Three Paragraph Summary of Hegel's Theory of Concept

The concept is the unity of being and essence. In the theory of being, being was seen withdrawing into essence; in the theory of essence, essence revealed what it was by putting itself forth in being. This double transition is the sublation of the difference of being and essence. At first, being was at the origin. But secondly it became the derivative of essence, something put forth (posited). Example: the egg is the essence of the chicken. But the former has no content apart from the latter, its realization in being. An ambiguity thus arose as to which was the original. At the end of the theory of essence there was the final reversal: being became the original and essence became the derived: the adult chicken is what the egg really is, the true essence of chicken. The chicken can produce the egg, but it can warm it, rotate it, make it hatch, etc., too. In the Aristotelian tradition this is called the ‘priority in substance of actuality over potency’. (Perhaps the most important thought in the whole tradition.) Being was static; its becoming was consequently its passing away. Essence endured change, but its actualization was a falling into the externality of being. As the third to being and essence we now have the essence which becomes by arriving at itself, actualizes by emerging into itself. This is the concept, the essence which is actual as essence. It abides by itself in its development. What satisfies this criterion is thinking: thinking is immanent actuality, that which is per se actual, active. The concept is thus the human ego, the ‘I’ of self-consciousness. But it is also the universal ego, God’s ego. First we are to consider the concept in itself, self-occupied thinking. This is traditional Aristotelian logic: concept, judgment, and syllogism. First of all, (1.) the concept as such is universal (all), particular (some), or individual (one). Each is the whole concept (e.g. an individual rose is an existing being, but it is also the rose in general, the universal rose, and a particular instance of the universal). The concept realizes itself through (2.) the judgment. Judgment is like the genesis of tree and fruit from the seed: the outgoing movement is always already the return journey into the origin. Judgment thus recapitulates the whole logic: judgments of being (the rose is red); judgments of reflection (the rose is useful on valentines days); and judgments of concept (the rose is a good rose). The first simply puts forth a quality; the second asserts goodness, but in relation to another; the third says it is good in and of itself. Judgments of concept thus repeat the subject’s true nature (essence) in its predicate (being). This rose is not just one among many, but is an exemplary rose, the essence of rose existing in reality. But the content appears twice. Judgment thus achieves completion in (3.) the syllogism, which has three forms: syllogism of being (in which the middle is not explicitly the unity of the extremes), the syllogism of reflection (in which the middle externally unites the extremes), and syllogism of necessity (in which the middle is the inner unity of the extremes). Syllogism of being is exemplified by the first Aristotelian figure (particular is in the middle), reflection by the second figure (individual is in the middle), and necessity by the third figure (universal is in the middle). Basically: syllogism of being is exemplified by linking an individual, through one of its qualities, to a universal (this rose is red, red is a color, therefore this rose is colored). Syllogism of reflection is exemplified by induction (Gold, copper, bronze conduct electricity; gold, copper, bronze are metals; therefore all metals conduct electricity). And syllogism of necessity is exemplified by a universal which is exhausted by its particulars (triangles are scalene, isosceles, or equilateral; this triangle is scalene; therefore it is not isosceles or equilateral). With this, the concept is brought to completion. This is the form of God, the trinity, but only the form, and thus deprived of objectivity.

