Chapter 4 - The Concept’s Freedom

Summary

The logic of the Concept has three parts. The first (“The subjective concept”) examines (apparently following the divisions of traditional logic) the concept as-it-is, the types of judgement and the reasoning (“syllogism”) constructed from judgements; but the notions of judgement and syllogistic reasoning are as deeply transformed as that of the concept itself. Far from any formal approach, how thought informs reality should be examined. The second part (“The object”) examines how this conceptual shaping of the real happens. It occurs at three levels, seemingly corresponding to the great divisions of classical science: mechanism, chemism, teleology. The third part concerns “the idea”, a notion that is completely transformed, being defined as “the absolute unity of the [subjective] concept and objectivity” (Encyclopedia §213). Hegel describes how subjectivity and objectivity, thought and reality, interfere, to the extent that it becomes impossible to separate them, except at the cost of a great abstraction, that of the “understanding”. Hegel calls this interpenetration of thought and being the “absolute idea”, thus redefining the terms in which philosophy had hitherto been thought.