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The Absolute is the concept of an unconditional reality which transcends limited, conditional, everyday existence. It is often used as an alternate term for "God" or "the Divine", especially, but by no means exclusively, by those who feel that the term "God" lends itself too easily to anthropomorphic presumptions. The concept of The Absolute may or may not (depending on one's specific doctrine) possess discrete will, intelligence, awareness or even a personal nature. It contrasts with finite things, considered individually, and known collectively as the relative.
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Examples of religions and philosophies which embrace the concept of the Absolute in one form or another include Hinduism, Jainism, Taoism, and existential or metaphysical forms of Christianity. Terms which serve to identify The Absolute among such beliefs include the Tao (the Way), Brahman (Universal Spirit), Universal Mind[citation needed], Universal Intelligence, and numerous other appellations.
The human vital essence - soul, spirit, spark of awareness, is said to have originally derived in each case from the Absolute, and to be indestructible after the nature of the Absolute, and to be capable of returning to its source. This returning is the goal of those Eastern religions that have such a concept.
The general commonalities between the various versions of the Absolute are: infinity, indescribability, formlessness, transcendence and immanence. An additional commonality is that one must renounce and/or transcend physical existence and its distractions, in some cases even to the point of extinguishing identity and individual awareness, in order to understand or co-exist with the Absolute. Uniformly, human passions and vices are regarded as barriers to spiritual advancement, and such virtues as humility, charity and righteousness or pacifism are felt to help pave the way to enlightenment.
Parallels may be drawn between such traditions and Judeo-Christian-Islamic monotheistic (i.e., Abrahamic) thought. The concept is of a universal subconsciousness, undivided and incapable of being depicted through gods or icons, parent to the individual souls of men, and to which men strive to return. This sought-after return is impaired by evil thought and deed, and facilitated by altruism. In addition, the traditions share a general value system that discourages worldliness and encourages seeking higher, more intangible principles, such as righteousness, justice, and good deeds done for their own sake.
Where basic divisions begin to appear between Eastern and Western spiritual traditions with regard to the Absolute, is in the separation of Godhead from God, and in the separation of Godhead from creation, nature, and the souls of men themselves. Eastern thought does the former (Western rarely defines 'Godhead' or obscures it,) but not always the latter, which Western spirituality often does.
Roughly, the Absolute may be distinguished from the following concepts, although there is debate of the synonymity between them:
However, rather than distinguishing from the relative, the thing in itself is used to distinguish an actual object from phenomenon (the appearance of things-in-themselves to the senses).
Heraclitus concerned himself with the knowable portion of the Absolute with his Logos. Plotinus, a Neo-Platonic philosopher, saw all forms of existence as emanating from 'The One'. The one or monad via Plotinus being as a non-sentient power or force. The concept of the Absolute was re-introduced into philosophy by Hegel, Schelling, and their followers; it is associated with various forms of philosophical idealism. the Absolute, either under that name, or as the "Ground of Being", or some similar concept, also figures in several of the attempted proofs of the existence of God, particularly the ontological argument and the cosmological argument.
The concept was adopted into neo-Hegelian British idealism (though without Hegel's complex logical and dialectical apparatus), where it received an almost mystical exposition at the hands of F.H. Bradley. Bradley (followed by others including Timothy L.S. Sprigge) conceived the Absolute as a single all-encompassing experience, rather along the lines of Shankara and Advaita Vedanta. Likewise, Josiah Royce in the United States conceived the Absolute as a unitary Knower Whose experience constitutes what we know as the "external" world.
The mathematician Georg Cantor equated the mathematical concept of the Absolute Infinite with God.[2]
Recently, certain philosophers have attempted to reconceive Christianity as a Gnostic religion (see Mary Magdalene). Here "the Absolute" is referred to as "the All".[citation needed]
However, the concept need not be taken to imply a universal unitary consciousness. American philosopher Brand Blanshard, for example, conceived the Absolute as a single overarching intelligible system but declined to characterize it in terms of consciousness or experience.
Kant questioned whether the absolute can be thought.
People have always spoken of the absolutely necessary (absolutnotwendigen) being, and have taken pains, not so much to understand whether and how a thing of this kind can even be thought, but rather to prove its existence.... if by means of the word unconditioned I dismiss all the conditions that the understanding always requires in order to regard something as necessary, this does not come close to enabling me to understand whether I then still think something through a concept of an unconditionally necessary being, or perhaps think nothing at all through it.
– Critique of Pure Reason, A593
Nietzsche criticized Hegel's claims about the non–relative Absolute .
Words are but symbols for the relations of things to one another and to us; nowhere do they touch upon absolute truth. ... Thus it is, today, after Kant, an audacious ignorance if here and there, especially among badly informed theologians who like to play philosopher, the task of philosophy is represented as being quite certainly "comprehending the Absolute with the consciousness," somewhat completely in the form "the Absolute is already present, how could it be sought somewhere else?" as Hegel has expressed it.
