ABSOLUTE. — A word derived from the Latin “absolutus,” which corresponds, in part of its meaning, to the Greek terms δλος and τέλειος, and now assumes one or the other of the two, otherwise connected, senses of this participle: released or completed. A. is that which is independent of every condition, relation, or impediment; thus, in philosophy, one speaks of absolute truth, that is, independent of every condition of time, place, or person, and therefore universal and necessary. But a. is also that which is complete, as in absolute perfection or an absolute change. The two senses often interpenetrate; indeed, in modern thought a. 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 a.: they commonly speak of absolute truth, absolute principles, and absolute nature, even in the realm of creation; but in so speaking they intend only to exclude certain determinate dependencies indicated by usage or context. Such a. is not, however, independent of the first cause; indeed, the requirement that these created a. depend upon an uncreated a. provides an argument adopted by many to demonstrate the existence of God, according to the statement of St. Thomas that the notions called eternal (that is, absolute) are not themselves eternal, but are founded upon an eternal principle (Contra Gent., II, 84). This principle is the a. in the supreme degree, truly released from every dependence or limitation, perfect and infinite, and therefore transcendent and personal.
The following objection is usually raised against the existence of the a.: we cannot think of and affirm the a. without placing it in relation to ourselves and without measuring it against the capacity of our intellect, and thus conditioning II. We cannot, therefore, affirm the a. But it is not difficult to discern a fundamental flaw in this argument: it proves nothing against the existence of the a., but merely demonstrates the imperfection of the knowledge we possess of it; nor does it demonstrate that such 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 a. solely through arguments and concepts drawn from experience of the sensible world and of our spiritual acts. This, moreover, does not remove the possibility of a rigorous demonstration of the existence of the a. and therefore of a knowledge—certainly deficient and merely analogous, but real and in some way positive—of its nature. Hamilton too, who begins from the principle that “to know is to condition,” insofar as conditional limitation is the fundamental law governing the possibility of thought, does not at all deny the possibility of the a. He acknowledges that the Unconditioned implies no intrinsic contradiction. Following in his footsteps, Mansel asserts that the knowledge of the Unconditioned accessible to the human mind is merely negative. For both thinkers, the concrete inconceivability of the a. in no way prejudices its existence: faith is called upon, in this matter, to complete and perhaps even to supplement reason. The thought of Hamilton and Mansel influenced Spencer’s conception of the Unknowable.
A deeper difficulty led some, among whom not a few place Aristotle, to deny to the a., precisely because of its absoluteness, every relation with other beings: it did not create them, does not know them, and does not love them. Otherwise it would lose its independence, as the subject of relative acts, and its perfection, since it would no longer be immutable. The response is that the relation existing in created beings toward God as their first cause is not necessarily reciprocal. The world is indeed dependent upon God, from whom it receives being, movement, and direction, but it does not follow that God depends upon the world in any way. From his wholly immanent action, he receives neither perfection nor change. God’s infinite dominion over being means that, as he pleases, the universe outside him exists and moves, without any change altering the infinite act of his being.
Post-Kantian idealists have often given the supreme principle the name a., while striving to unite it more intimately with the universe. They thus constructed radically pantheistic systems, in which every effort is made toward the impossible identification of the finite with the infinite. Fichte conceives the absolute I, impersonal, which expresses itself in the various individuals living in history. Schelling and Hegel, still more clearly, admit no reality other than that of the world of experience, in which the intelligible world becomes concrete. Schelling conceives the a. as the indifferential unity of opposites and strives to make nature, man, and history flow from II. In Hegel, the a. is the Idea unfolding in a dialectical process according to a triadic rhythm. The final triad of the Hegelian system constitutes the absolute spirit, stricto sensu, which is realized as art (thesis), religion (antithesis), and philosophy (synthesis of objectivity and subjectivity, unity of art and religion). The Idea, eternal and subsisting in and for itself, actualizes, creates, and eternally enjoys itself as absolute spirit (Enc., § 577). Those systems, which no one any longer accepts in their entirety, have left substantial parts of themselves in the various forms of later idealism. Their incurable weakness lies in the fact that, despite every spiritualistic premise and claim, they end by resolving, in practice, every reality into that of the mutable and finite universe, of nature and history, for which they cannot provide a rational explanation, and arrive at the enormity of which V. Delbos spoke, “of the deduction that prepares itself and of the creation that takes place in the unconscious and of the unconscious” (Figures et Doctrines de philosophie, 10th ed., Paris 1918, p. 259).
The problem of the a. was taken up particularly by Anglo-American idealism, which does not arrive, not even with the penetrating philosophical speculations of Josiah Royce, at a truly positive and exhaustive solution.
In Trinitarian theology, the a. signifies one of the categories admitted in God, namely substance, the other being relation. Precisely because relation by its nature posits nothing a., it does not appear impossible that each of the three relations subsisting in God should 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. TRINITARI).