There is, further, more than a little similarity here with Hegel’s view of how something becomes an object of thought, an idea. ‘The idea as a process runs through three stages in its development’, he says. ‘The first form of the idea is life: that is, the idea in the form of immediacy [RH]. The second form is that of mediation or differentiation; and this is the idea in the form of knowledge [LH].’ And finally, the result is ‘unity enriched by difference … the third form of the idea, the absolute idea [RH synthesis]’, which Hegel says is ‘at the same time the true first’, having ‘a being due
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