The concept is synonymous with abstract and general idea.

Kant distinguishes the pure concepts, or concepts a priori, which are the categories of the understanding, and the concepts a posteriori or empirical, i.e. derived from the experiment. The latter delimit classes and subclasses and can be analyzed logically in terms of comprehension and extension.

The empiricist ones deny the existence of concepts a priori, all the concepts resulting according to them only of one process of abstraction starting from the significant impressions.

For Hegel, the concepts of the reason exceed the oppositions characteristic of the finished categories of the understanding by distinguishing some the positive one and the negative one: they exceed them by understanding them and pass to a dialectical logic.

The Concept is the universal organic totality of which all the concepts are the particular moments of determinations. It is then for Hegel only the true concrete one, containing all the aspects of reality.

While denouncing in his abstraction and his general information the incapacity of the concept to give an account of the originality of the lived experiment and his authenticity, Nietzsche or Bergson often expresses their opinion on a metaphorical mode.

One can thus distinguish two divergent designs: maybe, with Hegel, the Concept is able to add up the whole of the fields and the ways of thinking by subordinating them, exceeding them by bringing them to their own concept by their explanation. It is then the historical deployment of the Platonic idea which is recapitulated in the totality of its sights and becomes reality itself; that is to say the concept is always insufficiently open to reach reality escaping its catch. It enters in dialog with other ways of thinking to which itself cannot claim (art, poetry).

The two cases suppose a going beyond the concepts of understanding.