is a way of judging.

Where it comes from

French subjectivite comes from Latin subiectus, placed under, from sub plus iacere, to throw.

  1. French

    subjectivité

  2. English, today

    subjectivity

From French subjectivité, equivalent to subjective + ity.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Big Ideas

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subjectivity in the wild

  • Since how one acts is, from the ethical perspective, more important than any matter of fact, truth is to be found in subjectivity rather than objectivity.

    Philosophy of Søren Kierkegaard

  • The self-model is the central concept in the theory of consciousness called the self-model theory of subjectivity (SMT).

    Self-model

  • The notion of political subjectivity is an emerging idea in social sciences and humanities.

    Political subjectivity

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

  • subject
  • subjective