The object is the concept outside itself. This is being, but now in the form of what has been put forth by reason, so that being as a whole is in rational (triune) form. This transition may seem incomprehensible, but it is the same as the ontological proof of the existence of God (cf. Anselm and Descartes): thinking has being in it, and thus has the power to put it forth. If reason (concept) is God as creative power, then the object is creation as an other, the natural world. Now the whole science of logic (being, essence, and concept) can be conceived as a nodal line (solid, liquid, gas) but with the three phases as: being, living, and thinking (à la Neoplatonism). Or: static nature, moving nature, self-moving nature. Or in Eriugena’s terms: a) created but uncreating, b) created and creating, and c) self-creating. But because the object is not yet returned back into the concept, it is not yet real thinking. Its phases are thus the phases of living nature, and of natural science: physics, chemistry, and biology. As forms of objectivity: mechanism, chemism, and teleology (but only external teleology). The object is thus first (1.) mechanism, objectivity in the form of externality. Mechanism is exemplified in nature by: atoms in the void, the solar system. But also in the human world: a mechanical memory, a mechanical way of walking. The parts of mechanism are disconnected: their connection is through their concept (the soul), but soul is nowhere to be found in mechanism. Its characteristic is rigidity, formality, lack of spontaneity. Mechanism corresponds to the philosophical theory of determinism or fatalism: every object is determined externally by another object, and on and on, without any self-determination, without freedom. The solar system is a mechanical syllogism with disconnected bodies as extremes mediated by the middle term, the central body, which is external to them. Second, (2.) chemism is the intrinsic relatedness of objects, their inner affinity for one another. This form of relationship is apparent in chemical science, but also in the human world in the form of love and friendship. Chemism is the objective form of the reflective judgment and reflective syllogism: combination, but external combination of the extremes through a middle which is not yet explicitly objective. In a chemical reaction the two extremes are brought together externally by the product. It has been said that love is one soul sharing two bodies. This third is the concept as such, which as an object is (3.) teleology, purpose. Where there is purpose, an intelligence is immediately assumed, so teleology falls squarely within the sphere of the concept. It is the concept outside itself as concept. But the telos is here only an external telos. When the telos is brought back into the concept, this is the end-in-itself, the idea.

The idea is the end-in-itself, the unity of concept and object. It may seem at first that the transition to the idea is no different from the transition from essence to concept. There the creator was a causal substance, and the creation was an effect identical to its cause (e.g. a seed or an egg). But God is not a seed or an egg – he is much more the intelligence (the concept) whose effect is rather intentional design (the object). The idea is thus the unity of designer and design, the immanent turning back of purposeful creation to its originative intellect. In other words the immanent bending back of being into thinking. A most important point must be made here: the traditional definition of truth is that it is the correspondence of being and thinking (Aquinas: ‘veritas est adaequatio rei et intellectus’). An infinitely true definition. However, it is not merely the lowering of consciousness down into conformity with a finite, sensible object. Philosophical truth is rather the raising up of the created object (nature) so that it is adequate to the infinite thinking which is its creator (God). Natural history (history of the universe) is this immanent return of creature to creator, the gradual elevation of creation into God. And this is the human being. Man is the idea, the truth itself existing in reality. Reason is truly the rational animal, the human being; and God is truly the theanthropos, the God-man. The idea, the end-in-itself, is in the first place (1.) life itself, the simple unity of thinking and being. Secondly, it is (2.) knowledge, but finite knowledge. The characteristic of finite knowledge is that in it the true and the good are held apart. The idea of the true is the aim of science; the idea of the good is the aim of practical action. The unity of these yields the practical activity which is an end-in-itself: the truth which is good and the good which is true. This union is a return back to life, but now as (3.) Absolute Idea. This is the highest definition of God that can be given in the science of pure logic: the reunion of knowledge back into life. In the Book of Genesis, Adam and Eve are expelled from the garden on account of having eaten the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good & evil, i.e. the partaking of finite knowledge. What they lack to resolve this dilemma is the fruit of the tree of life. The two trees are however one tree (cf. Jakob Böhme’s Mysterium Magnum: Part One, Ch. 17). The Absolute Idea is intelligent life who goes out of himself to get a look at himself, thus falling into finitude, into space and time, where he is held apart from himself in mutual externality; but in recognizing himself he reunites himself with himself, and is thus immediately restored to eternal life (cf. Fr. John Romanides, “Franks, Romans, Feudalism, and Doctrine,” p. 88). The Absolute Idea is the philosophical method, self-knowing truth, and imperishable life. He is love itself, the Word of God, the Logos as abiding eternally prior to the creation of space and time.