SUBJECTIVISM. – Opposed to objectivism (q.v.), it is properly used in relation to modern philosophy as the tendency to overvalue what is in function of the subject (q.v.), of consciousness (q.v.), and of thought (q.v.).
With regard to classical philosophy (medieval Greek-Christian), it is improper to speak of determinations of the subjectivism-objectivism type, because only the subjectivistic tendency of modern thought, having become decisive and fully conscious, has led to the qualification of the former as objectivistic by contrast. Those expressions, therefore, of classical philosophy that show points of affinity with subjectivism (modern) are to be regarded rather under other headings (skepticism, sophistry, interiority, conceptualism, nominalism, etc.).
One may distinguish a theoretical subjectivism, a subjectivism of science, an ethical subjectivism, and an aesthetic subjectivism. The figure of theoretical subjectivism is historically complex; it may be considered in relation to phenomenalism (q.v.) from the affirmation of the “psychicity” of corporeal qualities (Locke, Descartes) up to the separation that contemporary instrumentalists (Dewey) make between objects (subjective) of everyday experience and objects of scientific experience. Within these two historical limits, central is the Kantian presupposition of the subjectivity of sensible knowledge (cf. Critique of Pure Reason. Transcendental Aesthetic), which still exerts its influence upon critics of science (especially of physics), philosophers, and scientists. After the three great exaltations of the subject accomplished by Luther, Descartes, and Rousseau (q.v.), Kant defines that critical-subjectivistic idealism which expresses in the clearest manner the character of modern philosophy. At the base of theoretical subjectivism, in general, one finds one of these two suppositions: either reality conceived as pure object of experience (Berkeley, Hume), or the subject taken as the “point of departure” of philosophy and of reality itself (Fichte). One speaks, moreover, of empirical subjectivism when the subject is the single historical individual, and of transcendental subjectivism when the subject is the absolute and universal activity immanent in the empirical subject (idealism [q.v.]: but in this case, given the immaterialistic-monistic conception of reality, absolute subjectivism resolves itself also into absolute objectivism). Ethical subjectivism, as an affirmation in principle, follows from all those non-teleological conceptions of reality which fail to account for the objectivity and absolute value of the moral norm (q.V. OBLIGATION). Even ethical intuitionism (q.v.), by affirming that the moral norm is an immediate datum, arrives at conclusions of a subjectivistic type. It is not subjectivism, however, to affirm beatitude as the ultimate end (q.v.) of man when this is understood as a consequence of the objective perfection attained. Ethical subjectivism too can be empirical (the norm of action depends on the arbitrariness of the individual) or transcendental (the moral norm corresponds to the exigency of every possible will). The subjectivism of conduct, from the 19th century onward, is called egoism (q.v.). For the social and cultural aspects of subjectivism, see INDIVIDUALISM.
Aesthetic subjectivism, finally, which in part coincides with aesthetic hedonism, generally follows from the denial of the (classical) transcendental of the beautiful or from the limitation of the relations of the beautiful to the affective-emotional aspect of the subject (q.V. AESTHETICS).
It must moreover be observed that modern philosophy in general affirms its tendency toward subjectivism as the simple normality of a correct philosophical approach, and calls subjectivism “philosophy as the science of the spirit,” and a conception of the real as immanent to the spirit (B. Croce, Breviario di estetica, 10th ed., Bari 1951, p. 113).