A Theory of the Absolute Palgrave Frontiers in Philosophy of Religion

The purpose of A Theory of the Absolute is to sketch a theory of the basic structure of empirical reality, and its relation to the Absolute. It is influenced by the methods of analytic philosophy as well as phenomenology. Influential figures are Thomas Aquinas, Meister Eckhart, Karl Christian Friedrich Krause, Edmund Husserl, and Rene Descartes. A Theory of the Absolute develops a worldview that is opposed to the dominant paradigm of physicalism and atheism. Based on a new ontology of possible worlds, it is argued that subjects of experience cannot be identified with world-constitutive physical particulars. Instead, they are non-physical world-receptive particulars. It is then argued that there is sufficient reason to conclude that there is a supernatural cause of the being of empirical reality which is properly referred to as the Absolute. It is argued that the Absolute, surprisingly and puzzlingly, is neither distinct from nor identical with empirical reality. Instead, the Absolute is indistinct, that is, the more transcendent the more it is immanent to empirical reality.