A PRIORI • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of A priori

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A priori phr.

(Logic) Characterizing that kind of reasoning which deduces consequences from definitions formed, or principles assumed, or which infers effects from causes previously known; deductive or deductively. The reverse of a posteriori.

(Philos.) Applied to knowledge and conceptions assumed, or presupposed, as prior to experience, in order to make experience rational or possible. "A priori, that is, form these necessities of the mind or forms of thinking, which, though first revealed to us by experience, must yet have preexisted in order to make experience possible."

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Etymology of 'Priori'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"A priori" Quotes from Famous Books

... of any value for practice can be arrived at by direct experience. All true political science is, in one sense of the phrase, a priori, being deduced from the tendencies of things, tendencies known either through our general experience of human nature, or as the result of an analysis of the course of history, considered as a progressive evolution.—MILL, ...

— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton

... world. He at any rate would not lie to himself. He was more than Byronic now: not the spiritual rebel, Don Juan; not the philosophical rebel, Faust; but a new psychological rebel of his own century—defying the sentimental a priori forms ...

— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... the idea that Paolina, almost as a matter of course, was at least biassed in her acceptance of his love by a consideration of the material advantages she would gain by it. It was the natural thing then, the thing a priori to be expected, that a girl in Paolina's position should be so influenced. Ludovico would fain have questioned and cross-questioned La Bianca, his experienced monitress, a little more on ...

— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope

... a valuable anecdote, for it proves, what might have been concluded 'a priori', that Bunyan was a man of too much genius to be a fanatic. No two qualities are more contrary than genius and fanaticism. Enthusiasm, indeed, [Greek: o theos en haemin], is almost a synonyme of genius; the moral life in the intellectual light, the will in the reason; and without it, says ...

— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge

... 5. But from within (a priori) no human wisdom has been able to conceive what God is in himself, or in his internal essence. Neither can anyone know or give information of it except it be revealed to him by the Holy Spirit. For no one knoweth, as Paul says (1 Cor 2, 11), the things of man save ...

— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther

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