Understanding of the Abstract and the Concrete in Dialectics and Formal Logic

chapter 7 Understanding of the Abstract and the Concrete in Dialectics and Formal Logic

The terms ‘abstract’ and ‘concrete’ are used in everyday speech and in special literature very differently. Thus we talk about ‘concrete facts’ and about ‘concrete music’, about ‘abstract thinking’ and about ‘abstract painting’, about ‘concrete truth’ and about ‘abstract labour’. In each case such use of words seems to have its justification in this or that connotation of these words and to demand full unification of the use of these words will be to exhibit laughable pedantry. But if we are talking not simply about the words, not only about the terms, but also about the content of scientific categories, historically connected with the terms, then the matter is quite different. The definitions of the abstract and the concrete as the categories of logic must be stable and univocal within the limits of this science, since with their help there are discovered the most important principles of scientific thinking. Dialectical logic expresses in these terms a number of its fundamental principles (‘there is no abstract truth, truth is always concrete’, thesis about the ‘ascent from the abstract to the concrete’, and so on). Therefore in dialectical logic the categories of the abstract and the concrete have entirely determinate meaning that is inextricably connected with the dialectical-materialist understanding of truth, the relationship of thinking and reality, the method of the theoretical reproduction of reality in thinking, and so on. And if we are talking not about the words, but about the categories of dialectics that are connected with these words, then any frivolity, lack of clarity and instability (and therefore incorrectness) in their definitions would necessarily lead to the distorted understanding of the essence of the matter. For that reason it is important to purify the categories of the abstract and the concrete of all the extraneous material that is traditionally, either habitually or by mistake, associated with it for centuries in many books, often interfering with the correct understanding of the principles of dialectical logic.

1 The Categories of the Abstract and the Concrete in Formal Logic

The question of the relationship between the abstract and the concrete in its general form is not posed and is not solved within the limits of formal logic, since it is a purely philosophical, epistemological question that is loc-

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004388253_008 150 chapter 7 ated outside of the limits of its competence. However, where there is talk of the classification of concepts, or more precisely, of the division of concepts into ‘abstract’ and ‘concrete’, there formal logic necessarily assumes a perfectly definitive understanding of the corresponding categories. This understanding is the basis for the division and therefore may be revealed in an analysis. Since our educational-pedagogical literature on formal logic orients itself in its epistemological basics on the philosophy of dialectical materialism, it will not be useless to critically assess the traditional division of the concepts into abstract and concrete and see how justified it is from the dialectical-materialist point of view on thinking and concept, and to ask whether it needs to be ‘cor- rected’, whether there remain in it the traces of tradition that is incompatible with the philosophy of dialectical materialism. Otherwise it might so happen that together with the division of concepts into abstract and concrete the stu- dent will acquire an incorrect understanding of the philosophical categories of the abstract and the concrete, and this incorrect understanding will later – when he is dealing with dialectical logic – become an obstacle and lead to mis- understanding and confusion, or even to distorted understanding of the most important principles of the latter. The analysis of the educational-pedagogical literature, published in the last 10 or 15 years, shows that the majority of the authors express the traditional understanding of the matter, although with some qualifications and ‘correc- tions’. According to this traditional view, concepts (or thoughts) are divided into abstract and concrete in the following manner:

We call concrete that concept in which there is reflected a really exist- ing determinate object or class of objects. We call abstract that concept in which there is reflected some quality of objects, mentally abstracted from the objects themselves.1

The concrete concept is such a concept that is attributed to the groups, classes of things, objects, phenomena …The abstract concept is a concept of the qualities of objects and phenomena, when such qualities are taken as an independent subject matter of thought.2

We call concrete such concepts the objects of which really exist as qualities of things of the material world … Abstract, or abstracted, concepts

1 Kondakov 1954, p. 300. 2 Strogovich 1949, p. 87.