Important pair categories that reveals the laws and methods of man’s thinking activity. Rising from the abstract to the concrete is one of the basic methods of dialectical thinking and a higher form of dialectical thinking. Abstraction is a simple determination of thinking, which is a summation of the attributes of some aspects of objective things in thinking. When one makes such an abstract determination, the attributes and relations of the various aspects of the object are separated from the unity, extracted and reflected separately. The meaning of “concrete” refers to the unity of the diverse. Marx said: “The concrete is concrete because it is the concentration of many determinations, hence unity of the diverse.” As a whole the real thing is a unity of the diverse, it is concrete. There are two different types of concrete knowledge in the process of knowledge, one is the sensuous concrete, and the other is the concrete in thought. The sensuous concrete is the full conception of things, i.e., the concrete in conception, which is the point of departure of the process of logical thinking. Objects of knowledge are concrete things that can be felt by sensation, i.e., seen, heard, tasted, smelt, and touched. Concrete things form a full conception in the human brain through human sensation and perception, and such full impression of objective things is sensuous concrete knowledge. Sensuous concrete knowledge cannot reveal the essential determination of things and their internal connections, and cannot make a profound and comprehensive exposition of the inner connection of things and phenomena.
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