subjectiveadj.n.

Etymology: < classical Latin subiectīvus involving being placed after something else, postpositional, in post-classical Latin also submissive, relating to the subject as to that in which attributes inhere (from 13th cent. in British sources) < subiect- , past participial stem of subicere (see subject adj.) + -īvus -ive suffix. Compare Middle French, French subjectif relating to the subject of a logical proposition (c1350), (in grammar) that can be a subject, of or relating to a subject (15th cent.), of or relating to an individual as thinking subject, not empirical, personal, individual, of or relating to a person's habits, tastes, or methods of thinking (19th cent.), Spanish subjetivo (15th cent.), Italian soggettivo (19th cent.), also German subjektiv (18th cent.).Development of sense A. 2 and sense A. 3. Sense A. 2 arose from the distinction made by some medieval scholastic philosophers between what belongs to things ‘subjectively’ (post-classical Latin subiective ), i.e. as they are in themselves, and what belongs to them ‘objectively’ (post-classical Latin obiective ), i.e. as they are perceived or conceived by the mind. In contrast, sense A. 3 resulted from the development in early modern European philosophy of the tendency to make the mind's consciousness of itself the starting point of philosophical inquiry, and to consider the perceiver or thinker (rather than the object of perception or thought) as pre-eminently ‘the subject’ (see note at subject n. 9). This development more or less reversed the predominant philosophical meaning of subjective , and later of its correlative, objective (compare objective adj. 3). Since what is considered as belonging to the perceiving or thinking self is now called subjective , and what is considered as independent of the perceiving or thinking self is called in contrast objective , these changes amounted almost to an exchange of sense between the two adjectives. With sense A. 2 compare earlier subjectively adv.