The Concept of De-Sublation and the Regressive Process in History: Prolegomena

Abstract

I start the analysis with probably the strongest historiography of progress—the Hegelian philosophy. Then I discuss the dynamics of the “conceptual engine” of the theory of progress in Hegel—the concept of sublation. This analysis will make apparent that the Hegelian approach gives us not only a general “historiosophy” of progress, but above all a precise conceptual—even logical— tool, engine, device; thus productively mediatizing contradictions and conditioning the possibility of progress as such. In search of the general “historiography” of regress, I then turn towards psychoanalytical theory. In the psychoanalytical horizon of Freud and Lacan, I introduce a conceptual instrument forged on the basis of the Hegelian sublation—the concept of de-sublation. It will appear as the sought after “conceptual device” of the general theory of regress. We will see how the de-sublation of the previously sublated whole produces two independent conceptual entities, gathered around the moments of the universal and the singular.