Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- transitive verb To ascribe material existence to.
from The Century Dictionary.
- To attribute substantial existence to; make into or regard as a distinct individual substance or reality.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- transitive verb To make into, or regarded as, a separate and distinct substance.
- transitive verb To attribute actual or personal existence to.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- verb transitive To make into, or regarded as, a separate and distinct substance; to construct a contextually-
subjective and complex abstraction,idea , or concept into auniversal objectwithout regard to nuance or change in character. - verb transitive To
attribute actual orpersonal existence to.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- verb construe as a real existence, of a conceptual entity
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
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Examples
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As in the other disciplines of metaphysics, Kant suggests that we are motivated (perhaps even constrained) to represent the idea as a real object, to hypostatize it, in accordance the demand for the unconditioned:
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Ernst Bloch, who also rejects the Christian tendency to hypostatize the future into an already existing God.
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Recourse has also been made to vague principles which hypostatize the problem and call it a solution, e.g.,
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When we hypostatize our hopes and wishes and treat them as matters of fact, even though they cannot be proved to be either true or false, they assume a form which Sorel describes as myth.
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They hypostatize and deify an abstraction as though it were itself existent and divine.
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 5: Diocese-Fathers of Mercy
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The Reformation ran the same course as in England earlier; one is almost tempted to hypostatize it and say that it took the bit between its teeth and ran away with its riders.
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If we apply it also to qualities of things, we hypostatize the abstract quality.
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But the temptation must have been great for the philosopher to hypostatize this hope, or rather this impetus, of the new science, and to convert a general rule of method into a fundamental law of things.
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We proceed afterwards to hypostatize this idea of the sum-total of all reality, by changing the distributive unity of the empirical exercise of the understanding into the collective unity of an empirical whole -- a dialectical illusion, and by cogitating this whole or sum of experience as an individual thing, containing in itself all empirical reality.
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Together we hypostatize the divine presence, not to be maligned by Jackanapes Marprelate orthographers!!!
Pioneers of Alienation and 50s Sci-Fi at Thing Street Asylum
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