Absolutism
From Nordan Symposia
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Definition
- 1a : a political theory that absolute power should be vested in one or more rulers
- b : government by an absolute ruler or authority : despotism
Description(s)
- Absolute monarchy, a form of government where the monarch has the power to rule their land freely, with no laws or legally organized direct opposition in force
- Absolute space, a theory holding that space exists absolutely, in contrast to relationalism, which holds that space exists only as relations between objects
- Absolute truth, the contention that in a particular domain of thought, all statements in that domain are either absolutely true or absolutely false
- Autocracy (also known as 'political absolutism'), a political theory which argues that one person should hold all power
- Enlightened absolutism, the actions of absolute rulers who were influenced by the Enlightenment (eighteenth and early nineteenth century Europe)
- Moral absolutism, the position that there are absolute standards against which moral questions can be judged, and that certain actions are either good or evil, regardless of the context of the act
- Absolute idealism, an ontologically monistic philosophy attributed to G.W.F. Hegel. It is Hegel's account of how being is ultimately comprehensible as an all-inclusive whole
- Graded absolutism, the view that a moral absolute, like "Do not kill," can be greater or lesser than another moral absolute, like "Do not lie."
