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1. A Short Essay Explicating the Nature of the Hegelian Concept of
Thinking-Over in its Relation to the Dialectic and Sublation
Alyssa L. Firman
Modern European Philosophy
University of Guelph

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In order to properly explicate the Hegelian conception of thinking-it-over in relation to
the dialectic and sublation, a stage must be set as the background so as to best articulate the
foreground. With the incessantly fluctuating world of appearances as his background, G.W.F.
Hegel claims in the The Encyclopaedia Logic, that “in the order of time consciousness produces
representations of objects before it produces concepts of them (Hegel, 24).” Which is to say,
consciousness first experiences the immediacy of sense intuition, through which the
corresponding representation of the objects observed through sense intuition are represented to
the conscious subject. The subject through thought is then able to understand the content from
sense intuition by virtue of its representation in thought. However, an understanding of an object
is for Hegel not in any regard the same as understanding the Concept of an object. The
understanding “brings forth only finite determinations (of objects) and moves within these alone
(Hegel, 64).” The Concept of an object, which brings forth the true and universal nature of an
object, is not experienced by the conscious subject through the immediate intuition of the object
as is the understanding; rather, in order to grasp the universal Concept residing in an object, “we
must think it over to determine it’s genuine nature (Hegel, 54).”
Thus, the process of the concept of thinking it over is made manifest; it is the conversion
of mere representation into understanding, and from understanding into discovering the true and
universal concept of an object from and against that which is transitory of an object. In other
words, thinking it over is the action of thought in its search for actuality through the discovery of
universality amongst a sea of apparent particulars. The purpose of the search for universality, for
Hegel, is that as human beings, or more specifically, unsatisfied philosophers, we seek to
discover unity in the vast manifold of existence. It is not enough to simply accept this event and

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that event, this thing and that thing. For we are aquatinted with many phenomena, but this mere
acquaintance with sensible phenomena, Hegel rightly declares, is not enough. We want to look
behind it, we want to know what the thing in itself is and we want to comprehend that thing
which it is actually (Hegel, 53). Thus, “we think about it, we want to know the cause as
something distinct from the phenomenon; we want to know what is inward as distinct from what
is merely outward. So we reduplicate the phenomenon; we break it in two, the inward and the
outward, force and its utterance, cause and effect (Hegel, 53).” It is precisely in this process of
thinking over in this case of the separation of the inward and outward, where Hegel claims one
can distinguish the universal from the particular; for what is particular is something sensible and
transitory, but it is by thinking about something in its particularity, sensibility and transitoriness,
that we get to know what persists in it. What persists in it being the inner force which drives its
continuation; the universal of the thing, that of it which is essential, inner, the true concept of the
thing (Hegel, 52). Thus, the ultimate purpose in thinking something over is to derive the
universal essence of a thing from its being in order to form an understanding of its Concept
(Hegel, 133).
For example, let us consider the human race; a thing which constitutes billions of
particular sensible and transitory entities, united together in their particularity by virtue of the
shared universality which constitutes their being called human. That is to say, though the specific
human is particular and transitory, it is not simply this human or that human which constitutes
the concept of being human, but it is the thing shared universally between humans and which
persists through the cycle of births and deaths of humans, which constitutes the true concept of
the human. That thing which constitutes the essence of the being of a human is, as Hegel says,

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the both particular and universal “I.” For when each human naturally proclaims “I,” it means
“me as this one excluding all others,” but in the same movement it is this “I” which all other
humans have in common with me (Hegel, 51). Thus, this universal “I,” which is itself thinking as
the subject, is in the movement of its transitory singularity, universal in its true essence (Hegel,
51). As such, it is evident that the process of thinking something over is the process which, when
taken as active with regard to objects, makes the universal of that object known, and it is the
universal which contains the value of the object, what is essential, inner, and true of it (Hegel,
52). In this manner, “thinking over changes something in the way in which the content is first
given in sensation, intuition, or representation; thus it is only through the mediation of an
alteration that the true nature of the object comes into consciousness (Hegel, 54).” Thus, as
Hegel declares, it is from this both particular and universal “I” that abstraction is made from all
particulars to determine their universals (Hegel, 57). As such, it is in the movement from the “I”
to the universals which then generates Hegel's conception of what objective thought is; the
understanding of the universal concepts which determine things in themselves. In this manner,
things are, in themselves, viewed in themselves just as they are thought; Hegel concludes thus
that thinking over is the truth of what is objective in thought (Hegel, 54).
To summarize this concept simply, in order to proceed to its relation to the dialectic,
thinking something over begins with the thinking subject who declares itself as “I;” the subject
then orientates its thinking towards an object, differentiating what is particular from what is
universal in that object; whence the subject has come to differentiate the universal from the
singular, the subject has subjected itself to objective thought. Such was the case in the preceding
example of the determination of the universal within the human race. Thus, we now breach the

