CONCRETE. — In opposition to abstract (v.), which is the mental universal, concrete is the real singular, especially the individual of material substances and what belongs to it in propria: it is the first substance, indivisible (Aristotle, Cat., 5, 3 b 12). Concrete reality is thus given by the principle of individuation, which distinguishes the individual from the species and separates it from individuals of the same species.
This, in the end, corresponds roughly to the usage of classical Latin of concrete as an attribute of matter insofar as it presents itself as condensed and thick (“concreta copia materiale”: Lucretius, I, 1018; “aër concretus” in contrast to “aër fusus”: Cicero, De Nat. deor., II, 39). For which, instead, the concrete is the “concrete” in its subjectivity, inasmuch as, through the dialectical mediation, it holds together, in the moment of synthesis (becoming), the two preceding moments of thesis (being) and antithesis (non-being). Concrete is therefore the concept because it is a totality embracing in unity the moments of universality, particularity, and individuality (Enzykl. d. ph. Wiss., §§ 163-64). A position which Gentile found still too tied to classical logic, inasmuch as it supposed that the concept had outside itself both Nature, as its presupposition, and Spirit as the return by which the idea makes itself into itself. The true and authentic concrete can only be the pure Act of thinking, identity of thinking and thought, of consciousness and object of consciousness, and thus self-creation (v.), absolute freedom, and historicity. For the critics of idealism, the alleged new concept renews the very meaning of thought because it does not recognize the effective reality of the object and of the subject in their “singularity.”