hypostatize

present singular third person hypostatizes · participle present hypostatizing · participle past hypostatized · past hypostatized · alternative hypostatise

1. transitiveTo render into, or regard as, a separate and distinct substance; to construe a contextually-subjective and complex abstraction, idea, or concept as a universal object without regard to nuance or change in character.

   On the other hand, there were a few who could see no objective reality in anything but individuals, and looked upon both species and genera as hypostatized universals.

   1887 April, Thomas Henry Huxley, “Scientific and Pseudo-scientific Realism”, in Popular Science Monthly, volume 30

   1 more example

   Positivism, restricted to a programme of investigating observable particulars, cannot grasp the ‘self-formative process of man as process’. It hypostatizes the abstract concept of fact or datum.

   1980, David Held, Introduction to Critical Theory, University of California Press, →ISBN, page 172

2. transitiveTo attribute actual or personal existence to.

   Progressives are wrong to hypostatize their belief in mankind's eternal advance, and to disavow anything that does not fit this preordained vision.

   2005 February, Cardozo Law Review

   1 more example

   Roman Christianity is characterized by filial love and obedience expressed towards the fatherly authority hypostatized in the first Person of the Trinity […]

   2011, Paul Evdokimov, Orthodoxy