ABSOLUTE, in philosophy, the concept of that which is complete in itself and includes everything within itself--the unconditioned, ultimate reality. The absolute is reducible or referable to nothing other than itself, and all things are manifestations or determinations of it.

绝对原则，在哲学中，它的概念在本质上是完整的，并包括了内在必然性的一切---无条件的，终极实在。除了它自身以外，绝对原则不能被其它东西简化或参照，而且所有事物都是它的表现或决定。

Absolute also denotes a primary principle in certain special branches of philosophy. In ethics, for example, the categorical imperative is seen by Kant as an absolute that is binding on all rational beings. In epistemology the Cartesian principle of the thinking ego is claimed as the ultimate basis for all certainty.

绝对原则在哲学的某些特殊分支中还表示最基本的原则。例如，在伦理学中，绝对命令被康德视为对所有理性存在都有约束力的绝对原则。在认识论中，笛卡尔的自我思考原则被认为是所有确定性的终极基础。

The term “absolute” as denoting the ultimate reality came into prominence with post-Kantian German idealism, particularly in the philosophy of Hegel, and also was used by certain new-Hegelians and idealists of the late 19^th century. However, the problem that gave rise to the concept of a metaphysical absolute goes back to the origins of philosophical inquiry in Western civilization.

伴随康德的德国唯心主义，尤其是在黑格尔的哲学中，作为表示终极实在的“绝对原则”一词变得著名起来，而且也被19世纪末的某些新黑格尔派和唯心主义者使用过。然而，引发形而上学绝对原则概念的问题可追溯到西方文明中对哲学探究的起源。

Philosophers do not agree either on an absolute as ultimate reality or on absolutes as primary principles of the special branches of philosophy. Ethical relativists, for example, maintain that moral obligation is not an absolute since it does not drive from any unconditional imperative but is relative to time, place, and circumstance. In metaphysics, those who conceive of an ultimate reality often differ among themselves about the nature of such a reality. Some philosophers hold that there is an absolute reality but deny that it is knowable by man, and many view as nonsensical the very quest of an ultimate reality, whose verification, they claim, is impossible in principle.

哲学家们既不赞同将绝对原则作为终极实在，也不同意将绝对原则作为哲学特殊分支最基本的原则。例如，伦理相对论者主张，道德义务不是一种绝对原则，因为它不是来自任何无条件的命令，而是与时间、地点和环境有关。在形而上学中，在那些设想了终极实在的人们中对这样一种实在的本质常常持有不同的观点。一些哲学家认为，存在一个绝对原则，但否认它是人类可知的，而且许多人认为过度追求终极实在是无意义的，他们声称，原则上要想证实它是不可能的。

Ancient Philosophy. Parmenides (early 5^th century B.C.), the chief figure of the Eleatic School, challenged the concepts of reality put forward by other schools of philosophy by showing that they could not account for change and plurality without contradicting the meaning of “to be.” Disregarding the testimony of the senses and relying solely on abstract reasoning, Parmenides offered the first philosophical absolute: what “is” is an eternal, full, immutable, undifferentiated One.

古代哲学。巴门尼德（公元前5世纪早期），伊利亚学派的主要人物，通过证明他们无法在没有自相矛盾的“存在”含义的情况下解释变化与多元性，挑战了由其它哲学学派提出的实在概念。忽视感官的证据，而仅凭抽象的推理，巴门尼德提出了哲学的第一绝对原则：“是”什么是永恒的、完整的、不可改变的、无差别的一体。

Such a concept of reality seemed impossible to accept and impossible to refute logically. Subsequent philosophers, including Plato and Aristotle, undoubtedly offered far richer and more satisfying concepts of reality than the sterile monism of Parmenides. Yet in Plato the chorismos (separation) of the transient particularities and the eternal forms, and in Aristotle the obscurity of the relation between the unmoved mover and the world of motion may be seen as instances of a failure to meet the Parmenidean demands. To the Stoic philosophers of about 300 B. C. reality consisted of forms of the one divine logos, an absolute whose being is material (fire).

这样的实在概念似乎很难接受，而且在逻辑上也很难反驳。后来的哲学家们，包括柏拉图和亚里士多德，毫无疑问提出了比巴门尼德毫无新意的一元论更丰富、更令人满意的实在概念。然而，在柏拉图看来，转瞬即逝的特殊性与永恒形式的分离，以及在亚里士多德看来，静止的行动者与运动世界关系的晦涩可以被视为未能满足巴门尼德的追随者要求的例证。对于大约公元前300年的斯多葛派哲学家来说，实在是由一个神圣的理性形式组成的，其存在的绝对原则是物质（火）。

In the metaphysic of Plotinus (3d century A.D.) the absolute is conceived as the ineffable and transcendent One. It is not like the One of Parmenides, however, for from the One of Plotinus emanate the eternal Nous (mind or intelligence) and realm of forms, which in turn produce the twofold World Soul, particular beings, and matter.

在普罗提诺（公元3世纪）的形而上学中，绝对原则被构想为不可言喻的和至高无上的那个一体。然而，它不像巴门尼德的一体， 因为从普罗提诺的一体中散发出永恒的智性（心灵或智慧）以及形式的境界，它反过来又产生出双重的世界灵魂，特殊的存在和物质。

Modern Philosophy.  In Christian thought the absolute is immaterial spirit: the eternal almighty God, creator and sustainer of the world and all things therein. This doctrine and the ancient concepts of an absolute were challenged by 17^th century rationalists such as Spinoza, who charged in his Ethics (1674) that the Christian concept of a creation in time contradicted the concept of the eternal perfection of God. Any bridging of the gap between immaterial and material substance through creation ex nihilo (from nothing) or emanation was rejected by Spinoza as self-contradictory. Hence Spinoza put forward a concept of the absolute as infinite eternal substance that includes in its essence the attributes of both immateriality and materiality (thought and extension). The physical universe is God under the attributes of extension (space). Leibniz’s monadology, with its principle of the pre-established harmony, was another absolute system of the period of early modern science.

