its abstractness, which it therefore recognizes by admitting alongside the dialectic of thought a logic of the abstract, as its degree or moment in becoming. The logic of abstract thinking consists in the principle of identity, when being is made the object of thought, becoming identical with itself (A=A). Being is the negation of thought, because it is external to the actuality of thought, a being that according to Eleatic or naturalistic philosophy would exist even when it is not thought. Gentile points out that pure (natural) being, understood as the immediate and static "A", cannot be identical to itself, being unthought and therefore unreal, whereas only thought, however abstract, can establish the relation of identity A = A. This relation thinks the being as distinct from the thought, but not separated. The principle of identity then gives rise to the other determinations of Aristotelian logic such as that of the noncontradiction, of the excluded thirds, of the judgments and of the syllogism, a logic which thus remains fully valued by Gentile, and "remains all solid and alive" as a moment of the logic of the concrete. Logic of concreteness The determinateness of the abstract concept must thus be brought back to the concreteness of the actual life of the spirit, since it is proper to spiritual concreteness to create determined and circumscribed forms. The determined forms of thought reality, that is, of "experience," are expressions of the historical, spatiotemporal becoming of the Spirit: their multiplicity is not next to the unity of the Spirit, but belongs to the world as the object of consciousness, which unifies them all in a simple act. The positivity of the historical determinations is thus reconciled with the original negativity of the self-concept, or self-consciousness of the determined concept. The act of the spirit is "original negativity" in that it is fulfilled at the moment in which it denies being as nature (the simple "A" devoid of connections), that is, it denies something that does not exist (mistakenly believed to exist by naturalism), and in this denial it realizes itself. Pure being is nothing because it is not even that conceptual being posited by abstract thought which, although inactual, provides fuel for the logic of the concrete. The latter, also called authentic or speculative logic, highlights the continuity of the self through its progressive development in the principles me = me (differentiation in unity)