Synopses & Reviews
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 René 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.
Synopsis
A Theory of the Absolute develops a worldview that is opposed to the dominant paradigm of physicalism and atheism. It provides powerful arguments for the existence of the soul and the existence of the Absolute. It shows that faith is not in contradiction to reason.
About the Author
Benedikt Paul Göcke is Assistant Professor at the Catholic Faculty of Theology, Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany, and Junior Research Fellow in Philosophy at Blackfriars Hall, Oxford University, UK.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
1. Introduction: A Theory of the Absolute
2. Possible Worlds and Individual Essences
3. Existence and Individual Essences
4. Time and Individual Essences
5. Conceivability and Individual Essences
6. A Clarification of Physicalism
7. A Refutation of Physicalism
8. Reflections on the Soul
9. Concepts of God in Philosophy and Theology
10. The Contingency of Empirical Reality
11. The Indistinct Absolute
12. Summary
13. Bibliography
Index