We explain what a notion is, what meaning the term has in various philosophical schools and examples of its use with different meanings.
What is a notion?
a notion It is, in a very broad sense, a definition or idea of something . It is a word with a very diffuse meaning, which oscillates between the vague idea of a subject and the formal concept of a topic or thing. It comes from the Latin word news either notionistranslatable as “knowledge” or “idea”, since it derives from the verb noscere (“know”).
In most cases, when the word “notion” is used, it refers imprecisely to a basic or elementary concept that one has about a topic, or also to the specific way in which an author or school of thought puts forward a set of ideas or associations. For example:
- “My father doesn't have the slightest notion about how I'm doing at school”, it means that the father does not know how his son is doing at school.
- “Freedom is a notion key to democracy”, means that freedom is a key concept, a central or supremely important element for life in a democratic system.
- “The exam will address the notion of “surplus value” according to Marx”, means that in the exam the questions will revolve around the concept of “surplus value” as defined in the work of the philosopher Karl Marx.
- “The speaker lost the notion of time”, means that the speaker was so absorbed in his speech that he did not notice how long he had been speaking; but this is stated through a figurative sense: the speaker took so long that he seemed to forget what time meant.
The term “notion” also It was used by different philosophical schools to refer to innate ideas prior to empirical concepts. It is a lost concept in current philosophy, but it was very important in the times of the opposition between rationalism and empiricism (Baruch Spinoza and Gottfried Leibniz).
They can be considered synonyms of notion: “concept”, “idea”, “sense”, “knowledge” or “know”, although there are technical differences between most of these terms.
References
- “Notion” in Wikipedia.
- “Notion” in the Language Dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy.
- “Etymology of Notion” in the Online Spanish Etymological Dictionary.
- “Notion” in Wiktionary.
