Chapter 32 The third treatise on concepts (Die Lehre vom Begri ee)

§160 The concept is a principle of freedom, a substantive force existing independently.The concept is also a whole, and every link in this whole is a whole that constitutes the concept, and is set to have an inseparable unity with the concept.The concept is therefore in its own identity what is determined in and for itself. Note: The conceptual point of view is generally the point of view of absolute idealism.Philosophy is conceptual cognition, because philosophy regards other consciousness as existing and immediately independent of itself, but only as an ideal moment constituting the concept.In the "logic of the understanding" (Verstandeslogik), the concept is often regarded as a mere form of thought, or even as a common representation.From the standpoint of defending emotion and mood, the words that "concepts are dead, empty, abstract things" are often repeated, probably refer to this kind of view that underestimates concepts.In fact, on the contrary, the concept is the principle of all life and is therefore at the same time something completely concrete.This property of concepts has been developed from the whole preceding logical movement, and need not be proved here first.As for the idea just mentioned that concepts are only forms, it is due to the persistence of the opposition between content and form, which has been dialectically overcome with some other categories of opposition insisted on by reflection, that is, through The process of their own contradictory development has been overcome.In other words, it is the concept that sublates and includes within itself all the preceding categories of thought.The concept is undoubtedly the form, but it must be regarded as the infinite creative form, which contains all the full content in itself, and at the same time is not limited or bound by the content.Similarly, if the concrete that people understand refers to the concrete things in the senses or the directly perceptible things in general, then the concept can also be said to be abstract.Concepts as concepts cannot be grasped by hand. When we are thinking about concepts, hearing and vision must have become a thing of the past.But, as said before, the concept is at the same time the real concrete thing.This is because the concept is the unity of "existence" and "essence", and contains all the rich content of these two ranges within itself.

If, as already mentioned, we regard the stages of the Logical Idea as a series of definitions of the Absolute, the definition we now have should be: the Absolute is the Concept.In this way, we must of course understand the concept as another higher meaning, which is different from the understanding of intellectual logic, which regards the concept as a form in our subjective thinking that has no content itself.At this point, it may be asked why, if "speculative logic" gives to the word concept a special meaning far different from that which is commonly understood, why should this quite different term be called concept as well, so that the What about misunderstanding and confusion?The answer to this question may be as follows: Although the concept of formal logic is far from the concept of speculative thinking, it can be seen that the concept has a deeper meaning, which is not so related to the usage of ordinary language as it seems at first glance. estranged.We often say that the content is deduced from the concept, for example, from the concept of property to deduce the provisions of the law of property, or on the contrary, from the content to the concept.From this it can be seen that concepts are not mere forms without content in themselves.For if the concept is a form without content, on the one hand no content can be deduced from this empty form; Sex will be stripped away beyond comprehension.

§161 Conceptual progress is neither a mere transition to something else nor a mere reflection in something else, but a development.For in the concept those that are distinct are immediately and at the same time posited as identical with each other and with the whole.And the determinateness of each distinct is posited as a free being of the whole concept. Note: The transition to other things is a dialectical process within the scope of "being", and the reflection in other things is a dialectical process within the scope of "essence".Conversely, the movement of the concept is the development through which only that which is dormant in itself is developed and realized.In nature, only organic life corresponds to the conceptual stage.A plant, for example, develops from its seed.The seed already contains the whole plant, but only in an ideal potential way.But we should not understand the development of plants because it seems that different parts of plants, such as roots, stems, branches and leaves, seem to have existed in the seeds concretely and subtly.This is the so-called "primitive aggregate" assumption, and its mistake is to think that what is only in an ideal way at first has real existence.On the contrary, what is true of this assumption consists in the fact that the concept remains itself in its development, and that through this process nothing new is added as far as content is concerned, but only a form is produced. changes.The nature of the concept to express itself as self-development in the process is what is called innate ideas in the minds of ordinary people, or what Plato put forward, all learning is memory.But this statement does not mean that all the specific conscious content formed through education has already existed in the consciousness in detail beforehand.

The movement of concepts seems to be recognizable only as a game: the movement of concepts establishes an opponent that is not really the other, [but within itself].This truth is expressed in the Christian doctrine as follows: God not only created a world as an opposite to him, but also eternally once produced a Son, and God, as Spirit, in His Son That is, in himself. §162 The doctrine of concepts may be divided into three parts: (1) On subjective or formal concepts. (2) On the conception of immediacy or objectivity. (3) On ideas, the unity of subject and object, concept and objectivity, and absolute truth.

[Explanation] General logic includes only a part of the material of the third part of the whole system presented here, in addition to the laws of thought discussed above.There is some material on epistemology in Applied Logic.There is also a great deal of psychological, metaphysical, and empirical material mixed in here.The reason why so many empirical materials are mixed in is because I feel that the form of thinking itself is not enough in the end.But in doing so, logic loses its firm direction.But those forms which are at least within the sphere of true logic are taken only as categories of conscious thought, and only of intellectual thought, not of rational thought.

The logical categories discussed above, the categories of 'being' and 'essence', are indeed not only categories of thought, but they prove themselves to be concept.But they are only specific concepts (cf. §84 and §112), concepts in themselves, or in other words, concepts for us.Because the transition of each category, the opposite reflected in it is only a relative thing, which is neither defined as a special thing, nor defined as an individual or subject, nor defined as a third person who is a combination of the two. It is not clear that each category acquires identity in its counterpart, acquires its freedom, because it is not universal. —Concepts generally understood by ordinary people are only intellectual determinations or general appearances, and are therefore generally limited determinations of thought (cf. § 62).

The logic of concepts is generally regarded as a mere science of form, and understood as the science of the form itself of concepts, of judgments, of inferences, without at all dealing with whether there is something true in content; The question depends entirely on the content.If the logical forms of concepts were in fact dead, useless, and undifferentiated receptacles of representations and ideas, then knowledge of these forms would be a frivolous bastard irrelevant to truth.But in fact, on the contrary, they (logical forms) as conceptual forms are the living spirit of real things.Real things are true only by virtue of, through, and within these forms.But the truth of these forms themselves, as well as the necessary connection between them, has not been examined and studied until now.