View Full Version : Do absolutes make any sense?
mammadon
11-24-2008, 08:39 AM
And by absolutes, I mean codes of beliefs.
Everybody is different and everything is relative because of this. Since everything is relative, then how can any one code apply to all people, or bring happiness to all persons?
snowbird
11-24-2008, 08:42 AM
...... No but it is a great base to start from.
mammadon
11-24-2008, 08:47 AM
...... No but it is a great base to start from.
Why?
Mr Falcon might be able to tell us more about that since he seems to love words that signify absolutes.
Falcon
11-24-2008, 10:22 AM
Absolutely!
The fact that we attempt to make the absolute things of life into relative ones betrays a desire to define ourselves as some diverse species astoundingly based only on desire. What poppycock!
In the scheme of things with respect to species and variability, we are as homogenous as they come!
There are those out there who'd make up rules as we go along, to prove our 'individuality in the world', but ironically 'these rules' are absolute!!
Absolutely amazing!
guyguy
11-24-2008, 01:51 PM
Ah tink we doing mammadon philosophy homework fuh he oui. Wen ah UWI student start askin bout absolutes in ah Philosophy Thread, yuh know iz homewuk he doin'. Ent? :D :D :D
Amelia
11-24-2008, 05:30 PM
Of course it does. It represents the goal that we strive to achieve. The fact that circumstances do not always make it easy does not lessen the value of the goal.
There is a common thread of absolutes that is beneficial to all of mankind in the natural sense of survival of a species. I once started a thread on the origins of morality which touched on that issue - that our 'morals' come from natural laws which is attained by us working together as a team, as we are social creatures, thereby giving us strength in numbers and better chances of survival. Thou shalt not kill, for example, fairplay, honesty, bravery, honour...
All of these 'morals' speak to the betterment of the pack - rights of the masses over those of the individual. As our society becomes more individualistic, our priorities change and eventually, our morals. Absolutes are applied less and less as each case is judged by its own extenuating circumstances.
In the religious context though, the value of absolutes is, as SB said, a base. A springboard from which one develops a relationship with God based on one's belief system and later on, one's experiences.
So, yes, absolutes make sense, IMO.
guyguy
11-24-2008, 06:08 PM
Absolutely!
The fact that we attempt to make the absolute things of life into relative ones betrays a desire to define ourselves as some diverse species astoundingly based only on desire. What poppycock!
In the scheme of things with respect to species and variability, we are as homogenous as they come!
There are those out there who'd make up rules as we go along, to prove our 'individuality in the world', but ironically 'these rules' are absolute!!
Absolutely amazing!
Falcon,
I don't understand what you are saying. As far as I know, there is only one absolute - death. Nothing else in this world is absolute. What "absolute things" are you thinking about that we turn into "relative ones?" Please explain.
Falcon
11-25-2008, 07:55 AM
The usual tings yuh know.......
gender issues
abortion issues
parental responsibilities
honesty at work
unfaithfulness in marriage
the list goes on
if there is no moral code anywhere, then surely people will make it up as they go along.....
lexbarker
11-25-2008, 11:54 AM
Then, there is ABSOLUT Vodka. This one makes sense.
letric
08-09-2009, 11:21 AM
Questions have always fascinated me.....
Do absolutes make any sense?
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich HEGEL, (1770-1831). German philosopher born at Stuttgart. He studied theology, then became a headmaster of a school at Nuremberg. He became a professor of philosophy at Heidelberg in 1818, where he dominated German philosophy. Hegel is essentially mystical, he rejects the reality of separate objects, and of minds in space and time, and holds rather, an all-embracing unity: the
absolute which is rational, real, and true. To draw attention to a particular is to separate this from the whole, and so the particular is only partially true. Greater unity and truth are achieved by the dialectic of posting something (thesis), deny it,antithesis, and combining the two half truths in a synthesis. He held that the whole has a greater claim to reality than the parts that may be observed: and in (societies) that the group has more reality than the individuals composing it.
Hegel's main philosophical work is Phenomenology of the Mind, (1844)
.
Sirius
08-09-2009, 01:18 PM
Do absolutes make sense? Depends on the context. In a world filled with greys many things are relative. However, in both the bounds of physics and in the morality that defines us as human there are absolutes not to be crossed.
drolannod
10-06-2009, 04:42 PM
Is there a culture where there is a corporal punishment for delinquency...where female circumcision is practised, where mixed marriages are forbidden and polygamy authorized? Multi-culturalism requires
that we respect all these practices...In a world which has lost its transcendental significance, cultural identity serves to sanction those barbarous traditions which God is longer in position to endorse. Fanaticism is indefensible when it appeals to heaven, but beyond reproach when it is grounded in antiquity and cultural distinctiveness.
Alan Finklielkraut
drolannod
10-06-2009, 04:51 PM
I am too much a skeptic to deny the possibility of anything.
T.H. Huxley
drolannod
10-07-2009, 02:00 PM
The big issue of our times is surely not the absence of a set of common values in a multicultural society. It is rather a battle between people who believe in something and those who believe in nothing, not in knowledge, not in authority, not in moral absolutes, and above all, not in themselves.
Melanie Phillips.
mammadon
10-14-2009, 08:01 PM
Who has the authority to determine an absolute?
letric
11-04-2009, 11:04 AM
It has been said that Karl Marx 'stood Hegel on his head' by making matter, and not reason, the ultimate reality. Hegel is the contrary on an empiricist, for he held that the whole has a greater claim to reality that the part that may be observed; and (in societies) that the group has more reality than the individuals composing it.
CPL593H
11-08-2009, 04:42 AM
Letric, "Questions have always fascinated me"...I absoutley find answers a bit more facinating...
letric
11-08-2009, 05:07 AM
Is this a quote or a question?
CPL593H
11-09-2009, 01:42 AM
It's a quote and an answer...quoting you, and answering your original question...
letric
11-09-2009, 04:42 AM
The secret of man's being is not only to live, but to have something to live for.
letric
12-06-2009, 06:29 AM
She, stirred somewhat beyond her wont, and taking as
her text the three words which have been used so
often as the inspiring trumpet-calls of men - the words
God, Immortality, Duty- pronounced, with terrible
earnestness, how inconceivable was the first, how
unbelievable the second, and yet how peremptory and
absolute the third. Never, perhaps, have sterner
accents affirmed the sovereignty of impersonal and
unrecompensing Law.
F.W.H. Myers 'George Eliot' in Century Magazine
November 1881
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