The Absolute

Is there absolute reality?  Where do we get the idea of unity?  Does our knowledge of the world depend on the absolute for its coherence and integrity?

The absolute, it will be recalled in the Attributes of God section, is that which is perfect, complete; not mixed, pure, unrestricted, without conditions.

It is amazing that we know there is a universe: one entity containing hundreds of billions of disparate stars and galaxies. For by

observation, what we see are a multiplicity of phenomena, nowhere is it evident that this multiplicity can or should be one.

Indeed, the idea of unity extends to the smallest facets of reality. One

looks at a plant in a room that has many leaves and stems, and yet one knows it is one plant. From whence does one get the idea that it is one plant? Certainly not by looking at it - looking at the plant, what one sees is a mass of leaves, something else comes to one's aid to "pull it all together," so to speak. Abraham Heschel said it best:

"From the empirical plurality of facts and values, we could not infer one design which would dominate both the realm of facts and the realm of norms, nature and history. It is only in the mirror of [metaphysical] unity, in which we may behold the unity of all..."

Thus, it is an unconditioned dimension which informs our comprehension of the conditioned nature of reality. Absolute reality, in fact, is the measure of all conditioned reality, and the idea of unity is indeed a metaphysical one, since the idea of unity cannot be inferred from a disparate reality. This evidence of the unconditional element is an attribute of what would be God's absolute nature.

The absolute element is also evidenced as the "truth-itself" as the norm for all approximations of truth.  Centuries ago, Augustine showed that the most hard-boiled skeptic acknowledges the absolute element in truth in his denial of the possibility of a true judgment.  The very claim that there are absolutely no true judgments is itself a claim to an absolute, namely that there are absolutely no absolutes.

An infinite and absolute dimension is an inescapable and irrefutable element in the structure of reason and reality.  Finitude, and everything within it, including being and concepts like knowledge and truth and meaning, all have an infinite depth and absolute ground.  This realization of the rich infinity that surrounds us, of the inexhaustible depth of that which structures us, makes this realization a very powerful one indeed.  

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Notes

• unity of all: p. 108

• true judgment:  p. 207

• inescapable:  p. 208

Resources

• Big Bang:  discussion of the absolute in the context of time.  

• Absolute Truth: a definitional and comparative analysis of the absolute in religious terms.

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