ABSTRACT
G. W. F. Hegel makes a clean break from the critical empiricism of Immanuel Kant to an intricate idealism based on the subject. One moves away from empty formalism by establishing determinate identity through a dialectic that incorporates concrete identity. Formalism in the case of speculative philosophy of nature takes the shape of teaching that understanding is electricity, animals are nitrogen, or equivalent to South or North and so on. The instrument for producing this monotonous formalism is no more difficult to handle than the palette of a painter on which lie only two colors, say red and green, the former for coloring the surface when we want a historical piece, the latter when we want a bit of landscape. The pigeon-holing process of understanding retains for itself the necessity and the notion controlling the content, that which constitutes the concrete element, the actuality and living process of the subject matter that it labels.
