…cosmic totality that is “the Absolute.” Just as the moral will is the chief characteristic of the self, so it is also the activating principle of the world. Thus Fichte provided a new definition of philosophizing that made it the most dignified of intellectual pursuits. The sole task of philosophy…

…system, the system of the Absolute, contained a view of the place of religion in human life. According to this notion, religion arises as the relation between humanity and the Absolute (the spiritual reality that undergirds and includes the whole universe), in which the truth is expressed symbolically, and so…

Although Plato thought of the Absolute as finite, all theologians and metaphysicians from Plotinus (205–270 ce) on have supposed the Absolute to be infinite. What is meant by “the Absolute” depends, of course, upon the philosopher in question; it might be taken to mean God, an overarching universal mind, or…

…his persisting aspirations toward the Absolute in the claim that, beyond the certainties of subjective consciousness, there exists a new kind of certainty in a transsubjective realm. Subjectivity is, thus, inevitably transcended, just as the sciences are surmounted when they presuppose a metaphysics. The influential spiritual moralist Friedrich Paulsen defended…