The Method: Dialectical Subsumption and Integration-through-Differentiation
This text is a preview of History of the Reception of Hegel, volume II, to be published in 2026 by Reflexivity Press.
The Problem of Traditional Systematics
How can a system of classification be both universal and open to experience? The traditional method is classificatory division: one looks for external criteria and divides the field accordingly. The result is more or less arbitrary lists without inner coherence.
Heinrichs develops a fundamentally different method: dialectical subsumption. Instead of asking “What external criteria can I use to organize this?”, it asks: “What structuring emerges from the reflexive structure of the matter itself?”
The answer follows from the four stages of reflection: every field of human experience can be structured according to the four basic moments that correspond to the four elements of meaning. This structuring is not arbitrary but follows from the nature of reflection itself.
The special feature: the fractal structure. Each of the four basic categories can in turn be subdivided again according to the same four categories. Four becomes sixteen, sixteen becomes sixty-four, sixty-four becomes two hundred fifty-six categories—but not through mechanical combination, rather through the systematic unfolding of the reflexive structure. Each subdivision shows specific refractions of the basic structure that occur only in that particular concrete domain.
The Systematic Classification of Actions
An impressive example is Heinrichs’ systematic classification of types of action, developed in “Reflexionstheoretische Semiotik, Teil 1: Handlungstheorie” (Reflection-Theoretical Semiotics, Part 1: Action Theory, 1980). Just as the periodic table of the chemical elements discovered a systematic order within the seemingly chaotic variety of substances, so Heinrichs’ system reveals the inner order of human practice.
The four basic types—object-related, subject-related, socially related, and medium-related actions—are each subdivided fourfold, these sixteen types again fourfold, and these sixty-four again fourfold: 4 × 4 × 4 × 4 = 256 different types of action, each with its systematic location, each distinguishable from all others, but all connected by the same reflection-logical structure.
This is no scholastic game. It is an attempt to order the whole of human practice conceptually—not through external classification, but through disclosing the inner logic of action itself. For action theory, for sociology, for ethics, this is of enormous significance: for the first time there is a systematic ordering of human activities that is empirically verifiable and theoretically grounded.[1]
The Theory of Language: Even Deeper Systematics
What Heinrichs achieves for action theory in a single volume, he unfolds for language across five volumes of “Sprache der Reflexion” (Language of Reflection, 2007-2014). Language—the medium of all reflection—is here systematized to a depth without parallel in the history of the philosophy of language.
The four dimensions of language (syntax, semantics, pragmatics, sigmatics) are derived through the logic of reflection and then themselves subdivided fourfold—across multiple levels. The result is a “grammar of reflection” that shows: the structures of language are not arbitrary conventions but expressions of the same basic reflexive structure that also shapes consciousness and society.
Integration-through-Differentiation
The universal principle of development behind dialectical subsumption is integration-through-differentiation. It overcomes the false alternative between a conservative longing for unity and progressive fragmentation.
The secret lies in the principle of identity: integration-through-differentiation exists only when the principle of differentiation is identical with the principle of higher unification. The four stages of reflection are at once a principle of differentiation (different forms of rationality) and a principle of integration (systematic gradation).
Why does the staging of reflection work? Because it does not use external criteria that create artificial divisions, but discloses the inner logic of the matter itself. The distinctions follow from the reflexive nature of consciousness and therefore lead naturally to systematic integration.
Heinrichs develops the systematic classification of types of action in: Reflexionstheoretische Semiotik, Teil 1: Handlungstheorie. Strukturalsemantische Grammatik des Handelns, Bouvier Verlag, Bonn 1980. The theory of language follows a year later: Reflexionstheoretische Semiotik, Teil 2: Sprachtheorie. Philosophische Grammatik der semiotischen Dimensionen, Bouvier Verlag, Bonn 1981—the same year as Habermas’ TCA. An expanded revision of the theory of language appeared in five volumes: Sprache der Reflexion, Steno Verlag, Varna 2007-2014. ↩︎