ABSOLUTE (ante). Hegel, Cousin, and others use absolute as self-existent or "being" in itself, which is the primitive in thought, the ultimate in science, and the object of immediate intuition; or the infinite, recognized solely as pure being. But the knowledge of an absolute has been held impossible, on the ground that knowing is in itself a rela tion between a subject and an object ; what is known only in relation to a mind cannot be known as absolute. It is therefore said, of an absolute there is no knowledge: first, because to be known a thing must be consciously discriminated from other things; second, because it can be known only in relation with a knowing mind. Discussion of the abso lute raises the controversy whether the pure, unconditioned absolute "being" held to by Cousin and some German specialists is real, living being or God, or only a logical abstrac tion. Gioberti maintains that as the terms used are abstract, the idea they evolve can be only a logical deduction by the mind operating upon its own conception, regardless of space, time, or conditions; that, therefore, the absolute is no real being, but a generaliza tion of physical phenomena, and as far removed from the real and necessary being of the schooltuan, from the real, living God, in whom men believe, as nothing is from being something. , Kant, while denying, the absolute or unconditioned, as an object of knowl
edge, leaves it conceivable as an idea regulative of the mind's intellectual experience. It is against any such absolute—whether real o; conceivable—that Sir William Hamilton and Rev. Henry Mansell have taken ground, the Raver in his review of Cousin's " Philos ophy," and the latter in lectures on religious thought. This, however, is strongly con troverted.