[f. L. sublāt-, f. sub- SUB- 25 + lāt- (for *tlāt-), pa. ppl. stem of tollĕre to take away.]
† 1. trans. To remove, take away. Obs.
a. 1548. Hall, Chron., Hen. VII., 1 b. The aucthores of ye mischiefe [were] sublated and plucked awaye.
1601. B. Jonson, Ev. Man in Hum. (Qo. 1), II. iii. This brasse varnish being washt off, and three or foure other tricks sublated.
1657. Hawke, Killing is M., 46. Tiberius … was sublated by poison.
2. Logic. To deny, contradict, disaffirm: opposed to POSIT 2.
1838. Sir W. Hamilton, Logic, xvii. (1866), I. 331. When of two opposite predicates the one is posited or affirmed, the other is sublated or denied.
1864. Bowen, Logic, vi. 163. As both cannot be false, if I sublate one, the other is posited.
1867. Atwater, Logic, 180. Whether, in the Subsumption, the Disjunct Members are properly sublated.
3. Hegelian Philos. (rendering G. aufheben, used by Hegel as having the opposite meanings of ‘destroy’ and ‘preserve’): see quots. 1865.
1865. J. H. Stirling, Secret of Hegel, I. 354. 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. Ibid., 357. A thing is sublated, resolved, only so far as it has gone into unity with its opposite. Ibid. (1868), trans. Schwegler’s Hist. Philos., 401. The speculative of Hegel is also clear; it is what explanatorily sublates all things into the unity of God; or, in general, that is speculative, that sublates a many into one (or vice versa). A speculative philosophy, consequently, must be a chain of mutually sublating counterparts.
1877. E. Caird, Philos. Kant, II. x. 427. The material world exists only in so far as it goes into itself, or sublates its own self-externality.
1910. J. Orr, in Expositor, April, 367. High metaphysical theories, like Hegel’s, which make sin … a moment of ‘negation’ to be afterwards sublated in a higher unity.
