Absolute, The
A term employed in modern philosophy with various meanings, but applied generally speaking to the Supreme Being. It signifies (1) that which is complete and perfect; (2) that which exists by its own nature and is consequently independent of everything else; (3) that which is related to no other being; (4) the sum of all being, actual and potential (Hegel).
In the first and the second of these significations the Absolute is a name for God which Christian philosophy may readily accept. Though the term was not current in the Middle Ages, equivalent expressions were used by the Scholastic writers in speaking, e.g. of God as Pure Actuality (Actus Purus), as uncaused Being, or as containing pre-eminently every perfection. St. Thomas, in particular, emphasizes the absoluteness of God by, showing that he cannot be classed under any genus or species, and that His esseuce is identical with His existence. Aquinas also anticipates the difficulties which arise from the use of the term Absolute in the sense of unrelated being, and which are brought out quite clearly in modern discussions, notably in that between Mill, as critic of Sir William Hamilton’s philosophy, and Mansel as its defender. It was urged that the Absolute could not consistently be thought of or spoken of as First Cause, for the reason that causation implies relation, and the Absolute is outside of all relation; it cannot, therefore, be conceived as producing effects. St. Thomas, however, offered a solution. He holds that God and created things are related, but that the relation is real in the effects only. It implies no conditioning or modification of the Divine Being; it is in its application to, God merely conceptual. The fashion of our thought obliges us to conceive God as one term of a relation, but not to infer that the relation affects Him as it affects the created thing which is the other term. This distinction, moreover, is based on experience. The process of knowledge involves a relation between the known object and, the knowing subject, but the character of the relation is not the same in both terms. In the mind it is real because perception and thought imply the exercise of mental faciilties, and consequently a modification of the mind itself. No such modification, however, reaches the object; this is the same whether we perceive it or not.
Now it is just here that a more serious difficulty arises. It is claimed that the Absolute can neither be known nor conceived. “To think is to condition”; and as the Absolute is by its very nature unconditioned, no effort of thought can reach it. To say that God is the Absolute is equivalent to saying that He is unknowable. — This view, expressed by Hamilton and Mansel, and endorsed by Spencer in his “First Principles”, affords an apparently strong support to Agnosticism, while it assails both the reasonableness and the possibility of religion. It is only a partial reply to state that God, though incomprehensible, is nevertheless knowable according to the manner and capacity of our intelligence. The Agnostic contends that God, precisely because He is the Absolute, is beyond the range of any knowledge whatever on our part. Agnosticism, in other words, insists that we must believe in the existence of an absolute and infinite Being and at the same time warns us that we can have no idea of that Being. Our belief must express itself in terms that are meaningless. To avoid this conclusion one may reject altogether a term out of which all significance has evaporated; or (and this seems a wiser course) one may retrace the genesis of the term and hold fast to the items of knowledge, however imperfect and however in need of criticism, which that genesis involves. In proving the existence of God as First Cause, or as Absolute Being, we take as our starting-point facts that are knowable and known. So far as, in reasoning upon these facts, we are led beyond them to the concept of an Absolute, some remnant of the knowableness which facts present must be found in that whichis the ultimate explanation of the facts. If, as Spencer affirms, “every one of the arguments by which the relativity of our knowledge is demonstrated distinctly postulates the positive existence of something beyond the relative”, it follows that by getting clearly before our thought the meaning of those arguments and their force for distinctly postulating we must obtain some knowledge of the Being whose existence is thus established. Spencer, indeed, does not realize the full import of the words “positive existence”, “ultimate reality”, and “incomprehensible power”, which he uses so freely. Otherwise he could not consistently declare that the Being to which these various predicates apply is unknowable. It is in fact remarkable that so much knowledge of the Absolute is displayed in the attempt to prove that the Absolute cannot be known. Careful analysis of a concept like that of First Cause certainly shows that it contains a wealth of meaning which forbids its identification with the Unknowable, even supposing that the positive existence of the Unknowable could be logically demonstrated. Such an analysis is furnished by St. Thomas and by other representatives of Christian philosophy. The method which St. Thomas formulated, and which his successors adopted, keeps steadily in view the requirements of critical thinking, and especially the danger of applying the forms of our human knowledge, without due refinement, to the Divine Being. The warning against our anthropomorphic tendency was clearly given before the Absolute had taken its actual place in philosophic speculation, or had yielded that place to the Unknowable. While this warning is always needful, especially in the interest of religion, nothing can be gained by the attempt to form a concept of God which offers a mere negation to thought and to worship. It is of course equally futile to propose an unknowable Absolute as the basis of reconciliation between religion and science. The failure of Spencer’s philosophy in this respect is the more disastrous because, while it allows full scope to science in investigating the manifestations of the Absolute, it sets aside the claim of religion to learn anything of the power which is thus manifested. (See AGNOSTICISM, ASEITY, ANALOGY, GOD, KNOWLEDGE, THEOLOGY. For Hegel’s conception of the Absolute, see HEGELIANISM, IDEAISM, PANTHEISM.)
