What is aufhebung?

Question

I need a definition of Hegel's idea of aufhebung, particularly how it applies to literary/linguistic studies, that makes sense. Go!

Answer 1

"Aufhebung or Sublation

Aristotle's logic is concerned with separate, discrete (self-)identities in a deductive pattern. Hegel dissolves this classical static view in a dynamic movement towards the whole. The whole is an overcoming which preserves what it overcomes.
Nothing is lost or destroyed but raised up and preserved as in a spiral. Think of the opening of a fern or a shell.
This is an organic rather than mechanical logic. Hegel's special term for this "contradiction" of overcoming and at the same time preserving is Aufhebung, sometimes translated as "sublation".
For anything to happen, everything has to be in place.
Quantum theory, postmodern cosmology, chaos theory, computer interfacing and ecology all essentially subscribe to this view of "totality" in question, without being "hegelian"."

more specifically, with regard to linguistics:

"The first two moments are finite and transitory determinations of Mind. The theory of signs belongs to the science of one of these finite determinations, that of the Mind Subjective. If we consider that ‘the finite is not, i.e. is not the truth, but merely a transition (Ubergehen) and an emergence to something higher (Ubersichhinausgehen)’, then we can determine signs - which are part of a finite determination of Mind - to be a mode or finite determination of Mind Subjective taken as mediation or self-surpassing; the sign is a transition within transition, a transition of transition. But it is the transition of the departure from itself that is the route unto itself (nosto). This transition is, of course, thought in the movement of the true, under the authority of the dialectic, and is supervised (so to speak) by the concepts of Aufhebung and negativity. 'This finitude ... is the dialectic that makes a thing have its cessation (Vergehen) by and in another.'

But let us state yet more precisely the site of Hegel's semiology. The Mind Subjective itself is

In itself, or immediate: this is the soul or the Spirit in nature (Naturgeist), the object of Anthropology, which in fact studies man in nature.
For itself, or mediate, as identical reflection in itself and in other things. This is Mind in relation or particularization (Besonderung): consciousness the object treated by Phenomenology of Mind.
Mind determining itself in itself, as a subject for itself. This is the object treated by Psychology.
The theory of signs belongs precisely to psychology, defined as the science of Mind determining itself in itself as a subject for itself. Let us in passing notice (though this is most significant) that semiology, as a part of the science of the subject for itself, does not thereby belong to the science of consciousness, i.e. to phenomenology. I point out how profoundly traditional is this gesture or this topic inscribing semiology in a non-'natural' science of the soul, a psychology. We are thereby not only referred to all the semiological endeavours of the eighteenth century, which are all psychologies, but finally to Aristotle, the patron Hegel invokes for his Philosophy of Mind when, in the Introduction, he writes, speaking of psychology:

The books of Aristotle On the Soul (Peri Psychis) ... are for this reason still by far the most admirable, perhaps even the sole, work of speculative value on this topic. The main aim of a philosophy of mind can only be to reintroduce the concept into the knowledge of mind, and so rediscover the lesson of those Aristotelian books.

But Aristotle is precisely he who has inscribed his theory of the voice in a treatise Peri Psychis (this will be important for us later), and in his Peri Hermeneias has defined signs, symbols, speech and writing on the basis of the pathemata tes psychis - states, affections or passions of the soul. You know well that text that opens the Peri Hermeneias:

Spoken words (ta en tiphoni) are the symbols of the affections of the soul, and written words are the symbols of spoken words. Just as all men have not the same writing, so all men have not the same speech sounds, but the states of the soul, of which these expressions are the immediate signs (semeia protos: the primary signs) are the same for all [which precisely permits making a science of them], as also are those things of which these states are the images. This matter has, however, been discussed in my treatise about the soul.

When I say that it is traditional to make semiology dependent on psychology, I do not think only of Hegelianism in the past, but also of what often gives itself out as being beyond Hegelianism, and even as a Hegelianism surpassed. For this tradition, properly metaphysical and thus extending from Aristotle to Hegel, will not be interrupted by the venerable (venerated) initiator of the modern project of the general semiology that serves as the paradigm or model for so many 'modern' and 'human' 'sciences'. You know that at least twice in his Course in General Linguistics de Saussure makes his plan for a general semiology juridically dependent on psychology.

