Preliminary Notions

The notions (Bestimmungen) in question are: thought, concept, idea or reason, and their development.

1. Thought as Concept and Idea

a. Thought. First, then, there is thought.

(1) As Concept. Thought is not something empty and abstract; it is determining, in fact self-determining. In other words, thought is essentially concrete. This concrete thought we call concept.

Thought must be a concept; no matter how abstract it may seem to be, of itself (in sich) it must be concrete. As soon as thought is philosophical it is of itself concrete.

From one point of view it is correct to say that philosophy deals in abstractions, insofar as it has to do with thoughts, which are abstracted from the sensible, the so-called concrete. From another point of view it is quite incorrect to speak in this way: abstractions belong to the reflection proper to understanding, not to philosophy;

It is precisely those who condemn philosophy for being abstract who are most immersed in the sort of reflections which are proper to understanding, even though they think they have to do with the concretest of contents. Because they reflect on the matter at hand (die Sache), what they have is a combination of the merely sensible and subjective thoughts – i.e., abstractions.

(2) As Idea.

In more precise terms, concrete thought is concept. Still further determined it is idea. The idea is the concept insofar as it is realized. To be realized it must determine itself, and this determination is nothing else but itself. Thus, its content is itself. Its infinite relation to itself, then, means that only from itself does its determination come.

Now, the idea is what we call truth – a large word. To the unprejudiced it will ever continue to be a large word, and it will make his heart swell.

Recently, of course, the conclusion has been reached that we are incapable of knowing the truth. The object of philosophy, however, is concrete thought, and when this is further determined it is, precisely, idea or truth.

As for the claim that the truth cannot be known, this claim is made specifically (fur sich) in the history of philosophy, and when we come to it we shall examine it more closely. Here need only be mentioned that it is to some extent the historians of philosophy themselves who give the prejudice a semblance of validity.

Tennemann is a Kantian. He thinks that it is absurd to want to know the truth.

The proof of this is the history of philosophy.

What is difficult to understand is that anyone with this conviction should work so hard at philosophy, could in fact continue to be concerned with it, with no purpose in mind.

This sort of thing makes the history of philosophy a mere account of all kinds of opinions, each of which falsely claims to be the truth. Another prejudice says that we can, of course, know about the truth, but only after we have reflected on it (that truth is not known in immediate perception or intuition – neither in external sensible nor in so-called intellectual intuition – since every intuition is as such sensible).

I should like to call attention to (appellieren an) this prejudice. Granted that it is one thing to be capable of knowing about the truth and another to know the truth.

It is only by reflection, however, that I experience what the truth of the matter is. First, then, there is the contention that we cannot know the truth and, secondly, that we know truth only through reflection. If we give a more precise account of these contentions we shall have progressed further in the picture (Vorstellung) we are trying to give.

The first determinations we have arrived at, then, are that thought is concrete, that the concrete is truth, and that the truth can be the result only of thinking. To be even more determinate we can say that the spirit develops itself out of itself.