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 a universal object without regard to nuance or change in character.
  • verb transitive To attribute actual or personal 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

[From Greek hupostatos, placed under, substantial, from huphistasthai, to stand under, exist : hupo, beneath; see hypo– + histasthai, middle voice of histanai, to set, place; see epistasis.]

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Examples

  • 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:

    Kant's Critique of Metaphysics

  • Ernst Bloch, who also rejects the Christian tendency to hypostatize the future into an already existing God.

    FAITH, HOPE, AND CHARITY

  • Recourse has also been made to vague principles which hypostatize the problem and call it a solution, e.g.,

    ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS

  • 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.

    Introduction to the Science of Sociology

  • They hypostatize and deify an abstraction as though it were itself existent and divine.

    The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 5: Diocese-Fathers of Mercy

  • 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.

    The Age of the Reformation

  • If we apply it also to qualities of things, we hypostatize the abstract quality.

    A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy

  • 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.

    Evolution créatrice. English

  • 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.

    The Critique of Pure Reason

  • 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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