Blackwell Reference Online

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[absolutus, Absolut] see also antinomy, cosmology, freedom, god‘Absolute’ is the past participle of absolvere ‘to absolve, to acquit, to free from debt’. The term can be used adjectivally or substantively: it either qualifies something as free from any relation, condition or limitation, or designates that which is thus free. The philosophical use of the term is modern, appearing first in Spinoza where it echoes political discussions of ‘absolute sovereignty’ and theological discussions of God as absolute. Spinoza's use of the term is adjectival, as in ‘absolute certainty’, ‘absolute motion’, the ‘absolute dominion of the mind over the affects’ (see Deleuze, 1988, p. 44). Even God is only adjectivally qualified as absolute, and is defined in Ethics I def. 6 (1677) as ‘a being absolutely infinite’ (Spinoza, 1985, p. 409; see also pp. 237, 264, 595).Kant too uses the term adjectivally, and usually in opposition to ‘relative’ and ‘comparative’. His earliest recorded use appears in the distinction between absolute and relative position in OPA. In CPR he devotes over two pages to clarifying ‘an expression with which we cannot dispense, and which yet, owing to an ambiguity that attaches to it through longstanding misuse, we also cannot with safety employ.’ (A 324/B 380). The ambiguity involves two adjectival senses of absolute. The first refers to internal possibility – ‘that which is ... log in or subscribe to read full text