The Absolute (from lat. absolutum, “the detached”) is a term used in many areas of theology and philosophy to denote the complete detachment from all (restricting) conditions or relationships; in the philosophical tradition the term is closely related to the unconditional.
19th century idealists from Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) to Francis Herbert Bradley (1846-1924) – unlike the earlier 18th century idealist George Berkeley (1685-1753) – were heavily influenced by Immanuel Kant (1724-1804).
Kant insisted that there are limits to what we can, in principle, know about reality, and that we necessarily look at the world in certain ways only; for example in terms of substance and cause.
These idealists concluded that the world as we see it is somehow derivative, apparent, relative, incomplete, and even contradictory. They used ‘the absolute’ as a term for reality as it really is, free from these limitations but unknowable by us. Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) and the Greek philosopher Parmenides (early 5th century BC) have been seen as forerunners of this doctrine.
Also see: eleaticism.
For absolute idealism see: objective idealism.
Source: A Quinton, Absolute Idealism (1972); reprint of Dawes Hicks lecture at British Academy in 1971.
Table of Contents
The Absolute in the Western tradition
Antiquity and Middle Ages
Even if an exact equivalent for the expression of the absolute was missing in Greek philosophy, the universal conditionality of all being (contingency) led to the conclusion that there was a supreme condition that was itself not again conditioned: the pre-Socratics already asked about the arché, an origin of things that could no longer be traced back to anything else. According to Plato, this is to be determined as the highest goodness, because only in it, a last will to be for the sake of being, which is the true unconditional, the anhypotheton, can be thought of (Politeia 511b). The good is the ultimate reason of all things and of all knowledge and the highest goal of striving.
Occasionally God is already determined by the Church Fathers (Tertullian, Jerome) as the “highest good” with the predicate “absolute” (lat. absolutum). From Anselm of Canterbury (Monologion) onwards it was directly equated with God. He says of the divinely substantial spirit that only he is absolute (qui solus absolutus est, Monologion 28). Only in Nicolaus von Cues is the Absolute consciously addressed and introduced as a metaphysical basic category.
In scholasticism the teaching of the Absolute is strongly developed within the framework of Natural Theology, especially by Thomas Aquinas.
Modern Times
Spinoza
Fundamental to the history of the concept of the Absolute is Spinoza’s philosophy, to whose concept of God numerous philosophers of modern times have tied in with it in a positive or negative attitude (e.g. Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, Moses Mendelssohn, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Immanuel Kant, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Franz von Baader, Søren Kierkegaard).
In the first part of Spinoza’s Ethics (De Deo), Spinoza defines God as the absolute, unlimited substance (ens absolute infinitum, hoc est, substantiam), which is characterized by unconditional power (absolute potentiam) and “unconditional existence” (absolute existit). Furthermore, the absolute is “infinite” and “indivisible” (absolute infinita est indivisibilis) and the unconditional first cause (absolute causam primam).out of God flows everything (omnia necessario effluxisse) as unconditionally determined and dependent (omnia ex necessitate divinae naturae determinata sunt), and nothing (res nulla) in nature could become other than it is.
Kant
In the Critique of Pure Reason Kant defines the absolute as the unconditional in knowledge. In Transcendental Analysis, he attempts to prove that no unconditional thing in knowledge can be achieved through the concepts of understanding (categories). Kant explains that reason strives to “summarize all acts of understanding into an absolute whole” (KrV B 383). This is what Kant calls the concepts of reason or the transcendental ideas. They are to enable “the absolute (unconditional) unity of the thinking subject”, “the absolute unity of the series of conditions of appearance” and “the absolute unity of the conditions of all objects of thinking in general” (KrV B 391). The “objective” use (cf. KrV B 383) of these three transcendental ideas leads to irresolvable contradictions. Thus, for theoretical reason, the absolute is a “regulative principle” for the purpose of “the systematic unity of the world of senses” (KrV B 707) In the Critique of Practical Reason, Kant defines the unconditional as the determining factor of will that is given in moral law. There it is a regulative idea to bring together morality and bliss, which for Kant represents the “highest good” (KpV, 5, 108).
Schelling
For Schelling, the absolute represents the core concept of his philosophy. In his early writing Vom Ich als Princip der Philosophie oder über das Unbedingte im Menschen Wissen (1795), which was influenced by Kant and Fichte, he understands it to be the “last real ground of our knowledge”, which he, like Fichte, locates in the “absolute I” (SW V, p. 160) and sets identically with God. The knowledge of the Absolute is thereby not possible in theoretical philosophy, but only in “practical approach to the Absolute”.
With the Philosophical Letters on Dogmatism and Criticism and the formation of the philosophy of identity, in which Schelling seeks to unite the philosophy of Kant and Spinoza, he defines the Absolute as the “absolute identity” of cognition and being.the world is originally divided with God, but this can be reversed and brought to a higher level through speculation.the “final intention of history” is the “completed reconciliation and re-dissolution into the Absolute”.
In the philosophy of identity the Absolute is recognized in the “intellectual view”, which is the common source for the two basic sciences of philosophy, natural and transcendental philosophy.Transcendental philosophy has “to subordinate the real to the ideal”; natural philosophy, “to explain the ideal from the real”. For Schelling, art is the representation “of the forms of things […] as they are in the Absolute”. It eliminates the “infinite division” in “aesthetic production”.
The absolute nothing of the Kyōto school
In contrast to the occidental tradition of the Absolute in ontology as Absolute Being, the Absolute in the philosophy of the Kyōto school was conceived as Absolute Nothing (絶対無, zettai-mu). The thoughts formulated by Nishida Kitarō, Tanabe Hajime, Nishitani Keiji and other representatives of the Kyōto-school subsequently gave impetus to a religion-philosophical approach of the Christian-Buddhist dialogue that relied on the Buddhist topoi of emptiness resp. non-substantiality of all being (Shunyata) and non-self (Anatta) on the one hand and on the other hand on Christian mysticism (as with Meister Eckhart) and the tradition of negative theology.
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