Topic summary
Formal object
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Hypostatic abstraction.
Technical definition
The distinction between particular objects and a formal object is noted by Anthony Kenny: we might identify any object as having a certain property to which we respond, but the formal object of that response is the property which we implicitly ascribe to the particular object by virtue of us having that response: thus if a certain red rose is "lovely", the rose has the property of loveliness, and this loveliness is the formal object of our aesthetic appreciation of the rose.