[Sidenote: _as elaboration of the concepts, criticism, science of norms;_]
The character of the pure concept is also indicated in the definition of philosophy as the _elaboration of the concepts,_ which the other sciences leave imperfect and self-contradictory. Indeed, since no human activity has the imperfect and contradictory as its aim, if the other sciences are involved in imperfect and contradictory concepts, this means that they do not aim at constructing concepts and that philosophy alone elaborates true and proper concepts. For this reason, philosophy has sometimes been conceived, not as science, but as criticism, and criticism means placing oneself above the object criticized, in virtue of a concept superior to those criticized. For this reason, finally, philosophy has been conceived as the science of _norms and values_: norms and values, which, if they are to surpass singular things, cannot be extraneous to them. Hence it is the same thing to speak of _norms and values,_ or of universal concepts, surpassing and containing in themselves each single thing.
[Sidenote: _as doctrine of the categories._]
If philosophy is the pure concept, it is also the distinctions of the pure concept; it is all the pure concepts capable of serving as predicates to individual judgments and so of acting as categories. Here there is another definition of philosophy: philosophy is the _doctrine of the categories._ For this reason we have already refused to assign to Logic the search for the categories: first because the doctrine of the categories is the whole of Philosophy, whereas Logic is only one of its links, and consequently seeks only one of the categories, that of logicity. It could also be said that Philosophy is the doctrine of the categories, and that Logic, as a part of Philosophy, is a Category of categories, or a Philosophy of Philosophy. Hence its singular position among philosophical sciences, so that it appears at the same time within and without Philosophy, because it completes by surpassing and surpasses by completing it. In reality, Logic, like every other philosophic science, is within and not without Philosophy; like the glassy water which reflects the landscape and is itself part of the landscape.