Everything in language is basically psychological, including its material and mechanical manifestations, such as sound changes; and since linguistics provides social psychology with such valuable data, is it not part and parcel of this discipline? (p. 6-7) A science that studies the life of signs within society is conceivable; it would be a part of social psychology and consequently of general psychology; I shall call it semiology (from Greek semeion 'sign'). Semiology would show what constitutes signs, what laws govern them. Since the science does not yet exist, no one can say what it would be; but it has a right to existence, a place staked out in advance. Linguistics is only a part of the general science of semiology; the laws discovered by semiology will be applicable to linguistics, and the latter will circumscribe a well-defined area within the mass of anthropological facts.

To determine the exact place of semiology is the task of the psychologist.

It is from our point of view noteworthy that it was the same linguist or glossematician, Hjelmslev, who, while recognising the importance of the Saussurian heritage, cast into question, as the uncritical presuppositions of the Saussurian science, at the same time the authority recognised to psychology and the privilege accorded to the sonorous or phonic 'expressive substance'. We shall see how the psychic excellence and the phonic pre-eminence go together in Hegel also, for reasons that are essential and are historically metaphysical.

We return to Hegel: what does the inscription of semiology in speculative psychology mean for him? It means first very generally that signs are here considered according to the structure and movement of the Aufhebung by which mind, rising above nature, suppressing and retaining it, sublimating it in itself, is accomplished as inward freedom, and thus is presented to itself as such: 'Psychology', says Hegel, 'studies the faculties or general modes of mental activity qua mental - intuition, representation, remembering etc., desires etc.' As in the De Anima (432 ab) Hegel in several place refuses every real separation between the faculties of the soul (cf. § 445). In view of this attention to not substantially separate the psychic faculties and structures, but rather to determine their mediations, articulations, joinings, which constitute the unity of the movement, it is noteworthy that the theory of signs, essentially consisting in a theory of speech and writing, is contained in two long Remarks, much longer than the paragraphs to which they are attached, in the sub-chapter entitled 'Imagination'. Semiology is then a development in the theory of imagination, and more precisely, as we will see, in a Phantasiology or Phantastics.

What is imagination? Representation (Vorstellung) is intuition remembered-interiorised (erinnerte). It pertains to intelligence (Intelligenz), which consists in interiorising sensible immediacy, 'to posit itself as possessing the intuition of itself' (in sich seibst anschauend zu setzen) - to lift and conserve, in the twofold movement of Aufhebung, the subjectivity belonging to inferiority, to be exteriorised in itself and 'be in itself in its own exteriority' (in ihrer eigenen Ausserlichkeit in sich zu sein). Erinnerung is a decisive moment or movement in this movement of representation by which intelligence is recalled to itself, and is in itself in its own exteriority. In it the content of intuition becomes an image - that is, is freed from immediacy and individuality so as to allow transition to objective conceptual representation. And the image that thus is erinnert interiorised in memory - is no longer an 'existence', that is present, there, but stored up out of consciousness (bewusstlos aufbewahrt), retained in an unconscious abode. Intelligence can then be conceived as this reserve, this very dark cover at the bottom of which the buried images are to be sought. It is, Hegel says, a 'nocturnal pit' (nächtliche Schacht) or, further, an unconscious pit (bewusstlose Schacht)."

Answer 2

I wasn't even sure on Aufhebung although I speak German (it's really rusty) so I went to Babel fish. The translation offered was abolition. Since I don't think I have ever read Hegel (I avoided philosophy) I will leave it up to you to review his works and see how he applied the concept of abolition to literary and linguistic studies.

Answer 3

The word means undermining. As in undermining ideas. So lets say you have one position, say those of the Enlightenment. Then Romanticism comes along and undermines the enlightenment position, this act is sublation or undermining (aufhebung). You know the characteristic view of Hegel with the thesis antithesis and synthesis thing? Think about that.

Answer 4

The The lodge is the main advantageous practice station and the Tivoli leisure park opposite to the main advantageous roads interior the district of Vesterbro Vesterbrogade. On different pages of the positioning is bounded via the streets and Hammerichsgade Vesterport, and interior the western region via a neighboring progression. On a site visitors island between the lodge and the main advantageous railway station is provided in 1797 Column of Liberty, commemorating the abolition of serfdom in Denmark.

Answer 5

it means a nitwit who asks all the wrong questions in life! and then feels sorry for himself when the bullies beat the **** out of him for being a geek!