The term is translated to English as “sublation”, and it means “to lift up” and also “to cancel”. Hegel would call this as “Aufheben.” Aufheben, itself, requires a dialectical approach to understand its meaning since it contains contradictory reflections. The absolute state has essences of all the past moments we considered. The absolute state is where the dialectic movement goes towards. The Totality is the product of that process which preserves all of its ‘moments’ as elements in a structure, rather than as stages or phases. Overcoming or subsuming is a developmental process made up of ‘moments’. Hegel’s grand idea is ‘Totality’ – which preserves within it each of the ideas or stages it has overcome or subsumed. Every stage or phase or moment is partial, and therefore partially untrue. Of the Absolute it must be said that it is essentially a result, that only at the end is it what it is in very truth and just in that consists its nature, which is to be actual, subject, or self-becoming, self-development.”Īs Lloyd Spencer and Andrzej Krauze write:įor Hegel, only the whole is true. The whole, however, is merely the essential nature reaching its completeness through the process of its own development. Hegel would state that only the truth is whole.
![hegelian dialectic definition hegelian dialectic definition](http://nord.twu.net/acl/images/hegel.gif)
Any previous stages we bring forth for our understanding is not cancelled, but kept for improving our understanding. Any one stage cannot be viewed in isolation. To have a good understanding we should also look at the previous stages.
![hegelian dialectic definition hegelian dialectic definition](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/diyalektikmateryalizmsunus-130306054125-phpapp01/95/dialectical-materialism-5-638.jpg)
Each stage brings the past stages with it. The plant produces the bud, and the bud blooms into a flower, which produces the seed. We can look at this example with the starting point of the seed. The ceaseless activity of their own inherent nature makes these stages moments of an organic unity, where they not merely do not contradict one another, but where one is as necessary as the other and constitutes thereby the life of the whole. The bud disappears when the blossom breaks through, and we might say that the former is refuted by the latter in the same way when the fruit comes, the blossom may be explained to be a false form of the plant’s existence, for the fruit appears as its true nature in place of the blossom. This maybe made easier to understand by using the example of a flower bud. Hegel uses this idea of movement from one end to the other for reasoning. It goes through transformation continuously. Hegel’s view is that the world is in a movement from one phase to the next. Hegel’s view of dialectics has a background based in history. Generally, when we speak about contradictions, we either view it as an absurdity that negates any further thought or as a pro-con discussion which leads to choosing one over the other. Hegel’s idea of dialectical process is a holistic approach.
![hegelian dialectic definition hegelian dialectic definition](http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-esiIZckqpPw/VYWiJTjbc0I/AAAAAAAAMaQ/x8EC2AZ0N7M/s1600/hegeldialectic.jpg)
![hegelian dialectic definition hegelian dialectic definition](https://mjwhansen.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/1_Tl9rdNl7qaQTs1QNnpsUBw.png)
The new understanding can be notated as A’, which again is partial and sets off another dialectical process. As we further our understanding of the concept, we go through a dialectic process by looking at the innate contradiction (A and !A). The idea of dialectics implies that all abstract concepts are partial and contain innate contradictions. This is a very simple view of Hegel’s dialectic. To improve our understanding of “A”, we should also look at “!A”. Our understanding of “A” lies somewhere between “A” and “!A”. This understanding automatically brings in the opposite or “notA” to the realm of the understanding. When we look at a phenomenon say “A”, we are speaking about our understanding of “A”. With this introduction, I should note here that my post is “inspired” by his dialectical approach. Hegel’s writing is quite dense and he is often considered to be one of the hardest philosophers to understand. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770 – 1831) was a German philosopher who furthered the ideas of German Idealism in Philosophy after Immanuel Kant. In today’s post, I am looking at Hegel’s dialectical approach and using it to gain a better understanding of the purpose of an organization.