Dialectics of Concept

Dialectics of concept refers to the formation, change and development of concepts as well as the dialectical relationship between concepts and their transformation. Studies of the dialectical nature of concepts is the main content of the dialectical logic. Concept is people’s understanding of the essence of things. It is the most basic unit and form of logical thinking. As the knot of people’s understanding and mastering of natural phenomena, concept is formed in the understanding of the objective world and a reflection of the objective world. Concept is different from perceptual knowledge. It is not simple, direct or superficial, but uses abstractions to approximately depict the essence and laws of objective things that are developing and changing in the form of concepts, thus forming a series of concepts from vivid intuition to abstract thinking. Lenin pointed out that “the concept (cognition) reveals the essence (the law of causality, identity, difference, etc.) in Being (in immediate phenomena)—such is actually the general course of all human cognition (of all science) in general. Such is the course also of natural science and political economy (and history).” The concept reflects the “general course” of the dialectic development of human recognition and is a higher level of knowledge. The concept is formed in practice. With the development of practice and knowledge, it is in the process of motion, change and development and is subject to the test of practice. Marx and Engels pointed out in The Communist Manifesto that “Does it require deep intuition to comprehend that man’s ideas, views, and conceptions, in one word, man’s consciousness, changes with every change in the conditions of his material existence, in his social relations and in his social life? What else does the history of ideas prove, than that intellectual production changes its character in proportion as material production is changed?” As for people’s understanding of the surrounding through social practice, the original concepts are about the daily life, usually direct summary of the surrounding. At this time, people do not have a deep understanding of the surrounding and could not generalize things very well, which is the exact case for concepts summarized by primitive nationalities and people in early childhood. With the development and deepening of people’s social practice and the improvement of their cognitive ability, they have a more comprehensive, systematic and in-depth understanding of the relationship between things. Concepts cover a wider range and the connotations reflect the essence more deeply and accurately. Concepts used in scientific thinking, that is, scientific concepts, are formed under the guidance of relevant theories and in the context of specific theoretical systems. Their content is richer, more abstract and more general, and changes along with the theoretical systems. Since scientific thinking depends on a certain theoretical system in a specific era, its generalization of objective things far exceeds the concepts in daily life, thus reaching the depth that should be or may be reached at that time and becoming a profound summary of people’s understanding in a certain historical stage. With the development and change of people’s practice and understanding, concepts are also in the process of movement, change and development. The content of the original concepts gradually increases and deepens, and there even might be changes and innovations between the old and new concepts.

As an understanding of the essence of things, concept is a reflection of the dialectical nature of objective things. Concept, as a thinking form reflecting the essential attributes of things, reflects the dialectical movement of objective things. It is a dialectical unity of subjectivity and objectivity, particularity and universality, abstraction and concreteness, certainty and flexibility. The concept reflected as the objective dialectical relation of things necessarily reflects the dialectical relation of mutual connection, interaction and transformation between things. To dialectically understand and apply concepts is to understand the overall and universal flexibility of concepts, that is, the flexibility of the unity of opposites of concepts, and to learn the flexibility of concepts in and under specific theoretical systems and contexts. The concept should not be regarded as an isolated, one-sided, static and abstract regulation, but should be a unity of rich concrete contents, different regulations and diverse aspects. Lenin’s revelation of the dialectical nature of concepts and formation of abstract notions and operations with them already included the idea, conviction, consciousness of the law-governed character to the world. To distinguish causality from this connection is stupid. To deny the objectivity of notions, the objectivity of the universal in the individual and in the particular, is impossible. Consequently, Hegel was much more profound than Kant, and others, in tracing the reflection of the movement of the objective world in the movement of notions.

The scientific concept tested by practice is objective truth, which deeply reflects the reality and develops with the development of practice. Human’s understanding of truth is to form a series of concepts in practice, in the continuous change and movement of concepts, and in countless transformations from one concept to another. Lenin pointed out that, “The totality of all sides of the phenomenon, of reality and their (reciprocal) relations—that is what truth is composed of. The relations of notions (= transitions = contradictions) = the main content of logic, by which these concepts (and their relations, transitions, contradictions) are shown as reflections of the objective world. The dialectics of things produces the dialectics of ideas, and not vice versa.” The formation and development of concepts are dialectical reflections of the objective world in eternal movement, and the dialectics of the development of objective things determines the dialectics of concepts.