现代哲学。在基督教的思想中，绝对原则是非物质的精神：永恒的全能上帝，是世界和万物的创造者和维护者。绝对原则的这种学说和古老概念受到了17世纪理性主义者斯宾诺沙的挑战，在他的《伦理学》（1674年）中，他指责基督教的创造概念在时间上与上帝永恒完美的概念相矛盾。任何通过无中生有（从虚无中）的创造或散发以弥合非物质与物质实体之间鸿沟的方法都被斯宾诺沙驳斥为自相矛盾。因此，斯宾诺沙提出的一个绝对原则的概念作为无限永恒的实体，在其本质上它包括了非物质和物质性（思想与延伸）的属性。在延伸（空间）的属性下，物质的宇宙就是上帝。莱布尼兹的单子论，以其预先建立的和谐原则，成为了早期现代科学时期的另一个绝对原则体系。

Kant considered the Spinozist and Leibnizian visions of an ultimate reality as extensions of human knowledge beyond the realm of possible experience and therefore illegitimate. However, by demonstrating that the a priori ground of all human knowledge is the unifying activity of the thinking consciousness, Kant provided the germinating idea for the systems of absolutes of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel.

康德认为，斯宾诺沙学说和莱布尼兹学说对终极实在的观点是人类知识的延伸，超出了可能的经验范围，因此是不合理的。然而，通过证明人类所有知识的先验基础是思维意识的统一活动，康德为费希特，谢林和黑格尔的绝对原则体系提供了思想萌芽。

For Fichte the Kantian concept of the transcendental subjectivity becomes a metaphysical absolute in the form of an infinite spiritual life. For Schelling the absolute is the unity of the real and the ideal, nature and thought. Schelling’s absolute of “identity” or “indifference” is neither subjectivity nor objectivity, yet is the source of both.

对费希特而言，康德的先验主观性概念以一种无限的精神生活形式成为了一种形而上学的绝对原则。对谢林来说，绝对原则是真实与理想，自然与思想的统一。谢林的“同一性”或“无差异”的绝对原则既不是主观性，也不是客观性，而是两者的来源。

It is in Hegel that the concept of the absolute as Geist (mind or spirit) assumes its most compelling form. According to Hegel’s Phenomenology of the Mind (1807), the unity of the temporal and the eternal, the one and the many, subject and object can be realized only as spirit. Abstract being—the immutable and undifferentiated One of Parmenides—is the same as nothing. But differentiation that preserves unity must be inner or self-differentiation, the self-distinguishing of mind that remains one with itself in its distinguishing. This is the life of Geist.

在黑格尔那里，绝对原则的概念就是呈现了其最令人信服的感性（心灵或精神）。根据黑格尔《精神现象学》（1807年）的观点，世俗与永恒，唯一与众多，主体与客体只能以精神来现实。抽象的存在---巴门尼德的不可改变的和无差别的唯一就如同什么都没有。但保存了统一的差异化必定是内在的或自主分化的，心灵的自我区别在其区别中与自身保持了唯一。这就是感性的生活。

Hegel’s system did not withstand the advancing positivism and empiricism of the time. In England the introduction of Kant and German idealism modified somewhat the empiricist influence of Hume. Nevertheless, for Scottish philosopher Sir William Hamilton the absolute as the “unconditioned” remained inaccessible to human thought, as did the “unknowable” of Herbert Spencer and the absolute of Francis Herbert Bradley.

黑格尔的体系并没有抵挡住当时实证主义和经验主义的发展。在英格兰，对康德和德国唯心主义的引入在一定程度上改变了休谟的经验主义影响。尽管如此，对于苏格兰的哲学家威廉·汉密尔顿爵士而言，作为“无条件的”绝对原则对于人类思想依然是难以理解的，就像赫伯特·斯宾塞的“不可知的”以及弗朗西斯·赫伯特·布拉德雷的绝对原则一样。

In the United States, Josiah Royce, especially in the “Supplementary Essay” to The World and the Individual (1901), conceived the absolute as an infinite self-consciousness whose “knowing” and “willing” embraced all of time past, present, and future at once. Royce sought to clarify this conception by analogy with the “actual infinite” developed by the German mathematician Richard Dedekind. Few would say, however, that Royce and other philosophers of the absolute have succeeded in resolving those basic questions of time and eternity, freedom and individuality, evil and contingency, that had been left problematic in all previous endeavors to conceive an absolute.

在美国，约西亚·罗伊斯，特别是在《世界与个体》（1901年）的“补充内容”中将绝对原则作为无限的自我意识，它的“知晓”和“意愿”同时包括了所有的过去、现在和未来。罗伊斯力图通过德国数学家理查德·戴德金发展的“实际无限”类比的方法来阐明这个概念。然而，很少有人会说，罗伊斯和绝对原则的其他哲学家已成功解决了时间与永恒，自由与个性，邪恶与偶然性这些基本问题，这些问题在之前构想一种绝对原则的所有尝试中一直悬而未决。

                            MURRAY GREENE, New School for Social Research

                               默里·格林，社会研究新学院

                                        2022年6月28日译

（译者注：该词条位列《大美百科全书》1985年版，第1卷，第52页）