 Rational realism can be conceived of as a kind of ontological logic insofar as the logical laws of thought are constitutive of nature. It foregrounds the concept of thinking qua thinking (Denken als Denken). Thinking qua thinking is not to be understood representationally as involving the relation between subject and object, but as an original unity of thought and being. The principle of thinking qua thinking is expressed formally as “A as A in A and through A.” This principle indicates the essence, or “inner character,” of thinking qua thinking, namely “eternally absolute identity” (BzÜ 1, p. 103). Absolute identity excludes all distinguishability, distinction, and difference. For this reason, the essence of thinking qua thinking cannot consist in concepts, judgments, or inferences, and cannot admit of categorial determinations of quantity, quality, relation, or modality. These hold only for the application of thinking qua thinking to some matter. This matter is not derived directly from the principle of thinking qua thinking but is postulated (BzÜ 1, p. 111), since it is the condition of something being thought (BzÜ 2, p. 182f; Bardili 1800: 67). Formally, matter is represented as C, which, in relation to reality (B) and possibility (–B), yields a determinate object (b). These terms are—somewhat obscurely—employed in various mathematical operations (addition, multiplication, division) to derive the forms of intuition, the essence of a “thing qua thing,” the essence of judgment, organisms, life, and the categories of substance, cause, and ground (BzÜ 2, pp. 182–199). For Reinhold, the manifestation of pure thinking in nature is to be conceived of theologically: at bottom, rational realism represents “the manifestation of the original being in the essence of things, or the revelation of God in nature” (BzÜ 4, p. 219; for discussion of rational realism’s Neo-Platonist and religious overtones, see Ahlers 2012).