dephilosophize

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Verb edit

dephilosophize (third-person singular simple present dephilosophizes, present participle dephilosophizing, simple past and past participle dephilosophized)

To remove philosophy (from): to replace abstract models with objective observation and concrete description.
- 1984, Kathleen M. Wheeler, German Aesthetic and Literary Criticism:
  If we dephilosophize the sciences - what is left - earth, air, and water.
- 1995, Peter Augustine Lawler, A Question of Values: Johan Galtung's Peace Research, page 56:
  Furthermore, there has been a historical tendency in medicine to "dephilosophize" and shift from "armchair speculation" to the discovery of “a web of invariances that form the basis for today's control of Somatic man.".
- 2004, Richard Franklin Sigurdson, Jacob Burckhardt's Social and Political Thought, page 123:
  By viewing his task in this way, as John Hinde puts it, 'Burckhardt was not just trying to dephilosophize history; he wanted to aestheticize it in order to capture the whole of human society and history as an aesthetic product in which art and free spiritual creativity have world-making significance.'
To make or become unphilosophical.
- 1872 November, Shadworth H. Hodgson, “The Future of Metaphysic”, in The Contemporary Review, volume 20, page 831:
  Opinion again, while improved, interesting as it may be to its holders, has no special interest for philosophy; to press philosophy into its service is to dephilosophize it.
- 1963, The Atlantic Monthly - Volume 212, page 71:
  Philosopher, dephilosophize yourself, and then take off your clothes. Oh, God, what self-esteem, what ignorance, what malice, what shrunken thinking, and all in one person!
- 1973, Vernon W. Gras, European literary theory and practice, page 266:
  They have helped me to "dephilosophize," to shun the allures of culture and to place myself on the margin of convictions acquired through long philosophical inquiry on the subject of scientific thinking.
- 2009, John Mullarkey, Refractions of reality: philosophy and the moving image, page 214:
  To dephilosophize or unphilosophize, to embrace the insult of being 'unphilosophical' as one's own, because the alternative of being recognized as 'proper' comes at the cost of also being a cliche.