ABSOLUTE. — The word is derived from the Latin *absolutus*, which, in part of its meaning, corresponds to the Greek terms δᾶς and τᾶς, and assumes now one, now the other of the two senses—though connected—of this participle: freed or completed. *Absolute* is that which is independent of every condition, relation, or impediment; thus in philosophy one speaks of absolute truth, i.e., independent of every condition of time, place, or person, and therefore universal and necessary. But *absolute* is also that which is complete, as in absolute perfection or an absolute change. The two senses often interpenetrate; indeed, in modern thought *absolute* is used technically to signify the supreme principle, at once perfect and independent—God or that which is put in God’s place.
Modern scholastics distinguish two degrees of the absolute; they often speak of absolute truth, absolute principles, absolute nature, even in the realm of creation; but in doing so they intend only to exclude certain specific dependencies indicated by usage or context. Such an absolute, however, is not independent of the First Cause; indeed, the very requirement that these created absolutes depend on an uncreated absolute provides an argument adopted by many to demonstrate the existence of God, according to the affirmation of St. Thomas that the so-called eternal notions (i.e., the absolutes) are not themselves eternal but are founded in an eternal principle (*Contra Gent.*, II, 84). This principle is the absolute in the highest degree, truly freed from every dependence or limitation, perfect and infinite, and therefore transcendent and personal.
Against the existence of the absolute, it is usual to raise this objection: we cannot think or affirm the absolute without relating it to ourselves and measuring it by the capacity of our intellect, thus conditioning II. We cannot therefore affirm the absolute. But it is not difficult to see in this argument a fundamental defect: it proves nothing against the existence of the absolute but only demonstrates the imperfection of our knowledge of it; nor does it prove that this imperfection is irremediable or that God cannot, supernaturally, unite Himself to our intellect without any intermediary. It is true only that in our present condition we know the absolute only through reasoning and concepts drawn from the experience of the sensible world and our spiritual acts. This does not, however, remove the possibility of a rigorous demonstration of the existence of the absolute and hence of a knowledge—certainly imperfect and only analogous—yet real and in some way positive—of its nature. Even Hamilton, who starts from the principle that “to know is to condition,” since conditional limitation is the fundamental law of the possibility of thought, does not deny the possibility of the absolute. He acknowledges that the Unconditioned implies no intrinsic contradiction. On its forms, Mansel affirms that the knowledge of the Unconditioned accessible to the human mind is only negative. For both thinkers, the concrete inconceivability of the absolute in no way prejudices its existence: faith is called to supplement, and indeed to supply, reason on this point. The thought of Hamilton and Mansel influenced the Spencerian conception of the Unconditioned.
A deeper difficulty has led some—among whom not a few include Aristotle—to deny the absolute, precisely because of its absoluteness, any relation to other beings: it does not create them, know them, or love them. Otherwise, it would lose its independence as the subject of relative acts and its perfection, since it would no longer be immutable. To this it is replied that the relation existing in created beings toward God as their First Cause is not necessarily reciprocal. The world is indeed dependent on God, from whom it receives being, movement, and direction, but it does not follow that God depends on the world in any way. From His wholly immanent action, He receives no perfection and no change. The infinite dominion of God over being ensures that, as He wills, the universe exists and moves outside Him without any alteration to the infinite act of His being.
Post-Kantian idealists have often given the supreme principle the name of the absolute, striving, however, to unite it more intimately with the universe. Thus they have constructed radically pantheistic systems in which every effort is made to achieve the impossible identification of the finite with the infinite. Fichte conceives the absolute as an impersonal I that expresses itself in the various individuals living in history. Schelling and Hegel, more clearly still, admit no other reality than that of the world of experience in which the intelligible world becomes concrete. Schelling conceives the absolute as the indifferent unity of opposites and strives to derive from it nature, man, and history. In Hegel, the absolute is the Idea that unfolds in a dialectical process according to a traditional rhythm. The final triad of the Hegelian system constitutes the absolute spirit, in the strict sense, which is realized as art (thesis), religion (antithesis), philosophy (synthesis of objectivity and subjectivity, the unity of art and religion). The Idea, eternal and subsisting in and for itself, eternally actualizes, creates, and enjoys itself as absolute spirit (*Enc.*, § 577). These systems, which no one now accepts in their entirety, have left their mark in various forms of later idealism. Their incurable weakness lies in this: that, despite every spiritualistic premise and claim, they end by reducing, in fact, all reality to that of the mutable and finite universe—of nature and history—whose rational explanation they fail to provide, arriving at the enormity, of which V. Delbos spoke, “of a deduction that is prepared and of a creation that is effected in the unconscious and by the unconscious” (*Figures et Doctrines de philosophie*, 10th ed., Paris 1918, p. 259).
The problem of the absolute has been taken up again particularly by Anglo-American idealism, which, even with acute philosophers like Josiah Royce, does not arrive at a truly positive and exhaustive solution.
In Trinitarian theology, the absolute signifies one of the predicates admitted in God, namely substance, the other being relation. Precisely because relation, by its nature, does not posit anything absolute, it is not impossible that each of the three relations subsisting in God be really identical with the divine substance or essence, and yet really distinct from the other relations to which it stands opposed in the relative order (*V. TRINITY*).
CARLO BOYER