Ground Books

“We can recall that earlier, Hegel claimed that the particularization, individuation, and determinateness of the Concept is a movement and reference outward, which suggests that the judgment of the Concept must have the same outward reference. The notion of outward reference suggests that the subjective Concept strives to correspond with reality and approximates it, but ultimately remains inadequate and unequal to reality until we reach what Hegel calls the Idea. What does it mean, then, that life is the immediate Idea, the immediate unity and division of Concept and reality? Roughly, I think it means the following: life qua Idea not only is the ground of the correspondence between subject and predicate in judgment but must also be the ground of a schema of reality, allowing reality to take shape for and appear to the judging subject in a way that corresponds with its powers of judgment. That is, in order for reality to potentially correspond or not correspond to judgments of the Concept, reality must appear immediately to the judging subject in a particular way. This reality is not the immediacy of sheer being, not is it the immediacy of intuition in the form of space and time; rather, it is the immediate schema of the form of life, a form that Hegel outlines in the chapter on 'Life' according to three poles: corporeality, externality, and process of the species. Reality for Hegel is this not the immediacy of sheer being or bare givenness but, rather, always appears as shaped by the specific constitution of one's life-form, and all life-forms immediately experience reality according to the specific constitution of these three poles.”
― Karen Ng, Hegel's Concept of Life: Self-Consciousness, Freedom, Logic