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dialectic; for, “when we determine the universal in this way (by virtue of thinking over), we find
that it forms the antithesis of something else, namely the immediate, external, and particular, as
against the mediated, the inward, and the universal (Hegel, 53).” Which is to say, the dialectic for
Hegel, is composed essentially of a thesis, an antithesis, and a synthesis. In the case of thinking
over, the first component, the thesis, is thinking taken as a subject in its immediate particularity.
Whence the subject moves from the immediacy of its particularity into the comprehension of the
universals contained within particularities, an antithesis is formed as something which is in
opposition to the thesis. Namely, the universal as opposed to the particular. Once the thesis and
the antithesis, the particular and the universal, have been grasped in the thinking over of
consciousness, a synthesis of the two is formed. Which in the case of thinking over, the thesis
constituting the particular and the antithesis constituting the universal, come together in the third
movement to synthesize objective thought; the understanding of the concept that particular and
transitory things contain within themselves the universal and unchanging.
The dialectic as such is the demonstrative form of the syllogism, and the syllogistic form,
Hegel declares, is the universal form of all things (Hegel, 59). For the syllogism, as the dialectic,
“is the thought determination in which the particular is the middle that concludes the extremes of
the universal and the singular,” which is to say, “all of them are particulars that conclude
themselves as something universal with the singular (Hegel, 59).” The profundity of this, of
Hegel’s claim, is demonstrated eloquently in his allegorically metaphorical example of the
magnet. “The magnet,” he explains, “is a presentation of the syllogism; it brings its poles
together in the middle, at its point of indifference, and, as a result, the poles, though distinct, are
immediately one (Hegel, 59).” This demonstration is sagacious in its explanatory power; for the

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two poles can be interpreted as allegories for the thesis and the antithesis, the particular and the
universal, which are brought together inevitably by virtue of their relationship to one another.
And in the coming together of the two poles, of the thesis and the antithesis, of the particular and
the universal, though distinct of themselves, in the realization of their mergence they are
immediately understood as one. For there is no particular without its universal determinate, and
there is no cognition of universality without its particular manifestation.
However, as poetic as the oneness of the unity of particularity and universality could be
of itself if left at that, it does not compare to the greater and more fittingly tragic poetry of which
the process of thinking over the dialectic, the syllogism, concludes; which Hegel explains, is in
that the finite unity through which particularity and universality come together, must of its
nature, sublate itself and pass over of itself into its opposite, because it contradicts itself inwardly
(Hegel, 129). Which is to say, taking the human being again as an example, it is a thing which
exists, but in its existence it exists contradictorily. For the human being is an embodiment of both
particular being and of universal essence; it is the universal “I” of life, but it is also a particular
which is of finitude, of that which must come to death. Thus, the human exists as life itself but it
also carries within itself the opposite of life, the negation of itself in itself, as that which it will
inevitably sublate into by virtue of that precise inner contradiction; it’s own nature. Even this
planet, Hegel says, “in its position has it in itself to be in another position, and through its own
motion, brings this, its otherness, into existence (Hegel, 130).” As such, “everything finite is its
own sublation,” and these conclusions of sublation are themselves the result of the process of
thinking over, and the process of thinking over, is itself the dialectic in action (Hegel, 129).

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BIBLIOGRAPHY
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. The Encyclopedia Logic. Trans. T.F. Geraets, W.A. Suchting
and H.S. Harris. Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company Inc., 1991.