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Article: Absolutism
- Article from:
- Europe, 1450 to 1789: Encyclopedia of the Early Modern World
- Author:
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ABSOLUTISM
ABSOLUTISM.
Early modern European princes liked to promulgate the myth that they held "absolute power." For modern observers, both words create confusion. In contemporary English, the word
absolute
defines a dichotomy of this or that: a king would either ha
ve "absolute power," or he would not. Early modern Europeans lived in a world of accepted ambiguity: they believed the sovereign prince's power to be both "absolute" and "limited." Nothing could be further in spirit from the sovereign prince's "absolute power" than the modern idea that "absolute" means "unlimited."
ABSOLUTISM, DESPOTISM, TYRANNY
The term
absolutism,
first used in a political sense in various European ...