ABSTRACT
Sublimation is a principle of "rationality" which "gives man mastery over himself" and thus leads to freedom. Professor Walter Kaufman's expansion of Friedrich Nietzsche's conception of sublimation strengthens the tie with Ralph Waldo Emerson. Both G. W. F. Hegel's and Nietzsche's concepts of dialectic help to illuminate Emerson's vision of psychological process. For the principle of sublimation, according to Kaufmann, embodies Nietzsche's view of the will-to-power as a "self-overcoming" which involves the harmonization and elevation of competing impulses, not their repression. If "sublimation" involves the appearance of unconscious energies, this process includes more than the mere "elevation" or "purification" of thought. Consequently, awareness of sublimation helps to "incarnate" the mind by placing it back within the body. In Germany, philosophers such as Hegel had developed dialectical models to account for patterns of differentiation and growth. Hegel's dialectic, as he reminds in his "Preface" to the Phenomenology of Mind, emphasizes the role of negation and loss in growth.
