absolutism (redirected from absolutistic)

absolutism

Political doctrine and practice of unlimited, centralized authority and absolute sovereignty, especially as vested in a monarch. Its essence is that the ruling power is not subject to regular challenge or check by any judicial, legislative, religious, economic, or electoral agency. Though it has been used throughout history, the form that developed in early modern Europe (16th–18th century) became the prototype; Louis XIV is seen as the epitome of European absolutism. Religious authority was assumed by the monarch, who became the head of the church as well as the state, on the basis that the right to rule came from God (see divine kingship). See also authoritarianism, dictatorship, totalitarianism.

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absolutism

1. Philosophy

a. any theory which holds that truth or moral or aesthetic value is absolute and universal and not relative to individual or social differences

b. the doctrine that reality is unitary and unchanging and that change and diversity are mere illusion

2. Christianity an uncompromising form of the doctrine of predestination