21st Century Absolut

In the 19th century, philosophers and theologians clamored over each other to appropriate a true Absolute. From Schleiermacher’s feeling of absolute dependence to Thomasius’s absolute personality, and from Hegel’s absolute infinite substance to Kierkegaard’s absolute paradox, the great minds sought an absolute theory of everything. Each, in their own way, would have claimed that their absolute more adequately addressed the great philosophical and theological problems of their day. In brief, their absolute would make the world a better place.

Today, in the 21st century, make of it what you will, we have our own Absolut for a better world. As Marshall McLuhan said, “Today it is not the classroom nor the classics which are the repositories of models of eloquence, but the ad agencies.”