ABSTRACT

The Danish word konkret (in Kierkegaard’s spelling, concret) is from the Latin concretus and primarily denotes that which is determinate or real, especially in the sense of having material or physical form.1 By contrast, the word abstrakt, from the Latin abstractus, commonly denotes that which exists merely as an idea or as an object for theoretical consideration.2 In the philosophical vocabulary of the modern period, “the abstract” (German, das Abstrakte) is commonly understood to indicate a concept or universal that has been derived or “abstracted” from perceptible, concrete reality-although in Kant’s usage “an intellectual concept abstracts from everything sensuous, it is not abstracted from sensuous things.”3