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Single Idea 20953

[filed under theme 18. Thought / D. Concepts / 1. Concepts / a. Nature of concepts ]

Full Idea

Hegel relies on the claim that every concept depends for its determinacy upon its relation to other concepts which it is not (so that even the concept of being depends, for example, upon the concept of nothing).

Gist of Idea

Every concept depends on the counter-concepts of what it is not

Source

report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Science of Logic [1816]) by Andrew Bowie - Introduction to German Philosophy 4 'Questions'

Book Ref

Bowie,Andrew: 'Introduction to German Philosophy' [Polity 2003], p.90


A Reaction

How does he know this? A question I keep asking about continental philosophers. The negation concepts must be entirely non-conscious. Which negation concepts are relevant to the concept 'tree'?


The 27 ideas from 'Science of Logic'

If we start with indeterminate being, we arrive at being and nothing as a united pair [Hegel, by Houlgate]
Thought about being leads to a string of other concepts, like becoming, quantity, specificity, causality... [Hegel, by Houlgate]
Dialectic is the instability of thoughts generating their opposite, and then new more complex thoughts [Hegel, by Houlgate]
To grasp an existence, we must consider its non-existence [Hegel, by Houlgate]
Thinking of nothing is not the same as simply not thinking [Hegel, by Houlgate]
The ground of a thing is not another thing, but the first thing's substance or rational concept [Hegel, by Houlgate]
Kant's thing-in-itself is just an abstraction from our knowledge; things only exist for us [Hegel, by Bowie]
Hegel believe that the genuine categories reveal things in themselves [Hegel, by Houlgate]
The 'absolute idea' is when all the contradictions are exhausted [Hegel, by Bowie]
Hegel, unlike Kant, said how things appear is the same as how things are [Hegel, by Moore,AW]
Hegel's non-subjective idealism is the unity of subjective and objective viewpoints [Hegel, by Pinkard]
Hegel claimed his system was about the world, but it only mapped conceptual interdependence [Pinkard on Hegel]
The Absolute is the primitive system of concepts which are actualised [Hegel, by Gardner]
Hegel's 'absolute idea' is the interdependence of all truths to justify any of them [Hegel, by Bowie]
Every concept depends on the counter-concepts of what it is not [Hegel, by Bowie]
When we explicate the category of being, we watch a new category emerge [Hegel, by Houlgate]
Objectivity is not by correspondence, but by the historical determined necessity of Geist [Hegel, by Pinkard]
Being and nothing are the same and not the same, which is the identity of identity and non-identity [Hegel]
Hegel's dialectic is not thesis-antithesis-synthesis, but usually negation of negation of the negation [Hegel, by Moore,AW]
Nothing exists, as thinkable and expressible [Hegel]
The so-called world is filled with contradiction [Hegel]
The absolute idea is being, imperishable life, self-knowing truth, and all truth [Hegel]
The absolute idea is the great unity of the infinite system of concepts [Hegel, by Moore,AW]
The nature of each category relates itself to another [Hegel]
Authentic thinking and reality have the same content [Hegel]
In absolute knowing, the gap between object and oneself closes, producing certainty [Hegel]
We must start with absolute abstraction, with no presuppositions, so we start with pure being [Hegel]