Subject and Object

A pair of categories in philosophy that denote the practitioner, the knower, and the object of practice and knowledge in practical and cognitive activity. A subject is a person who is engaged in practical and cognitive activity. Objects are things that enter the sphere of human practical and cognitive activity, i.e., objects of the practical and cognitive activity of the subject.

The question concerning the relation of subject and object is an important question of epistemology, an important manifestation of the basic question of philosophy in epistemology. Starting out from the determination of matter by spirit and of being by thinking, idealism resolved the subject of knowledge into a mental being. Abandoning practice and social relations, old materialism conceived the subject as an isolated individual, and knowledge as a passive contemplation of objective things. Marxism understands the subject, the object and their relationship based on the scientific conception of practice, and of the history of society.

Social practices such as productive labor divide the unified material world into subject and object and also connect the two together. The subject is the person who is engaged in practical and cognitive activity in a certain social relation. The subject has materiality, sociality, consciousness, practicality and other features. The subject is the person who exists and develops in nature as a material substance. It has consciousness, but it does not merely resolve itself into human spirit or consciousness. The subject is not an isolated individual, but a real individual as the ensemble of certain social relations. The subject is the unity of individual and society, including individual subjects and various group subjects of different nature and level. Real individuals forge certain social relations in which they consciously engage in practical and cognitive activity.

The object is the object of the practical and cognitive activity, and, as objective things that enter the subject’s scope of practical and cognitive activity, the object is constantly expanding with the development of the history of society. The object is, in the last instance, the material world, it is an objective being that does not depend on the will of the subject. Objectivity is the fundamental attribute of the object. But the unified material world includes the phenomenon of consciousness, and the object also includes spiritual objects. The object includes nature and society, as well as man himself. Man is both a subject and can become an object.

Subject and object form a relation based on practice that is both opposite and unified. Practice is the activity in which the subject dynamically changes the object to make it appropriate to the needs of the subject, but the practical activity of the subject is conditioned by the nature and the laws of the object and can only succeed if it conforms to them. The subject’s own abilities also change and develop in the process of practice by the action of the object. Knowledge is the subject’s sensations and ideas formed by the action of the object on the subject’s senses, but the subject is active and dynamic in the cognitive activity rather than passive and reactive. Practice and knowledge are an interaction between the subject and the object, both are initiated by the subject, and both are conditioned by the object. Both subject and object change and develop in this interaction.