Every concept-determining study faces the problem of comprehending
conceptually an object that was first comprehended non-conceptually, and
therefore of putting a concept in the place of non-conceptual notions of
an object. This problem finds a specially clear expression in the
concept-determining judgment (the definition), which puts in immediate
juxtaposition, in its subject some non-conceptual notion of an object,
and in its predicate a conceptual notion of the same object.
Accordingly, the study that is to determine the concepts of Anarchism
and its species has for its problem to comprehend conceptually objects
that are first comprehended in non-conceptual notions of Anarchism and
its species; and therefore, to put concepts in the place of these
non-conceptual notions.
3. But our study may specify its problem still more precisely, though at
first only on the negative side. The problem is not to put concepts in
the place of all notions that appear as non-conceptual notions of
Anarchism and its species.
Any concept can comprehend conceptually only one object, not another
object together with this. The concept of health cannot be at the same
time the concept of life, nor the concept of the horse that of the
mammal.
But in the non-conceptual notions that appear as notions of Anarchism
and its species there are comprehended very different objects. To be
sure, the object of all these notions is on the one hand a genus that is
formed by the common qualities of certain teachings, and on the other
hand the species of this genus, which are formed by the addition of
sundry peculiarities to these common qualities. But still these notions
have in view very different groups of teachings with their common and
special qualities, some perhaps only the teachings of Kropotkin and
Most, others only the teachings of Stirner, Tucker, and Mackay, others
again the teachings of both sets of authors.
If one proposed to put concepts in the place of all the non-conceptual
notions which appear as notions of Anarchism and its species, these
concepts would have to comprehend at once the common and special
qualities of quite different groups of teachings, of which groups one
might embrace only the teachings of Kropotkin and Most, another only
those of Stirner, Tucker, and Mackay, a third both. But this is
impossible: the concepts of Anarchism and its species can comprehend
only the common and special qualities of a single group of teachings;
therefore our study cannot put concepts in the place of all the notions
that appear as notions of Anarchism and its species.
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