Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Correspondence (1933-1967)

Letter ID: 87

Sri Aurobindo — Nahar, Prithwi Singh

July 31, 1944

Sublate

(The first part of the reply was in answer to the question as to the meaning of the word «sublate» occurring in The Life Divine, Vol. II, p. 267: «It claims to stand behind and supersede, to sublate and to eliminate every other knowledge....»

The second part was in explanation of a quotation from the Hegelian Philosophy taken from the Oxford Dictionary and with reference to the special meaning it gave to the word:

«Hegelian philos. (rendering G. aufheben, used by Hegel as having the opposite meanings of “destroy” and “preserve”) See Quot. : “Nothing passes over into Being, but Being equally sublates itself, is a passing over into Nothing, Ceasing-to-be. They sublate not themselves mutually, not the one the other externally ; but each sublates itself in itself, and is in its own self the contrary of itself.” »)¹

«Sublate» means originally to remove : it implies denial and removal (throwing off) of something posited. What appeared to be true, can be sublated by a greater truth contradicting it. The experience of the world can be sublated by the experience of Self, it is denied and removed; so the experience of the Self can be sublated by the experience of Sunya; it is denied and removed.

Hegel could not have used the word «sublate» as he wrote in German. I do not know what word he used which is here translated by sublate, but certainly it does not mean both destroy and preserve, nor in fact does it mean either. Being passes over into Non-being, so it sublates itself, changes and eliminates itself as it were from the view, becomes Non-being instead of being; but so also does Non-Being, what was Non-being passes over into being; where there was nothing, there is being; nothing has eliminated itself from the view. This, says Hegel, is not a mutual destruction by two contraries each of which was outside the other. Being inside itself becomes nothing or Non-Being; Non-Being or Nothing equally inside itself passes into being. They do not really sublate or drive out each other, but each sublates itself into the other. In other words it is the same Reality that presents itself now as one and now as the other.

Sri Aurobindo

Aufheben, if that is the German word, must mean the same as the Latin word subtollere p.p. sublatus, to heave up and off, or throw, from which «sublate» is taken.

¹ Prithwi Singh’s note.

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