Dialectics in World Politics by Shannon Brincat

Author:Shannon Brincat [Brincat, Shannon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, General
ISBN: 9780415625272
Google: d44BnwEACAAJ
Goodreads: 18431781
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2014-07-13T00:00:00+00:00

Sublation

Now we come to the key point of this section—the meaning of sublation, through a particular instance of this concept: the dialectical moment of Aufhebung that transcends the either/or of ‘understanding’ in our rational judgment of Being and Nothingness. This suspends understanding by showing how each concept is related. Yet, neither is subsumed into the other in this movement. Rather, by relating each to its other, the concepts become qualified by their relation (Williams, 2007, p. 43). Here, Hegel contrasts his position with that of Parmenides, the Buddha, and Heraclitus, who each prioritize, respectively, being, nothingness, and becoming (Palm, 2009, p. 48). This difference can be seen most clearly in the Daodejing, in which wu (non-being) is seen as the opposite of you (being) and produces it. Here, wu and you form a polarity of oppositions, in distinction to the Hegelian notion where they are interpenetrated (or for Palm ‘inseparable’) and lead to sublation (Chen, 1969, pp. 391–405). Yet, from a dialectical point of view, there can be no relative priority accorded to either temporally; hence, any sequential ordering of ‘nothing – becoming – being’ (or any such variant) is false. In ‘becoming’, rather, both Being and Nothingness lose their ‘pure indeterminacy’—they are determined as moments of becoming and, at the same time, are preserved as distinct moments or, as Hegel expressed it, ‘as vanishing, sublated moments’ (Hegel, 1999, p. 105).

However, as Palm’s thesis demonstrates, throughout the Logic there is variation in how sublation functions relative to different contents. Dialectics is not some formal method or what he calls a ‘logic machine’, that can be applied as if by ‘rote.’ It is the content—or subject, in our case—that matters. So it is important to not confuse dialectical sublation with negation or synthesis. As Palm writes:

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