Abstraction animates and sharpens what it simultaneously hardens into being

Evidence

The understanding, through the form of abstract universality, does give them, so to speak, a rigidity (Härte) of being such as they do not possess in the qualitative sphere and in the sphere of reflection; but at the same time through this simplification (durch diese Vereinfachung) it spiritually animates (begeistert) them and so sharpens them. — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 1026

Categorization

Category: Contrarian or Surprising Claims

• XREF: The claim that abstraction is death and animation at once parallels Malabou’s own plasticity frame in which form-receiving and form-giving extremes coexist.

Related

• Modern education arrives as truncated abstraction, ancient as self-formed universality (similarity 0.79)
• Modern individuals receive abstract universality ready-made rather than forging it from concrete life (similarity 0.79)
• Absolute Knowledge is metamorphosis that shapes individuals’ expectations of the future (similarity 0.78)