are only its partial aspects, and which relate it to other things. Just as in mathematical construction we abstract from all the accidental features of a figure (it is written with chalk, it is on a blackboard) to see it as a perfect exemplar of some universal truth, so in philosophical construction we abstract from all the specific properties of an object to see it in the absolute whole.Hegel's doubts about intellectual intuition's ability to prove or legitimate that the particular is in identity with whole, led him to progressively formulate the system of the dialectic, now known as the Hegelian dialectic, in which concepts like the Aufhebung came to be articulated in the Phenomenology of Spirit (1807). Beiser (p. 19) summarises the early formulation as follows:a) Some finite concept, true of only a limited part of reality, would go beyond its limits in attempting to know all of reality. It would claim to be an adequate concept to describe the absolute because, like the absolute, it has a complete or self-sufficient meaning independent of any other concept. b) This claim would come into conflict with the fact that the concept depends for its meaning on some other concept, having meaning only in contrast to its negation. There would then be a contradiction between its claim to independence and its de facto dependence upon another concept. c) The only way to resolve the contradiction would be to reinterpret the claim to independence, so that it applies not just to one concept to the exclusion of the other but to the whole of both concepts. Of course, the same stages could be repeated on a higher level, and so on, until we come to the complete system of all concepts, which is alone adequate to describe the absolute.Hegel's innovation in the history of German idealism was for a self-consciousness or self-questioning, that would lead to a more inclusive, holistic rationality of the world. The synthesis of one concept, deemed independently true per se, with another contradictory concept (e.g. the first is in fact dependent on some other thing), leads to the history of rationality, throughout human (largely European) civilisation. For the German Idealists like Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, the extrapolation or universalisation of the human process of contradiction and reconciliation, whether conceptually, theoretically, or emotionally, were all movements of the universe itself. It is understandable then, why so many philosophers saw