The Hegelian Movement Beyond Binary

This is where Hegel becomes crucial but not only in the oversimplified “thesis-antithesis-synthesis” way in which dialectic is often discussed (that triadic formula came from Fichte, and Hegel himself considered it a schema that was not the actual living aufheben). His actual dialectic involves dynamic, immanent critique where contradictions unfold from within concepts themselves.

What Hegel actually contributes is the idea that truth emerges through holding and transcending oppositions—what he called Aufhebung, or sublation: simultaneously canceling, preserving, and elevating. contradictions aren’t dead ends but generative—truth emerges through their dynamic interplay, not through eliminating one pole. So we are not actually moving from past to future or from far to near but rather all these layers are ways we assess what is

Constellation Thinking: Beyond the Dialectic

Constellation thinking requires seeing “at least three” perspectives simultaneously, moving beyond binary opposition entirely. This is not just doing Hegelian dialectic—we’re doing something more radical.

Holding paradox means “noticing the polarities, and beginning to imagine them not as dual poles but as two parts we have focused on within a larger constellation.”

This transcends even Hegel’s nuanced sequential movement. Instead of thesis → antithesis → synthesis → new thesis, the way-making approach in neuroscience and philosophy proposes we can exist ‘in’ the constellation simultaneously, navigating between multiple positions without collapsing them into synthesis, even as they synthesize and shift. Actuall, that is what is happening but we in the form of life that is a human have this amazing ability to notice that…

So…to put it in not very scientific terms (you can find it in scientific terms elsewhere in my work if you wish) I argue that the hippocampus enables not just binary dialectic but this kaleidoscopic cognition—simultaneously holding multiple perspectives across space and time, treating ourselves and others as “constellations” rather than fixed points. And how I aruge this is through all this amazing research that so many have done and all the ways so many researchers have tried to write about it…and one big inspiration is Lynn Nadel. And in this paper The hippocampal formation and action at a distance, he really makes some interesting and important leaps. And he’s made even more since then, as you’ll hear in our conversation. But first let’s talk about some of this science that is part of this paper, and also I should note you can watch a video, a talk Lynn gave, about these subjects too, which is in the show notes and which we also mention here.