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In philosophy (often specifically metaphysics), the absolute, in most common usage, is a perfect, self-sufficient reality that depends upon nothing external to itself. In theology, the term is also used to designate the supreme being. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel#Absolute spirit Absolute idealism and British idealism Contrary to some popular accounts, the term is not specific to Hegel. It first occurs in the work of Nicholas of Cusa, and Hegel's own usage was developed in response to that of his contemporary Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling. Hegel's use of "absolute" is easily misunderstood. Michael Inwood, however, clarifies: derived from the Latin absolutus, it means "not dependent on, conditional on, relative to or restricted by anything else; self-contained, perfect, complete." In the words of scholar Allegra de Laurentiis, this means that absolute knowing can only denote "an 'absolute relation' in which the ground of experience and the experiencing agent are one and the same: the object known is explicitly the subject who knows." That is, the only "thing" (which is really an activity) that is truly absolute is that which is entirely self-conditioned, and according to Hegel, this only occurs when spirit takes itself up as its own object. In some respects, this view of Hegel was anticipated by Johann Gottlieb Fichte's theory of the absolute self. The final section of Hegel's Philosophy of Spirit presents the three modes of such absolute knowing: art, religion, and philosophy. For Hegel, as understood by Martin Heidegger, the absolute is "spirit, that which is present to itself in the certainty of unconditional self-knowing". As Hegel is understood by Frederick Copleston, "[l]ogic studies the absolute 'in itself'; the philosophy of nature studies the absolute 'for itself'; and the philosophy of spirit studies the absolute 'in and for itself'." In British philosophy, self-identified neo-Hegelian F. H. Bradley distinguishes the concept of absolute from God, whereas Josiah Royce, another neo-Hegelian and founder of the American idealism school of philosophy, has equated them.

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A deity or god is a supernatural being who is considered divine or sacred. The Oxford Dictionary of English defines deity as a god or goddess, or anything revered as divine. C. Scott Littleton defines a deity as "a being with powers greater than those of ordinary humans, but who interacts with humans, positively or negatively, in ways that carry humans to new levels of consciousness, beyond the grounded preoccupations of ordinary life". Religions can be categorized by how many deities they worship.

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