Begriff

Begriff is a German noun that means concept, notion, or idea. In ordinary and scholarly usage it denotes the mental content or abstract meaning attached to a term or category, distinguishing it from more concrete or individual referents. The term is widely used across philosophy, linguistics, cognitive science, and logic to discuss how we grasp, organize, and communicate general content.

Etymology and sense developments start from begreifen, “to grasp.” The noun form Begriff emphasizes the graspable content—what is mentally apprehended when one uses or analyzes a term. In German, Begriffe often refer to general notions that can be applied to many cases, rather than to single, concrete objects.

In philosophy, Begriffe play a central role in theories of knowledge, reason, and logic. For Immanuel Kant, Begriffe (concepts) organize sensory appearances into knowledge. In later German thought, figures such as Hegel treated the Begriff as a dynamic, self-developing notion that advances through contradictions. In logic, the term is specialized. Frege’s Begriffsschrift introduces Begriff (concept) as the general notion applicable to objects; in Fregean terms, a concept is a function that maps objects to truth values, enabling formal analysis of judgments and inferences.

In contemporary German, Begriff remains the standard term for “concept” or “notion,” often preferred in scholarly or technical contexts over synonyms like Konzept or Idee. The word also appears in discussions of semantics, cognitive science, and analytic philosophy to distinguish general content from specific instances or opinions.

See also: Begriffsschrift; concept in philosophy and linguistics.