Issues of “concrete” and “abstract” for the understanding
The issue of what it means to be “concrete” exhibits a challenge for the understanding as it grabbles with the association of what constitutes “real” in the context of knowledge. On the one hand, the “abstract” or what we know as the concept or the idea of an object comes after the perception of the object, which is taken as the first element of concreteness by the understanding. The standard for being “concrete” according to the understanding is that the object exists at the present moment and that it directly stimulates the organs of sensation, like perception, so that it cannot go about denying something it is in contact with even if it lacks knowledge of what it is.
On the other hand, every object the understanding is directly in contact with is based on the “abstract”, meaning that there is an idea which allows the object to be recognized as something specific and that this distinct nature of the object is also the concept or form of the idea that characterizes its essetinal nature, but the understanding does not have direct contact with that aspect of the object and that is why it is considered “abstract”— not directly present at the moment. The object is directly in contact with the sense organ and in this way it is considered the “concrete”, but the fact that the understanding can not deny the existence of the object based on the fact that it is directly in contact with it, does not indicate for the understanding what the object is. If for example I am blinded and touching something, I may not know what it is, I may know it’s hard and a piece of metal but I may not know whether it is a gun, stool, or something else.
MoreoverI can still be looking at something I have no idea of, it would just appear as an unidentifiable blab of some sort, like a UFO at the far distance. This level of concreteness has to resort to the abstract to inform it what it is, touch, sight, smell, has to recognize the idea of the thing it is in contact with before identifying what it is. A cat for example has sense but it only receives his owner in a limited way, I.e., it sees him as a mammal capable of play, consumption m, movements et ., but it does not for example grasp his essetinal idea, that man is the potentially rational being, in other words, the cat has senses but it lacks the idea of what the man is. Just like for example a man has the senses to perceive an object but lacks the idea of what it is, he does not know what he is looking at.
On the other hand, the abstract as the idea of something without the concrete — in the sense of the object being there for the senses— also lacks reality because similarly even if thought cannot deny having an idea that clearly indicates something, like I just thought of a horse brings about the knowledge of a horse, the idea without the object being in contact with the senses, is in flux, an idea of a horse quickly turns into an idea of a frog, than that turns into a table, all of which bear no necessary context to each other and are in constant state of changing into each other. While a horse directly perceived does not instantaneously changes into another object like a dog or a tree. This indeterminate phenomena of mind has a place in nature that is not only in the subject but also outside any individual capable of grasping it as their ability.
The problem with what it means to be abstract and concrete for the understanding can be summarized thusly; to define each concept with the other, I.e., to define the concrete with the abstract in the sense the latter informs the former by making it a specific and particular thing by portraying what it is during a haze of an indetermanite bundle ; and for the same reason, for the concrete to define the abstract by making it definite and specific thing by keeping it stable and certain so as to be picked out by a mode of thought to apprehend rather than in a constant flux: both these supplementary definitions of the other does not answer the dilemma of which is more fundamental than the other.
When the concrete is more fundamental it has the abstract as the reason why it is fundamental; and when the abstract is more fundamental it has the concrete as the reason it stands on as being so. The understanding can not grasp the basis for its existence by looking at which principle comes prior to the other. Reason is achieved when it knows that both are abstractions of the same existence in which it is trying to understanding, because reason is both these as a unity, prior to the dissection of them as opposed principles. It is too simplistic to place one before or after the other, even though that is necessary. The abstraction of two different type of natures however is not made for the arbitrary reason of then coming to realize that they are the same, because there default condition the understanding finds itself in, that it is in contact with the objects around it and it takes this to be concrete, but then there is also a true innate intuition that this is not the only case and that there is a more fundamental abstract basis that it is not directly in contact with but is indirectly knowable. The contradiction between the concrete and abstract is synonymous with the contradiction of confusing the part with the whole.