D—
The Impossibility of Philosophy without Presuppositions; Sublation

In the introduction to the first chapter of his Greater Logic ,^[63] Hegel discusses his goal of creating a philosophy without pre-

[62] Alan Brudner presents still another way of looking at this problem. He argues that insofar as property is the act of the abstract free will to objectify itself, it is by definition a unilateral act by which the will recognizes itself as its own end. Basing property on consent of another denies this and denies the will's appetite for infinite appropriation. As Brudner states, "A complete property must therefore embody a reconciliation between the right to exclusive possession and the right to freedom of acquisition." Brudner, Unity of the Common Law, supra note 35, at 56. The resolution of this problem will be exchange and the concomitant right of alienation of property. But we cannot derive this from a preexistent ability of the person to consent because, as we have seen, the starting point of the individual will (as imagined by liberalism) is pre-social. Brudner also says:

Among the many difficulties with this solution [i.e., presupposing the ability to consent, rather than logically deriving and creating the ability to consent] one in particular concerns us most. No person could rationally, that is, consistently with his claim to be an end, consent to a unilateral and exclusive appropriation by another; for this would be to acquiesce in his permanent exclusion from the thing and hence in a permanent disparity between his self-conception and reality.

Id . at 55.

[63] G.W.F. Hegel, Hegel's Science of Logic (A.V.Miller trans., 1969) [hereinafter Hegel, The Greater Logic].

suppositions. To put it simply, he concludes that it is impossible to begin a logical analysis without intentionally, if tentatively, adopting presuppositions.^[64] One needs an initial working hypothesis or abduction. I have just explained that Hegel criticized other philosophers for basing their theories on unexamined presuppositions. Does this mean that Hegel himself is open to the same criticism despite his denials?

Hegel would argue "No." The problem with most philosophers is not that they start from presuppositions, which is inevitable. It is that they never return to critique their initial presuppositions. Presuppositions should only be accepted tentatively as working hypotheses to be developed and tested. Hegel argued that his totalizing philosophy and dialectic logic of Aufhebung (frequently translated into the dreadful English word "sublation") always turns back on itself. This enables one not only to develop the logical consequences of a hypothesis but also to return to and analyze the starting point—to test the hypothesis.

The essential requirement for the science of logic is not so much that the beginning be a pure immediacy, but rather that the whole of the science be within itself a circle in which the first is also the last and the last is also the first.^[65]

Sublation is a process by which internal contradictions of earlier concepts are resolved, but not in the sense of suppressing difference. The German word aufheben means paradoxically to preserve as well as negate.

"To sublate" [i.e., "aufheben" ] has a twofold meaning in [German]: on the one hand it means to preserve, to maintain, and equally it also means to cause to cease, to put an end to. Even "to preserve" includes a negative element, namely, that something is removed from its immediacy and so from an existence which is open to external influences, in order to preserve it. Thus what is sublated is at the same time preserved; it has only lost its immediacy but it is not by that account annihilated.^[66]

In trying to understand the dialectic, many Americans are hampered by having been taught a crude caricature of sublation as a simplistic trinity of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. That is, a thesis is presented, an in-

[64] And yet we must make a beginning: and a beginning, as primary and underived, makes an assumption, or rather is an assumption. It seems as if it were impossible to make a beginning at all.

Hegel, The Lesser Logic, supra note 29, at 3.

[65] Hegel, The Greater Logic, supra note 63, at 71.

[66] Id . at 107.

ternal contradiction or antithesis in the original thesis is identified, and the two are resolved in a harmonizing synthesis, which destroys all previous contradictions. This serves as a new thesis, starting the logical process over. This formula is designed more as a means to discredit Karl Marx (who expropriated Hegel's method) than to understand philosophy. Indeed, this is how I was introduced to it in high school.

The problem with this description is that it suggests that sublation destroys all difference and deviation by converting them into an oppressive compromise.^[67] Rather, as the German term implies, sublation preserves, as well as negates, the prior concept. Sublation is not merely tertiary—it is quadratic.

Thesis and antithesis exist in contradiction. Through sublation these contradictions are simultaneously resolved into synthesis so that at one moment thesis and antithesis are revealed as identical. Yet there always remains an unmediated moment, a hard kernel of unsublated contradiction, a phantom fourth, the trace or differance of deconstruction, that resists mediation.^[68] That is, in sublation we have not only the thesis and antithesis and the moment of identity of synthesis, but also simultaneously the moment of difference which resists sublation.

In sublation the difference identified in the earlier stage is always preserved because it is always a necessary moment in the development of the later. To gussy it up with more fashionable terminology, the earlier concept is at one moment always already the subsequent concept, but simultaneously the very existence of the latter concept requires that the earlier concept is not yet the later concept.

Sublation (i.e., synthesis) can never destroy the differentiation between self and other (thesis and antithesis) precisely because sublation is the recognition that at one moment self and other are truly the same while at another moment they are truly different. Moreover, the moment of identity is itself different from the self-identity of self and other. In other words, in the differentiation of self and other, identity is a possibility. It is through sublation that the possibility of identity is actualized. But at

[67] Even as brilliant a philosopher as Charles Sanders Peirce criticized Hegel for subsuming "secondness" (awareness of distinctions) into "thirdness" (interrelations). See John E. Smith, Community and Reality, in Perspectives on Peirce: Critical Essays on Charles Sanders peirce 92, 96, 103 (R. Bernstein ed., 1965) [hereinafter Perspectives on Peirce]. Other scholars, however, recognize a cross affinity between Peircean secondness and thirdness and Hegelian sublation. See, e.g ., Paul Weiss, Charles S. Peirce, Philosopher, in Perspectives on Peirce, supra at 120, 133–34.

[68] See Zizek,^[*] For They Know Not What They Do, supra note 19, at 179.

the same time, self and other must remain differentiated in order for actualization to remain possible. Hence Hegel's famous slogan of "the identity of identity and non-identity."^[69]

This is a necessary result of the circularity of the dialectic. Although worded in terms of the proactive resolution of what initially appeared to be contradictions into an implicit and inevitable whole, sublation is simultaneously the retroactive breakdown of what initially appeared as a harmonious whole into unresolved inherent contradiction.^[70]