ppl. a. [UN-1 8.]
1. Not subject to, or dependent upon, conditions or stipulations.
a. 1631. Donne, Serm., xxxix. (1640), 391. Thou must stay out that time,… and by no practice, no not so much as by a deliberate wish, or unconditioned prayer, seeke to be delivered of it.
1692. Beverley, Disc. Dr. Crisp, 10. Therein it must needs be, as unconditioned, as Election is.
1712. Berkeley, Pass. Obed., Wks. 1871, III. 139. I speak of non-resistance as an absolute, unconditioned, unlimited duty.
1776. Gibbon, Decl. & F., xi. I. 301. With the choice only of submitting to his unconditioned mercy, or waiting the utmost severity of his resentment.
1852. Bailey, Festus (ed. 5), 491. Who thus pour forth Unmeasured, unconditioned, your divine Riches of works and words.
1864. R. A. Arnold, Cotton Famine, 477. They had grown used to ‘th’ relief,’ and regarded it as their unconditioned right.
2. Not dependent upon, or determined by, an antecedent condition.
1829. Sir W. Hamilton, in Edin. Rev., L. 204. We are … inspired with a belief in the existence of something unconditioned beyond the sphere of all comprehensible reality:
1846. Lewes, Hist. Philos., IV. 205. An entirely unconditioned Thought.
1862. H. Spencer, First Princ., I. iii. § 15 (1875), 50. If Space and Time are the conditions under which we think, then when we think of Space and Time themselves, our thoughts must be unconditioned.
3. absol. That which is not subject to the conditions of finite existence and cognition.
1829. Sir W. Hamilton, in Edin. Rev., L. 198. The first of these ideas … is variously expressed, under the terms unity, identity, substance, absolute cause, the infinite, pure thought, &c.; we would briefly call it the unconditioned. Ibid. (1836), Metaph., xxxviii. (1859), II. 373. The Conditioned is that which is alone conceivable or cogitable; the Unconditioned, that which is inconceivable or incogitable.
1877. E. Caird, Philos. Kant, III. 45. The form of time, in which we always find condition beyond condition, cause beyond cause, and never reach the unconditioned, the causa sui.
Hence Unconditionedness.
1860. J. Young, Prov. Reason, 47. Only through and on account of this undefinedness (unconditionedness) is Being Non-Being.
1903. Edin. Rev., July, 71. Nor is the test of this unconditionedness arbitrary.
