Subjectivity is the condition of being a subject: i.e., the quality of possessing perspectives,
experiences, feelings, beliefs, desires, and/or power.
Subjectivity is used as an explanation for what influences and informs people's judgments
about truth or reality.
It is the collection of the perceptions, experiences, expectations, personal or cultural understanding,
and beliefs specific to a person.
It is often used in contrast to the term objectivity, which is described as a view of truth or reality
which is free of any individual's influence.
Society Subjectivity is an inherently social mode
that comes about through innumerable interactions within society.
As much as subjectivity is a process of individuation, it is equally a process of socialization,
the individual never being isolated in a self-contained environment, but endlessly engaging in interaction
with the surrounding world.
Culture is a living totality of the subjectivity of any given society constantly undergoing
transformation.
Subjectivity is both shaped by it and shapes it in turn, but also by other things like
the economy, political institutions, communities, as well as the natural world.
Though the boundaries of societies and their cultures are indefinable and arbitrary, the
subjectivity inherent in each one is palatable and can be recognized as distinct from others.
Subjectivity is in part a particular experience or organization of reality, which includes
how one views and interacts with humanity, objects, consciousness, and nature, so the
difference between different cultures brings about an alternate experience of existence
that forms life in a different manner.
A common effect on an individual of this disjunction between subjectivities is culture shock, where
the subjectivity of the other culture is considered alien and possibly incomprehensible or even
hostile.
Self Subjectivity presupposes a subject, one that
experiences all the phenomena that makes up and produces subjectivity.
The subject is the form of an existing being while subjectivity is the content, and the
process of subjectivation is the alteration of what it means to be that subject.
It is a classic philosophical question of whether the self, or the subject, is a transient
or permanent aspect of existence.
Whatever the answer to the problem, it can be said that subjectivity, which is the way
that the subject expresses itself, constantly undergoes change, though still retains constant
characteristics, depending on the subject who has the potential to affect their subjectivity.
This is true, that subjectivity is constantly undergoing change, because what makes up our
psychic experience is a wide range of perceptions, sensations, emotions, thoughts and beliefs,
that, through the passage of time, and our relation to space, constantly generate transformation
in terms of our subjective relation to the world.
See also
Intersubjectivity Phenomenology
Phenomenology Q methodology
Subject References
Further reading Beiser,Frederick C..
German Idealism: The Struggle Against Subjectivism, 1781-1801.
Harvard University Press.
Block, Ned; Flanagan, Owen J.; & Gzeldere, Gven The Nature of Consciousness: Philosophical
Debates.
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
ISBN 978-0-262-52210-6 Bowie, Andrew.
Aesthetics and Subjectivity : From Kant to Nietzsche.
Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Dallmayr, Winfried Reinhard.
Twilight of Subjectivity: Contributions to a Post-Individualist Theory Politics.
Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press.
Ellis, C. & Flaherty, M..
Investigating Subjectivity: Research on Lived Experience.
Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
ISBN 978-0-8039-4496-1 Farrell, Frank B. Farrell.
Subjectivity, Realism, and Postmodernism: The Recovery of the World in Recent Philosophy.
Cambridge - New York: Cambridge University Press.
Lauer, Quentin.
The Triumph of Subjectivity: An Introduction to Transcendental Phenomenology.
Fordham University Press.
External links