Aufhebung — Central German term in Hegelian dialectics, translated as sublation, supersession, or overcoming (aufheben). Hegel deliberately exploits the ambiguity of the German word, which carries a threefold simultaneous meaning: (1) to negate — to cancel or abolish the prior moment; (2) to preserve — to retain what was true in it; (3) to elevate — to integrate into a higher level of determination. This logical-real movement articulates the entire Science of Logic (1812–16) and the Phenomenology of Spirit (1807): each figure of consciousness is sublated by the next — not simply discarded but integrated as a partial moment within a more concrete totality. Paradigmatic example: the antithesis between being and nothing is sublated in becoming (Werden), which contains them as moments. Aufhebung distinguishes Hegelian dialectics both from fixed contradiction (formal logic) and from additive synthesis: the point is not to combine opposites but to reveal that contradiction is the motor of the concept’s development. Marx “inverts” Hegelian Aufhebung: dialectical overcoming realises itself in material history, not in the movement of Spirit.
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