Aufhebung — Hegel's untranslatable speculative term denoting the simultaneous negation, preservation, and elevation of a prior moment — occupies a structurally pivotal position across the depth-psychological corpus. The term arrives not as a historical curiosity but as an active logical instrument. Wolfgang Giegerich deploys it with the greatest systematic rigour, insisting that Jung's psychology constitutes a sublated religion and a sublated science: the prior formations are cancelled in their positivity, rescued in their essential truth, and raised to a new logical status of consciousness. For Giegerich, Aufhebung is the very grammar of soul's self-movement. Iain McGilchrist appropriates the concept neurologically, arguing that the right hemisphere's reintegration of left-hemisphere achievements does not annul those achievements but performs upon them precisely this triadic movement — hence his explicit section heading 'Reintegration as Aufhebung.' Jacques Derrida, characteristically, submits the concept to pressure: tracking Hegel's 'inexhaustible ruse of the Aufhebung,' he proposes the French relève as a translation that smuggles in the disruptive force of différance, exposing how the economy of sublation perpetually risks encircling the very alterity it claims to incorporate. Across these voices, Aufhebung functions as the conceptual hinge between dialectical transformation and psychological individuation — the point where negation becomes generative rather than merely destructive.
'Sublation' is the translation of the Hegelian term Aufhebung in the threefold sense of a) negating and canceling, b) rescuing and retaining, c) elevating or raising to a ne
Giegerich furnishes the canonical definition of Aufhebung and deploys it to argue that Jung's psychology is simultaneously sublated religion and sublated science, occupying a higher logical status than either.
, The Soul’s Logical Life Towards a Rigorous Notion of, 2020thesis
REINTEGRATION AS AUFHEBUNG I have expressed this reintegration in terms of a 'return' to the right hemisphere. This risks suggesting that the achievements of the left hemisphere's interventions are lost or nullified
McGilchrist explicitly frames hemispheric reintegration as Aufhebung, arguing that the right hemisphere's return does not nullify left-hemisphere achievements but sublates them into a richer whole.
, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World, 2009thesis
Thus Aufhebung is usually best annotated and left untranslated... Derrida's translation is la relève. The word comes from the verb relever, which means to lift up, as does Aufheben.
Derrida proposes relève as a translation of Aufhebung that preserves its conservative-negating lift while introducing the destabilising force of différance and the possibility of relief or relay.
, Margins of Philosophy, 1982thesis
we are reduced to the inexhaustible ruse of the Aufhebung, which is unceasingly examined, in these margins, along with Hegel, according to his text, against his text, within his boundary or interior limit
Derrida characterises Aufhebung as an 'inexhaustible ruse' that perpetually re-encircles transgression within restricted economy, making genuine exteriority the central problem of any post-Hegelian thought.
, Margins of Philosophy, 1982thesis
sublated (aufgehoben) 48, 67, 71, 75, 84, 122, 180, 188, 191-192, 222 sublation, Aufhebung 67, 68, 84, 118, 137, 140, 191-194, 200, 220, 226, 246, 261, 266, 270, 274, 278
The index of Giegerich's text reveals the extraordinary density of Aufhebung's deployment throughout the work, confirming its status as a structural master-concept for his entire logical psychology.
, The Soul’s Logical Life Towards a Rigorous Notion of, 2020supporting
the very concept of speculative negativity (the Aufhebung) is possible only by means of this infinite correlation or reflection
Derrida locates Aufhebung as the condition of possibility for Hegel's speculative negativity, showing it depends on the circular correlation of punctuality, space, and time.
, Margins of Philosophy, 1982supporting
all the characteristics of a relève (Aufhebung) of humanism
Derrida identifies post-humanist thought as itself exhibiting the structure of Aufhebung, suggesting that even critique of humanism risks replicating the conserving-elevating movement it seeks to escape.
, Margins of Philosophy, 1982supporting
true knowledge redeems itself by 'returning back into itself' in the right hemisphere
McGilchrist reads Hegel's dialectical self-return as a neurological event, in which left-hemisphere analytic decomposition is redeemed by right-hemisphere reintegration — the practical enactment of Aufhebung.
, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World, 2009supporting
man appears to himself in consciousness in his Being-past, in his to-have-been, in his past surpassed and conserved, retained, interiorized (erinnert) and rele
Derrida traces the Hegelian movement of Erinnerung and relève in the structure of self-consciousness, linking memory's interiorisation to the broader logic of Aufhebung.
, Margins of Philosophy, 1982aside
It "relifts" (relève) sight. Despite the ideality of light and vision, the objects perceived
In aesthetics, Derrida applies the relève/Aufhebung structure to the hierarchy of the senses, showing hearing as the sublation of sight within Hegel's system.
, Margins of Philosophy, 1982aside