A structural approach

Giorgio Buccellati – December 2023

Etymology

Etymology is a useful starting point.

The term (first used in the late Middle Ages) comes from ab-solvere, where ab has a negative or privative meaning (getting away from) and solvere means “to loosen,” hence to “break up, to analyze.” So the original meaning is something like “resistant to analysis” or free of limits and hence immeasurable. And if there are no limits, there can be only one absolute.

The universals and the absolute

Cultural and natural universals apply to finite sets of elements, and are bound to that context. To that extent, they are fully susceptible of analytical control.

A context-free universal is “context-free” only in the sense that that the context is so wide (including all of reality, temporally and spatially), that one cannot lay claim to any adequate control of their totality. It is in this sense that the pertinent universal cannot be considered context-“bound”. It is in this, sense, therefore, that it can be considered as a “absolute”.

The notions of the vanishing point and the grammar as “quasi absolutes” may be viewed as metaphors to explain the dynamics intrinsic to the notion of absolute: a person may not know the details of a conditioning factor (the grammar, perspective), but will nonetheless feel that fact as real and operative, in the sense that the actions of the speaker or the viewer must take that factor fully into account.

A divisive question arises when confronted with dimensions where no expert can claim control. Is such an “absolute” only temporarily unlimited, or is it inexhorably so? In the first intsance the assumotion is that, given enough time, continued analysis will yield full control of everything and remove all limits, eventually bringing everything under the control of experts, and, through them, of all. In the second instance, the assumption is that there are dimensions that by their very nature escape all possibility of control

A structural contrast

The absolute as a sum

Polytheism is the classical historical manifestation of the quest to relativize the ultimste absolute. The absolute is “effable” in the sense that it can be analyzed: within the religious framework the “gods”

Outside the religious framework – progress, science

The absolute as a whole

ironically, the “logos” but “made flesh” – hence mystery

Buddhism

A structural dilemma

Is the context really unlimited?

Not only the use of the plural “absolutes,” but even more the qualification of the absolute as “limited” are paradoxical. And yet.

In a historical perspective it is fair to say that the development of our species has been punctuated by a constant striving at limiting one absolute after another, bringing them progressively under our theoretical and practical control (anaysis and experimentation). Whether it was an early paleolithic individual who developed, with the heightened perception I have called “para-perception,” ever more refined ways of chipping tools; or the alloying of copper and tin to make bronze; or the splitting of the atom – in each case there was a removal of limits to what unutil then appeared as an unsolvable (ab-solute) problem.

We may then say that, at some level, the notion of progress, pushed to its extreme (if unproven) extreme, implies that there in fact is no ultimate absolute: the belief is that the ultimate absolute is but a congeries of absolutes that can be progressively, if slowly, be brought under full control – just as grammar or the vanishing point in the case of language and painting. There is faith in the assumption that even what is ultimately “un-solvable” can in fact be “solved.”

We may say that an absolute as experienced when speaking grammatically without knowing the grammar is a limited absolute. It is absolute for the speaker, but not for the linguist:

The question that arises is whether the ultimate absolute can be so limited and relativized. To which there can be two, and only two, answers. They take shape in the form of two diverse religious configurations, but they extend beyond the level of religion (see also the theme about innumerability).

structural contrast ~ universal it is here that the strong structural contrast between the two emerges, because we are dealing with the fundamental issues that define the respective mindsets.

Limited absolutes and the ultimate Absolute

we may consider the Absolute as being beyond control

if control is possible on limited absolutes, then control is possible on ultimate absolute – i. e., there is no ultimate absolute

extending ghe model of the limited absolute so that there is no ultimate absolute

The ultimate absolute is the one which remains closd to any possible level of control: there is no outside expert (like the linguist or the painter) who can define it. And yet it is pervasive as we attribute to it countless events in our lives for which we have no explanation.

It is ultimate in a dual sense.

On the one hand, it is seen as being at the highest level of significance because it conditions the deepest moments of our lives: death is one such moment, as it irreparably affects both the dying person and the survivors. It is ultimate spatially, we may say metaphorically, because it is the highest.
On the other hand, it is ultimate because it is beyond control. We do not have the equivalent of a linguist or a painter who can define rules and limits: this is the boundary where our analytical ability stops. It is ultimate temporally, we may say, because it is the last, the one that has not (yet?) been “solved.”

Whether the ultimate absolute is viewed as being inexhorably unlimited, or only temporarily so, it is clear that, in our historical condition, as well as in that of Mesopotamia and the Bible, we have what we may call an operationally ultimate absolute. It is a proper universal that can be so acceped by everyone – and it is in this sense that we will understand the term in the rest of our discussion.

Mesopotamian Religion

5.MonographsThe absolute