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And by a prudent flight and cunning save A life which valour could not, from the grave. A better buckler I can soon regain, But who can get another life again? Archilochus

Wednesday, May 5, 2021

Hegelian Abstract vs. Concrete Universalities


Concrete Universal: A key conception in the philosophy of Hegel, that certifies the reality of categories. A category is a synthesis of two opposed abstractions (e.g. becoming is a synthesis of being and not-being) and in turn will be one member of a pair of opposites: the dialectical progress of history unites or sublates the pair under a yet higher category. The only absolutely concrete universal is reality as a whole: an all-embracing system of thought. British absolute idealists, such as Bosanquet and Bradley, supposed that if the concrete universal is substantial and real it ought to be identified with individual things.
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“In the serene world of mental illness, modern man no longer communicates with the madman: on one hand, the man of reason delegates the physician to madness, thereby authorizing a relation only through the abstract universality of disease; on the other, the man of madness communicates with society only by the intermediary of an equally abstract reason which is order, physical and moral constraint, the anonymous pressure of the group, the requirements of conformity.”
― Michel Foucault, "Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason"
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The difference between philosophy and sophistry on this point could perhaps be summed up by saying that, while sophistry represents an abstract universality, philosophy's universality is essentially concrete.

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