CONCRETO. – In opposition to the abstract (v.), which is the mental universal, c. is the real singular, above all the individual of material substances and that which belongs to it properly: it is the first, indivisible substance (Aristotle, Cat., 5, 3 b 12). Concreteness is therefore given by the principle of individuation, which distinguishes the individual from the species and separates it from the individuals of the same species.
What, at bottom, corresponds remotely to the usage of classical Latin, in which c. is an attribute of matter insofar as it presents itself as condensed and thick («concreta copia materiae»: Lucretius, I, 1018; «aër concretus» in contrast with «aër fusus»: Cicero, De Nat. deor., II, 39). For Hegel, on the other hand, c. is the «concept» in its subjectivity, insofar as, through dialectical mediation, it holds united within itself, in the moment of synthesis (becoming), the two preceding moments of the thesis (being) and the antithesis (non-being). C. 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 that seemed to Gentile still too closely bound to classical logic, insofar as it supposed that the concept had outside itself both Nature, as its presupposition, and Spirit, as the return effected by the idea to itself. The true and authentic c. can be none other than the pure Act of thinking, the identity of thinking and thought, of consciousness and the object of consciousness, and therefore autochthysis (v.), absolute freedom and historicity. For the critics of idealism, the alleged new concept of c. repudiates the very meaning of thought because it does not recognize the actual reality of object and subject in their «singularity».