Appendix II: The Theory of the Absolute

Dr Bosanquet's theory of the state is so intimately bound up with his general theory of Reality, that a discussion of his social philosophy can hardly be complete without some reference to his conception of the Absolute as contained in the two volumes of his Gifford Lectures, to which reference has several times been made in the preceding chapters. Indeed, for him the state seems in a manner to be the medium, it is certainly one of the media, by which the individual comes into contact with the Absolute. The Absolute is sovereign Lord, but the state is its vicegerent here and now. What then is the Absolute and how is it related to our lives?

The Absolute is that in which all contradictions are reconciled. But this definition really includes two characteristics which are perfectly distinct. By contradiction is meant, in the most natural and straightforward sense of the term, logical contradiction. It is clearly true, but it is also a platitude, to say that logical contradictions cannot exist in reality. If the Absolute then is an expression for reality as it is in its completeness, it is certain that within it there can be no contradictions. Whether we should say on this point that within it contradictions are reconciled is not so certain. Contradictions really exist in the world of partial knowledge, and it would be truer to say that they must necessarily be reconciled, that is, resolved away, in complete knowledge, while in reality they cannot really exist. However, to let this verbal point pass, it is clear that in the Absolute all elements of reality which as partially or separately known to us are imperfectly understood, and thus give rise to apparent contradictions, are so related by underlying principles of connection as to constitute a consistent whole. All this is little more than platitude, put it as we may.

But there is a second meaning of contradiction -- practical contradiction, conflict, opposition, under which, in general, pain, misery, evil and destruction may be grouped. That there exists any being, call it what we will, in which all such conflicts are reconciled, is a much more doubtful proposition. It can by no means be regarded as a postulate of thought, as the first proposition may be, and I suspect that its plausibility depends upon an unconscious transition from the first meaning to the second. That contradiction in this second sense may be somehow reconciled in undoubtedly the aspiration of the religious consciousness, but its realization is not a fundamental postulate of philosophy. What has here to be asked, however, is whether Bosanquet's Absolute does in fact provide any such reconciliation; and if so, at what cost to our moral and religious ideas? Bosanquet's view is that the Absolute is perfection and that all the content of our experience, whether we call it good, bad or indifferent, would be found, if we had full knowledge, to play its necessary part in this perfect scheme. What we have to ask is in what way evil, pain and conflict and destruction can have a part to play in a perfect scheme. One answer would be that these things are necessary incidents of a process in which some life is evolved or some plan being worked out so good and glorious that if we could understand it all, we should deem it worth the cost. This conclusion, however, is expressly barred by Bosanquet, who refuses to conceive the Absolute as the realization of a purpose. In point of fact, the conception of purpose is only applicable if we think of it as operating upon material which is given to it, or at least under conditions by which it is so limited as to make the suffering and destruction necessary to the completeness of its work. At bottom this is why Bosanquet rejects the conception of purpose. It cannot characterize the whole. But he does not seem to consider the alternative that the whole might be something in which the element of purpose is that which we really value, so that the ultimate success of this purpose would reconcile us to the cost.

Rejecting purpose, we have to be satisfied with a world which is not going to be any better than the world of our experience but is of one tissue with it, only complete. We might perhaps value such a world if we could think of it, for example, as a kind of living organism, as an organic unity. But the characteristic of an organic unity is that it maintains the parts by which it is constituted. Thus, if there is destruction and pain within the organism, it is either because the organism is acted upon by foreign bodies or because it is in some way imperfect. The universe is not acted upon from without, and if organic at all, must be imperfectly so. But the difficulties that arise here are not relevant, for Dr Bosanquet's Absolute is the very reverse of organic in its conception, being quite indifferent to the permanent welfare of the units, Spiritual beings, selves, which go to make it up. The life of any one of them may end in disruption and despair, and yet reconciliation is supposed to be found in the Absolute. The Absolute thus presented is something utterly inhuman, without bowels of compassion. It is below the moral categories, as everything that pretends to be above them invariably is.

But if the Absolute is neither purpose nor an organism, what is it? Bosanquet answers that it is perfection. It is not good and it is not evil strictly, for we judge things good or bad by reference to the perfection of the whole. Can this perfection give us any reconciliation? The answer is that it may reconcile logical contradictions, but for that we need no inception of perfection but simply of reality, or, to phrase it better, of reality thoroughly understood; but that there is only one way in which conflict, pain, evil and ills can be said to be reconciled either with one another or with any scheme or order to which our emotions and admiration and satisfaction can attach themselves, and that is by showing that they are necessary steps in the fulfilment of some purpose which we regard as fully adequate to the heavy cost which they represent. If reconciliation means anything other than this, the meaning should be specified. There is no suggestion that it means anything else except the overcoming of contradictions, which has been shown is a different concept not to be surreptitiously identified with the ideal in question.

Certain passages in Bosanquet suggest a possible line of reply approaching more nearly to the ordinary ethical and religious view of reconciliation. An evil, it may be said, is transformed into something which is not evil and perhaps even good by the way in which we take it, by our fortitude, by our resignation, by our accepting it as the burden which we must bear for others, and so on. Now, it is true that by our attitude an evil may be modified and in some respect turned to a good account; but, though modified, the evil is not cancelled. If the sufferer does not resent it for himself, we resent it and are right to resent it for him. The finer his attitude, the stronger should be its appeal to us onlookers as a flagrant wrong which man, or nature, or an Absolute, if you will, has imposed on a being who is showing himself worthy of better things. In the individual sufferer who uses his suffering nobly there is reconciliation, but it is precisely not in the Absolute that this reconciliation is achieved. It is in reality is a whole that the wrong remains, and so far as it is overcome it is the work of the human spirit operating in reality.

Lastly, if we really need pain and evil as a substratum for our good, then it may be true that the most we can do is to maintain a life of struggle. This cannot be attributed to the perfection of the Absolute, but to a deep-seated dissonance in the structure of things, which not only is not, but on this principle never could be reconciled. It must be added that if, as Bosanquet appears to maintain, effort cannot ever fundamentally improve this situation, then effort is fundamentally hopeless and discord is absolute. If, on the other hand, effort can make an improvement, then, though the discord is there, it is capable of mitigation and it becomes conceivable that through effort, conscious and active beings may achieve a life worth the pain and travail. It is in the notion of such a life, either here or hereafter, either for others or for ourselves, that every one who has not argued about the issue, but felt it, looks for that which may repay the terrible cost of human suffering.