![time notion definition time notion definition](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/ac/91/6e/ac916e71296b3c50c73582f45b71e262.jpg)
If, as was said at an earlier point, the different stages of the logical idea are to be treated as a series of definitions of the Absolute, the definition which now results for us is that the Absolute is the Notion. And yet, as it was before remarked, the notion is a true concrete for the reason that it involves Being and Essence, and the total wealth of these two spheres with them, merged in the unity of thought. For the notion is not palpable to the touch, and when we are engaged with it, hearing and seeing must quite fail us. And so too the notion may, if it be wished, be styled abstract, if the name concrete is restricted to the concrete facts of sense or of immediate perception. It certainly is a form, but an infinite and creative form which includes, but at the same time releases from itself, the fullness of all content. The notion, in short, is what contains all the earlier categories of thought merged in it.
![time notion definition time notion definition](http://www.girardstudies.com/www.girardstudies.com/Memesis_in_the_works_of_Girard_and_Derida_files/Darkroom_spotlight.jpg)
The contrast between form and content, which is thus used to criticise the notion when it is alleged to be merely formal, has, like all the other contrasts upheld by reflection, been already left behind and overcome dialectically or through itself. That it is so follows from the whole logical movement up to this point, and need not be here proved. The notion is, on the contrary, the principle of all life, and thus possesses at the same time a character of thorough concreteness. It is to this inferior view of the notion that the assertion refers, so often urged on behalf of the heart and sentiment, that notions as such are something dead, empty, and abstract. In the logic of understanding, the notion is generally reckoned a mere form of thought, and treated as a general conception. Philosophy is a knowledge through notions because it sees that what on other grades of consciousness is taken to have Being, and to be naturally or immediately independent, is but a constituent stage in the Idea. The position taken up by the notion is that of absolute idealism. Thus in its self-identity it has original and complete determinateness. It is a systematic whole, in which each of its constituent functions is the very total which the notion is, and is put as indissolubly one with it. The Notion is the principle of freedom, the power of substance self-realised. Part One of the Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences: The Logic Third Subdivision