出典(authority):フリー百科事典『ウィキペディア(Wikipedia)』「2016/03/22 23:37:46」(JST)
In religious philosophy, the Absolute is the concept of (a form of) Being which transcends limited, conditional, everyday existence. The manifestation of the Absolute has been described as the Logos, Word, the Ṛta or Ratio (Latin for "reason").
Related concepts are the Source, Fountain or Well, the Centre, the Monad or One, the All or Whole, the Origin (Arche) or Principle or Primordial Cause, the Sacred or Holy or Utterly Other (Otto), the Form of the Good (Plato), the Mystery, Nirvana, the Ultimate, the Ground or Urground ("Original Ground").[citation needed]
It is sometimes used as an alternate term for the more commonly used God of the Universe, the Divine or the Supreme Being ("Utmost Being"), especially, but by no means exclusively, to express it in less personal and more impersonal representations. The concept of the Absolute may or may not (depending on one's specific doctrine) possess discrete will, intelligence, awareness, or a personal nature. It is sometimes conceived of as the source through which all being emanates. It contrasts with finite things, considered individually, and known collectively as the relative. This is reflected in the name's Latin etymology absolūtus which means "loosened from" or "unattached" (from a subject-object dualism).
The Absolute has been known by different names and conceptions in all the major religious cultures of the world, both historically and contemporarily.[citation needed] It was called Anu or Dingir among the Sumerians; Amun ("The Hidden") or Netjer in the theology of Ancient Egypt; *Dyeus Phiter ("Luminous Creator") among the early Indo-Europeans and later as Deus Pater, Deus Ignotus ("Unknowable God") or Deus Incognitus ("Unconceivable God") in the theology of Ancient Rome and other Indo-European branches; Zeus or Deos in Greek religion, and as an abstract concept the Arche (Origin), to En (the One) or the Monad in Hellenistic philosophy.[citation needed]
The human vital essence - soul, spirit, spark of awareness and stories 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 it. The general commonalities between the various versions of the Absolute are: infinity, indescribability, formlessness, transcendence and immanence.[citation needed]
An additional commonality is that man 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 are felt to help pave the way to enlightenment.[citation needed]
In Hinduism the Absolute is called Parabrahman or Brahman, while in some Buddhist religions it has been conceptualised as Adibuddha. In Japanese Shinto and Korean Korean shamanism it is called respectively Amenominakanushi (and Kannagara is its manifestation or the order of nature) and Haneullim.
In eastern philosophy the Absolute is known as Parabrahman. According to I. K. Taimni both the Vedas and the Upanishads contain indirect hints to an Ultimate Reality an unknowable principle. Taimni describes the Parabrahman as unknowable by the human mind and unthinkable but the highest object of realization and the most profound object of philosophical enquiry.[6] Taimni wrote that:
Because the Ultimate Reality which is denoted by the word 'Absolute' or 'Parabrahman' (卍) is the very core of our being as well as the cause and basis of the universe of which we are part, we can no more get away from it than our solar system can get away from the sun round which it resolves and from which it receives everything which keeps it alive and moving. Although the Absolute is sometimes referred to by such epithets as the Void, Ever-Darkness etc. and is beyond intellectual comprehension, still, from the intellectual point of view it is the most profound concept in the whole realm of philosophy. The fact that it is called 'Unknowable' does not mean that it is beyond the range of philosophical or religious thought and something on which thinking is impossible or undesirable. The very fact that it is the heart and the basis of the universe should make it the most intriguing object of enquiry within the realms of the intellect.
— I.K. Taimni, Man, God and the Universe, Chapter 1[7]
In Chinese religions, Confucianism and Taoism the Absolute is called respectively Taidi ("Great Energy"), Tian and Tao as the Wuji.
The Absolute is known as Ein Sof in Jewish philosophy or Kabbalah; Allah in Arabic-speaking cultures and Islam and specifically Al-Haqq in Sufism. In Western Christian countries the names of the Absolute are generally variants of the Germanic word "God" or the Latin Deus. In the Yazdani faiths, Yazdān ("Divine") defines the Absolute.[citation needed]
The Germanic word *Gudan, from which English "God" derives, is a variant of *Wodanaz (Odin), and both come from Indo-European roots all meaning "energy" (inner urging), "spirit", "creation", "invoking" (inner calling). The Absolute is revealed in the Slavic native faith as the Rod, meaning "Root", "Origin", "Genus".[citation needed]
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 of Plotinus is a trans-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. In scholastic philosophy the Absolute was regarded as Pure Act, unadulterated with remaining potential.
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.
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.
The Absolute is known as Teotl or Hunab Ku in native Mesoamerican religion, the Great Spirit in native North American religions.
