sb. and a. [f. ABSOLUTE a. + -IST; after mod. Fr. absolutiste.]
A. sb. An adherent or partisan of absolutism.
1. Polit. One who is in favor of an absolute government.
1829. Bentham, Justice & Cod. Petit., Suppl. 12. The Earl of Mansfield, ablest as well as most zealous absolutist that, since the aristocratical revolution, ever sat upon an English bench.
1830. Gen. Thompson, Exerc. (1842), I. 300. Absolutists and priests may rail.
1866. Motley, Dutch Rep., II. i. 127. [Cardinal Granvelle] was a strict absolutist…. His deference to arbitrary power was profound and slavish.
1879. trans. Busch’s Bismarck, II. 286. A kindly, upright, and sensibly conducted absolutism is the best form of government…. But we have no longer any thorough-going Absolutists.
2. Metaph. One who maintains the absolute identity of subject and object.
1856. Ferrier, Inst. Metaph., 169. Out of this question … came the whole philosophy of the Alexandrian absolutists.
1859. Sir W. Hamilton, Lect. Metaph., II. xxiii. 79. The materialist may now derive the subject from the object, the idealist derive the object from the subject, the absolutist sublimate both into indifference.
1862. H. Spencer, First Princ. (1875), I. iii. § 20. 65. On this ‘primitive dualism of conscious’ … Mr. Mansel founds his refutation of the German absolutists.
B. adj. [The sb. used attributively.] Practising or supporting absolutism in government; despotic.
1837. Gen. Thompson, Exerc. (1842), IV. 241. Imagine that the Tories had undertaken to conduct an interference in favour of absolutist principles. Ibid. (1838), IV. 337. The absolutist powers will take it up next.
1850. Mazzini, Royalty & Repub., 182. A pretext for the machinations of absolutist governments.
1880. E. Peacock, in Academy, 28 Aug., 145. This absolutist tradition derived from the flatterers of Henry VIII.
