OBJECT. - From ob-icere (ob-iectum, Gk. ἀντι-κλίμενον) it is that which stands opposite, which is placed before. It therefore implies, etymologically, a relation of presence of something to someone: not, then, a pure reality in itself, but in its possible relations to a subject (v.). In current usage o. means, in general, "thing," "subject matter" (e.g.: the o. of a discourse, of a trial).
In philosophical usage the term has two principal references: a) o. is the term to which a faculty, a tendency, an act, a habit is related (the good as o. of the will, the aesthetic expression as o. of art, the reverence and worship of God as o. of religion, etc.). Analogous is the meaning of o. referred to science: where the distinction of o. into material (the reality, the content or subject matter taken into consideration by a science) and formal (the characteristic aspect under which a science considers its matter) is traditional: for example, man (material o.) studied by the sociological sciences in the unfolding of his relational activities (formal o.). This distinction, moreover, also applies to o. as the term of a faculty: in this sense the formal o. is called by St. Thomas "illud sub cuius ratione omnia referuntur ad potentiam" (Sum. Theol., I, q. 1, a. 7, c.): thus color is the formal o. (sub quo) of sight, while colored things are its material o. St. Thomas, with Aristotle, further distinguishes the "common" o., which can be the term of faculties even specifically different (e.g., space as o. of sight and of touch), and the "proper" o., "quod est primo et per se cognitum a virtute cognoscitiva" (ibid., q. 85, a. 8, c.). From the formal-proper o. Thomism derives the specification of faculties and acts (ibid., q. 77, a. 3, c.; cf. I-II, q. 18, a. 2 and III Sent., dist. 27, q. 2, a. 4, q. 1 ad 3).
b) O., with an essentially gnoseological meaning, and opposed to subject (v.), is the content and term of knowledge. It has assumed quite different determinations in the history of philosophy, in relation to the various metaphysical interpretations of knowledge itself. In medieval Scholasticism the expression "esse obiectivum" frequently indicates the form of representative being that a content has in knowledge, while "esse subiectivum" is the real modification that an act of knowledge brings about as a form of the mind: "esse obiective idem est quod esse in prospectu intellectus" (Hervaeus Natalis, Quodl., I, 1; cf. M. De Wulf, Storia della filos. mediev., III, Ital. trans. by V. Miano, Florence 1949, pp. 58-59 and 40 [for Ockham]). But alongside this sense there is already the opposite modern usage that identifies o. with "thing in itself" distinguished from the knowing subject and from the representative image itself: "obiectum non potest secundum se esse praesens intellectui nostro et ideo consequitur species quae est praesens, quae supplet vicem obiecti" (Duns Scotus, Reportationes, I, 36, q. 2, 34; G. Ockham, Sent., II, 15; cf. De Wulf, op. cit., p. 15). The same acceptation in Campanella: "realiter agunt in nos obiecta" (Metaph., I, 38). In Descartes the medieval and the modern sense coexist: "a thing exists objectively or by representation in the mind, by means of its idea," while "to exist formally and in fact" belongs to the causes of ideas (Medit., III; Ital. trans. by A. Tilgher, I, Bari 1938, pp. 122-13, 124); but at the same time: o. is the reality "outside me" which ideas may or may not resemble (ibid., pp. 109-10; cf. Princ. philos., I, 70; Passiones, I, 23). In Berkeley (v.) o. is the immanent content of knowledge, that is, the idea (v.) itself: "the o. of human knowledge are ideas"; "the o. and the sensation are the same thing and therefore the one cannot be separated from the other" (Principles, Ital. trans. by G. Papini, Bari 1925, pp. 27-28; cf. Siris, § 292). An analogous acceptation in Hume (Treatise of human nature, part 4, sec. 2). In Kant the use of o. as actual reality is not lacking: "Spatium non est aliquid obiectivi seu realis... sed subiectivum et ideale" (De mundi sens. atque intell. forma et princ., § 15); but then, in the Critique, o. is the cognitive representation (phenomenon [v.]), distinct from the thing in itself, although related to it by way of empirical intuition (v. OBJECTIVISM). In Fichte (v.) o. is the absolute Subject itself as the term of its own representation: "The I represents itself... and only then is it Qualcaea, an o."; "The I originally posits absolutely its own being," so that "the I is necessarily the identity of the Subject and the O.: Subject-O." (Wissenschaftslehre, Ital. trans. by A. Tilgher, 2nd ed., Bari 1925, pp. 57-58). Schopenhauer (v.) too distinguishes the o. from the thing in itself: "The O. is not the thing in itself; but it is, as empirical o., real"; "everything that exists for knowledge, therefore this entire world, is only o. in relation to the subject, intuition of the one who intuits: in a word, representation" (Die Welt, etc., II, ch. 2; Ital. trans. by G. De Lorenzo, II, Bari 1930, p. 29 and I, ibid. 1928, pp. 3-4). N. Hartmann (Metaph. der Erkenntnis, I, ch. 8) distinguishes four meanings of o.: "that which is actually known (objectum); that which is still to be known (obijciendum); that which is in fact not known (transobjective); finally that which is not knowable (irrational or transintelligible). From the o. understood in these 4 senses must be distinguished the creation [the representation] realized in consciousness."
In a realistic conception of knowledge a fundamental distinction of o. seems to have to be admitted: the immanent o. (internal, gnoseological, actual) and the transcendent o. (external, ontological, potential). The immanent o. is the intrinsic content of the cognitive representation: in this sense it coincides with the "given" of knowledge; the transcendent o. is the reality in itself to which the immanent o. is eventually related. Knowledge admits purely immanent o., which, as such, have no effective consistency outside consciousness (pure imaginings, logical entities, etc.). But on the whole human knowledge is related to an ontological, transcendent o.: reality in itself, the sensible-intelligible world. However, because of the limit, the historicity and the margin of relativity inherent in human knowledge, it does not entail, for any real-ontological o., a full adequation and coincidence between the immanent o. and the transcendent o. (v. KNOWLEDGE).