"The Absolute" is a term used by philosophers to signify the ultimate reality regarded as one and yet as the source of variety; as complete, or perfect, and yet as not divorced from the finite, imperfect world. The term was introduced into the philosophical vocabulary at the very end of the eighteenth century by Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and was naturalized into English by Samuel Taylor Coleridge as early as 1809–1810 in The Friend. Later in the century it was an important term in the writings of such Idealist philosophers as James Frederick Ferrier, Francis Herbert Bradley, Bernard Bosanquet, and Josiah Royce.

Introduction of the Term

One of the sources of the philosophy of the Absolute is the literature about Benedict (Baruch) de Spinoza commencing with Moses Mendelssohn's Morgenstunden (1785) and F. H. Jacobi's Ueber die Lehre des Spinoza in Briefen an...