According to Mircea Eliade, the Sacred, which human beings are not always conscious of in their profane everyday experience, can be mediated or revealed through symbols.[8] For Eliade the "archaic" mind is constantly aware of the presence of the Sacred, and for this mind all symbols are religious (relinking to the Origin).[8] Religious symbols reveal the modality or structuring of the real or world (the manifestation of the Absolute) that is not immediately evident in common experience.[8]
Through symbols human beings can get an immediate "intuition" of certain features of the inexhaustible Sacred.[8] The mind makes use of images to grasp the ultimate reality of things because reality manifests itself in contradictory ways and therefore can't be described in concepts.[8] It is therefore the image as such, as a whole bundle of meaning, that is "true" (faithful, trustworthy).[8]
Thus, the Sacred or Absolute is reality, being as such. Hierophany reveals absolute reality. As explained by Eliade:[9]
The Absolute is expressed through symbols as the Centre and theophanies (modes of manifestation).[10] The world tree or tree of life is a common symbol of the Absolute that generates and sustains the world.[10] The tree is a microcosm, an image of the cosmos (imago mundi), of life, and the mystical bond of every being to the Source.[11] As such it is a symbol of rebirth and resurrection or immortality.[11]
In Eliade's words:[11]
As axis mundi ("axle of the world") the tree represents a repository or receptacle of the Sacred, where one can access to knowledge of the Absolute reality.[11] Attaining the Centre, that is living in the Sacred, that is the main desire of the religious man, is equivalent to a consecration or initiation, that is the passage to a new life that is real, enduring and effective.[12] As axis mundi it is the Centre of the universe, supporting and linking the three levels of its dimension: Heaven, Earth and Hell.[11]
As the mystical bond to the Divine, the tree is represented in many myths,[11] such as in the myth of Prometheus and the fire, at the end of the Odyssey, and in the Epic of Gilgamesh. As a symbol of resurrection, rebirth and enlightenment, the tree is the Cross of Christian theology[11] or the Tree of Awakening of the Buddha.
Symbolism is capable of expressing paradoxes, or the "contradictory aspect of the ultimate reality", the coincidentia oppositorum and the "passage from a profane to a spiritual existence".[11] According to Eliade:[13]
These symbols allow humans to grasp the mystery of existence as a constant theme of death and rebirth, simultaneously signifying the original act of creation out of chaos.[14] Myths and rites, as figurative stories and practices of the manifestation of the Absolute and its modalities (archetypes), are eternally true.[15]
The experience of the Absolute or the Holy, or the Mystery (from Greek myein: "to conceal", "to hide", "to hush") of the mystics, is defined by Mircea Eliade as a coincidentia oppositorum (coincidence or solution of all the opposites), that can be furtherly understood as a "state of wholeness" or "nostalgia for the primordial completeness and bliss".[16]
Eliade defines the Absolute as the Divine Ground (German: Grund or Urgrund, "Original Ground"), that defies "all possibilities of rational comprehension" and can only be "grasped as a mystery or paradox".[16]
The coincidentia oppositorum, interpreting Nicholas of Cusa, must not be viewed as a synthesis of reason.[16] This is because the Sacred is infinite, while human reason is limited and for it the Sacred remains a mystery.[16] According to Eliade, this "inconceivable transcendental" can only be "expressed by contradictory or paradoxical metaphors".[16]
The coincidentia oppositorum can serve to at least approximate the experience of the Mystery or Divine, that does not lend itself to a conceptual formulation, the conjecture of opposites preserving the ambiguous or ineffable content of religious-mystical experience.[16]
Rudolf Otto describes the experience of the Holy or the Utterly Other (Ganz Andere) as a mysterium fascinans et tremendum (both fascinating and awful or frightful mystery).[17] It corresponds to Paul Tillich's state of "being grasped by ultimate concern" or Ignatius Loyola and Karl Rahner's "consolation without cause".[17]
The Mystery is always mediate; what is immediate in the experience of it is the gift of God's love, consolation in Rahner's terms.[17] There is a meaning of coincidentia oppositorum also in Otto's "fascinating and frightening".[17]
In Bernard Lonergan's theory of consciousness the Absolute is explained through the notion of "elemental meaning".[17] This "meaning" of the unmediated Ground is "elemental" in the sense that the distinction between a subject and an object has not yet arisen,[17] there is no object for a subject to apprehend in such an encounter.[17]
This elemental meaning can be "set within a conceptual framework", but conceptualisation or objectification never reproduces the original experience.[17] In terms of Lonergan's theory the experience of the Absolute is pre-predicative, precedes the cognitional levels of conceptualised understanding, judgement and decision.[18] It's pre-rational. Subsequent reflection upon the experience allows for an approximate objectification of its content, through symbols.[18]
From a Buddhist perspective, there is no text in which the Buddha explicitly argues that the universe lacks an essence; he instead critiques positions regarding an ultimate nature of reality — such as those found in the Upanishads — in the manner of later Prasangikas.[19] The Buddha of the early texts does speak of experiencing "luminous mind" beyond the six sense media.[20] Passages in which the Buddha criticizes those who talk about things not amenable to experience are quite common in the early texts.[21]
Nagarjuna, one of the most prominent philosophers of Mahayana Buddhism, was considered by early scholarship as propounding an absolutist doctrine with his development of the Buddhist concept of śūnyatā ("emptiness", "void" or "openness"). This is criticized by many modern scholars as incorrect and not grounded on textual evidence.[22] The consensus is that Nagarjuna defended the classical Buddhist emphasis on phenomena.[23] For him śūnyatā is explicitly used as a middle way between eternalism and nihilism, and that is where its soteriological power lies. It does not refer specifically to an ultimate, universal, or absolute nature of reality.[24]
Holding up emptiness as an absolute or ultimate truth without reference to that which is empty is the last thing either the Buddha or Nagarjuna would advocate.[25] Nagarjuna criticized those who conceptualized śūnyatā: "The Victorious Ones have announced that emptiness is the relinquishing of all views. Those who are possessed of the view of emptiness are said to be incorrigible."[26]
By contrast, many schools of Mahayana Buddhism, particularly those in alignment with the Tathagatagarbha scriptures, affirmed some notions regarding a positive absolute, identifying it with the true or original substance or Self of the Buddha.
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.
— Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks, § 11.
The mathematician Georg Cantor equated the mathematical concept of the Absolute Infinite with God.[27]
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).
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