Commentary on §213-222: Is the Idea abstract?

Question: If the Idea is the totality of truth (through the dialectic), how is it more than merely an observation of the negative nature of truth, supplemented with an abstract concept? Is the idea of a totality merely a trick of words, enabled by negation, with no concrete reality due to it’s inconceivability?

In discussing Hegel’s explanation of the Idea in §213-222, the first necessary premise for Hegel’s concept to work, is that “the Idea is totality or absolute.” (170/213) This reference to totality is completely essential for the Idea to arise as a concept. Hegel continually refers to this necessity of totality in statements like “The Idea is the Truth,” (the Truth being the whole) and saying “everything actual, in so far as it is true, is the Idea.” (170/213) Although at the surface this already seems to be an abstract concept that simply grasps as far as it can, he assures us that it is not. He goes as far as saying the Idea is “essentially concrete,” and he accomplishes this through the important aspect of negation in the notion.

In the 6th premise of the argument concerning the Idea, which refers to the essential concreteness of the Idea, the description of the notion is lacking in a consideration of the effects of negation. Hegel affirms that the Idea would indeed be an abstract form “only if the notion which is its principle were taken as an abstract unity,” (171/213) instead he suggests that the realization of the notion as a negative return into subjectivity gives it it’s concrete form. All the relations of understanding are “constrained by their nature.” (4c) These relations only become the truth through the negation that is necessary for the dialectic, and through their part in the totality. 


When premise 6 states that concreteness for the idea is created by the “notion birthing character to itself”  the essential aspect that it is missing is the negative nature of the notion. Concepts like Notion and Objectivity are impermanent when separated, their truth lies in their negative relations to each other, their dialectical aspect that makes them a “dynamic element of the idea.” (172/213). As a concept on its own Notion would only negate itself into its opposite, and in a truly totalizing fashion Hegel says “this transition, and the unity in which the extremes are merged and become factors... reveals itself as their truth.” (172/214) The conclusion of this argument is lacking in an essential contribution which is the attribution to the fact that the union which enables the Idea, happens through negation.

This aspect of the negative tendency of reality is an incredibly exciting one, it provides the framework for Hegel’s dialectic, and it seems to fit into the philosophical/historical tendency to want to unite opposed concepts like causality and freedom. However, I can’t help but want to pull back from this necessity of totalizing these relations and crafting them into such a grand concept as the Idea. Firstly, (and this is merely the individual’s subjective tendency) since the Idea is so necessarily a totality, one will never experience it, besides it’s impermanent manifestations. This incapability of grasping the totality makes it as distant a concept as God, using such circular reasoning as totalizing lends itself to. When Hegel says the Idea is everything, this is the same as saying “Everything is everything” but calling it by a different name the first time. If Hegel were here he would despise my comments because they are entrenched in subjectivity and neglect to see the negation, neglect to see everything. Who will see everything though? The only thing capable would be another abstract concept such as the Mind. Even if one studied the dialectical movement of history until the end, Hegel says himself “the Idea is the result of this course of dialectic.” (171/213) This particular course. Is it to be assumed that our particular human history will contain within it every possible relation? However, even if it did, it would remain an ungraspable idea, thwarted by the negation and totalizing that makes it possible.