A Word for the Revolution, Life, & Transcendence
Aufheben • (auf-he-bən) • verb
Definition: to preserve, to destroy, to transcend
Origin: German
Aufheben may be the most simple, yet the most complex word you have never heard of, and it is a word we all must know. Aufheben is a German word that has no adequate English translation, yet we engage in aufheben each and every day. At first glance, aufheben appears to be a contradiction, and it is easy to conclude that a word cannot include opposing definitions. However, after further examination, the word becomes clear and one can easily see how these apparent contradictions exude the beauty of the word and even existence itself.
The Language of Philosophy and Discourse
German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel applied aufheben as a central part of his dialectic. As with many European philosophers, the emphasis on a dialectic derived from Ancient Greece, and the dialectic has always been a method of conversation, dialogue, or engagement that seeks to find the truth. For many philosophers, their dialectic would normally be used during a conversation or debate. For example, Plato’s method of dissecting every aspect of one’s line of thought could leave someone in a state of aporia (The Word #9: impasse, puzzlement, doubt), but Hegel aspired to apply his dialectic at a macro- and not a micro-level. His dialectic could be a dialogue that consumes an entire society and not just two people.
In Hegel’s dialectic, instead of having two people in a dialogue, he identified a thesis and an antithesis as the two voices. The thesis could best be understood as the status quo of a society, and the antithesis would be whatever chooses to challenge that status quo. Hegel’s dialectic understood that tension and conflict were inevitable because the ideas of his dialectic were forged during the turbulence of the French Revolution through Napoleon’s reign (1789-1815).
For Hegel, it was inevitable that the thesis and antithesis would clash, but what made his dialectic revolutionary was the idea that neither side would prevail. According to Hegel, the thesis and antithesis would merge and create a new synthesis. The action of synthesizing is aufheben. During aufheben, facets of the thesis and antithesis are abolished and preserved, and this process allows for the synthesis to transcend both the thesis and antithesis. Eventually, the synthesis becomes the new thesis, and the dialectic will repeat itself with a new antithesis.
According to Hegel, Napoleon represented the embodiment of aufheben because he was neither a king nor a commoner, but a transcendent combination of the two and a new type of French ruler. Prior to the synthesis of Napoleon, French society consisted of a feudal system controlled by a hereditary monarch who had total control over his subjects and serfs, and the dialectic was the tense battle between the monarchy (thesis) and the people (antithesis). The conventional wisdom at the time was that either the thesis or antithesis would prevail, and few anticipated that Napoleon’s synthesis would come out on top. Without the language of aufheben, it becomes harder to transcend our present situation and people will only envision either the thesis or antithesis prevailing.
The Language of Revolution and Life
Aufheben is primarily thought of as an obscure philosophical term, but it is actually the language of revolution. Revolutions aspire to transcend the present and create a new, previously unimaginable future. Creating the unimaginable is incredibly difficult because words do not exist for the unimagined. Thus we need to make new words to get to new places, and aufheben is a word that can help us get there. It provides the language for transcendence, and at a micro-level, most of us engage in aufheben all the time.
Being in a relationship consists of constantly engaging in aufheben. Relationships have tension and conflict, but the goal is for the sum to be greater than its parts. The combination of two people should ideally transcend the capacity of each individual. We know this phrase and say it all the time, but America never dissects the phrase or what the process entails. To ensure that the sum is greater than its parts, we ideally preserve what is best about each person, abolish their worst features, and combine these characteristics to make something that transcends each of them. All of us are looking for a person with whom we can engage in aufheben with, and for many of us, we aspire to create children who are the embodiment of aufheben.
Aufheben is existence, so it is even more tragic that it is a word that does not exist in English.
Additionally, authoritarian, ethnocidal societies aspire to never commence aufheben. Existence becomes zero-sum with winners and losers, but not transcendence. Ethnocidal America recoils at the thought of aufheben, and aspires to use lethal force to suppress people of color and their allies who are willing to fight to transcend America’s status quo. For far too long, America has used brutal force to suppress the antithesis of racial equality.
Aufheben is a revolutionary language, and as protests consume America following the murder of George Floyd, I keep on coming back to it. Donald Trump, Republicans, and white supremacists aspire to suppress transcendence because their ethnocidal way of life cannot exist without dominance. They live to not transcend their own limitations, and this is the opposite of existence.
America is fighting to transcend our unacceptable status quo and create something new, and this process will be even harder if we do not have a verb for describing and articulating the act of transcendence. We all need to say and engage in aufheben today.
Please share your thoughts with us via email, Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter using #TheWord. We will be hosting a Live Q&A session on our Instagram today at 5PM EDT so that we can answer your questions about aufheben. We hope to see you there.
P.S.
This week I created a lot of content for other media publications using the language of SCL. Below you will find links to the content.
The Daily Beast: “‘I Can’t Breathe’ Is the New American Anthem. Here’s How We Change That.”
The BBC: “Viewpoint: US must confront its Original Sin to move forward”
Grits & Gospel: “Finding Freecano - Cultivating a Language of Liberation”
Hashing It Out with Siraj Hashmi (Podcast): “Barrett Holmes Pitner on George Floyd and identifying America’s racial problem”
The Bridge by The Washington Informer: “How Ethnocide Explains COVID-19”