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SCHUMACHER, The Knowableness of God (Notre Dame, Indiana, 1905), contains good bibliography; ST. THOMAS, Summa, I, Q. xiii; Contra Gentes, II, 12, 13; HAMILTON, Discussions (New York, 1860); MILL, An Examination of Sir W. Hamilton’s Philosophy (Boston, 1865); MANSEL, The Philosophy of the Conditioned (London, 1866); CAIRD, An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion (Glasgow, 1901); ROYCE, The World and the Individual (New York, 1900); FLINT, Agnosticism (New York, 1903).
E.A. PACE
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume ICopyright © 1907 by Robert Appleton CompanyOnline Edition Copyright © 2003 by K. KnightNihil Obstat, March 1, 1907. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., CensorImprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York
Fuente: Catholic Encyclopedia
Absolute, The
(in Metaphysics) Most broadly, the terminus or ultimate referent of thought. The Unconditioned. The opposite of the Relative (Absolute). A distinction is to be made between the singular and generic use of the term.
A. While Nicholas of Cusa referred to God as “the absolute,” the noun form of this term came into common use through the writings of Schelling and Hegel. Its adoption spread in France through Cousin and in Britain through Hamilton. According to Kant the Ideas of Reason seek both the absolute totality of conditions and their absolutely unconditioned Ground. This Ground of the Real Fichte identified with the Absolute Ego (q.v.). For Schelling the Absolute is a primordial World Ground, a spiritual unity behind all logical and ontological oppositions, the self-differentiating source of both Mind and Nature. For Hegel, however, the Absolute is the All conceived as a timeless, perfect, organic whole of self-thinking Thought. In England the Absolute has occasionally been identified with the Real considered as unrelated or “unconditioned” and hence as the “Unknowable” (Mansel, H. Spencer). Until recently, however, it was commonly appropriated by the Absolute Idealists to connote with Hegel the complete, the whole, the perfect, i.e. the Real conceived as an all-embracing unity that complements, fulfills, or transmutes into a higher synthesis the partial, fragmentary, and “self-contradictory” experiences, thoughts, purposes, values, and achievements of finite existence. The specific emphasis given to this all-inclusive perfection varies considerably, i.e. logical wholeness or concreteness (Hegel), metaphysical completeness (Hamilton), mystical feeling (Bradley), aesthetic completeness (Bosanquet), moral perfection (Royce). The Absolute is also variously conceived by this school as an all-inclusive Person, a Society of persons, and as an impersonal whole of Experience.
More recently the term has been extended to mean also (a) the All or totality of the real, however understood, and (b) the World Ground, whether conceived idealistically or materialistically, whether pantheistically, theistically, or dualistically. It thus stands for a variety of metaphysical conceptions that have appeared widely and under various names in the history of philosophy.
In Chinathe Wu Chi (Non-Being), T’ai Chi (Being), and, on occasion, Tao. In Indiathe Vedantic Atman (Self) and Brahman (the Real), the Buddhist Bhutatathata (indeterminate Thatness), Vignaptimatra (the One, pure, changeless, eternal consciousness grounding all appearances), and the Void of Nagarjuna.
In Greecethe cosmic matrix of the Ionians, the One of the Eleatics, the Being or Good of Plato, the World Reason of Stoicism, the One of Neo-Platonism.
In patristic and scholastic Christianitythe creator God, the Ens Realissimum, Ens Perfectissimum, Sui Causa, and the God of mysticism generally (Erigena, Hugo of St. Victor, Cusa, Boehme, Bruno).
In modern thoughtthe Substance of Descartes and Spinoza, the God of Malebranche and Berkeley, the Energy of materialism, the Space-Time of realism, the Pure Experience of phenomenalism, the ding-an-sich (q.v.) of Kant.
B. Generically “an absolute” or “the absolute” (pl. “absolutes”) means
the real (thing-in-itself) as opposed to appearance;
substance, the substantival, reals (possessing aseity or self-existence) as opposed to relations;
the perfect, non-comparative, complete of its kind;
the primordial or uncaused;
the independent or autonomous.
Logic.
Aristotelian logic involves such absolutes as the three laws of thought and changeless, objectively real classes or species,
In Kantian logic the categories and principles of judgment are absolutes, i.e. a priori, while the Ideas of reason seek absolute totality and unity,
In the organic or metaphysical logic of the Hegelian school, the Absolute is considered the ultimate terminus, referent, or subject of every judgment.
Ethics and Axiology. Moral and axiological identified with the Real values, norms, principles, maxims, laws are considered absolutes when universally valid objects of acknowledgment, whether conditionally or unconditionally (e.g. the law of the best possible, the utilitarian greatest happiness principle, the Kantian categorical imperative).
Aesthetics. Aesthetic absolutes are standards, norms, principles of aesthetic taste considered as objective, i.e. universally valid. — W.L.