Autonomy, Negativity, and the Challenge of Spinozism in Hegel's Science of Logic (original) (raw)
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2012
The issue of negation and the possibility of self-negation stand at the very center of the philosophical dialogue between the systems of Spinoza and Hegel, and in this paper I will attempt to provide a preliminary explication of this foundational debate between the two systems. In the first part of the paper I will argue that the “determination is negation” formula has been understood in at least three distinct senses among the German Idealists, and as a result many of the participants in the discussion of this formula were actually talking past each other. The clarification of the three distinct senses of the formula will lead, in the second part of the paper, to a more precise evaluation of the fundamental debate between Spinoza and Hegel (and the German Idealists in general) regarding the possibility (or even necessity) of self-negation. In this part I will evaluate the validity of each interpretation of the determination formula, and motivate the positions of the various participants in the debate.
Reviews in Religion & Theology, 2019
To speak of what is not, we must first speak of what is, of being, and of metaphysics. Such positive speech of being thus seems to proceed any speech of nothing. And yet it is also possible to argue that, since we cannot begin to speak of being until we first speak of what being is not, negative speech is not less but arguably even more originary than any positive speech of being. Much of European philosophy since Martin Heidegger has inherited this assumption of the primacy of negativity, of negative speech, and of the nothing (das Nicht). For it often speaks of the nothing as something in a discourse of nihilism. Yet in such a discourse, the nothing is not simply discarded but, to the contrary, always already related back through speech to the metaphysical source of any speech of being. The discourse of nihilism may thus often appear to lapse into the sophistic spectacle of negativity, of a negative ontology, or of a 'meontology' masquerading as an inverted escape from the tradition of metaphysics from Plato to Hegel (Conor Cunningham, The Genealogy of Nihilism: Philosophies of Nothing and the Difference of Theology, London: Routledge, 2002, pp. xv-xvii). Gregory Moder has, in Hegel and Spinoza: Substance and Negativity, staged a critical comparison between anti-Spinozist readings of Hegel and anti-Hegelian readings of Spinoza for the purpose of showing the merits of reading Hegel and Spinoza together at once. Moder argues both for and against the criticisms of Hegel and Spinoza. Hegel had argued that Spinoza was constitutionally incapable of thinking of a productive or determinative negation; of the determinacy of substance becoming subject for the freedom of subjectivity; and indeed of any dynamic surprise in an utterly inert substance (pp. 5-8). He describes Hegel's question as 'a question of movement, specifically of movement or contradiction of the beginning, of the primordial' self-determination of the dynamism internal to the being itself of absolute substance (p. 8). And yet Moder also recommends a Neo-Spinozist reading of the Hegelian dialectic, where, with Althusser, Hegel can be reproached for reducing the form of dialectic to a 'mechanical finalism' of preformulated stages without any anticipated surprise at its end in 'absolute knowing' (pp. 11-14). Moder presents a dilemma: either the beginning of Hegel's Logic is included or excluded from the beginning of his philosophical system (p. 24). The difference between thinking and not thinking is, for Moder as for Žižek, the fundamental presupposition of Hegel's Logic (p. 27). He proposes to read Hegel and Spinoza over this difference between thinking and not thinking (p. 23). The beginning of the logic itself may in this way be 'redoubled' in the process in which it begins, in the motion of a Reviews 673
Commentary on Hegel's Logic 1: Prefaces and Introduction
Phenomenology of spirit. Although I cannot proclaim to be nearly as good a Hegel-scholar as Harris is, I still thought it worth the effort to express my thoughts and interpretations of Science of logic in a study analysing each paragraph and then explaining it in more detail, as best as I could.
Toward The Idea of the Absolute: A Critical Assessment of Hegel’s Relationship to Spinoza.
In giving a critical assessment of Hegel's relationship to Spinoza it is to be remembered that Hegel was not so much concerned with refuting another philosopher's ideas, for 'each [philosophy] in turn… [is] the one true philosophy', and 'philosophy is the totality of [its] forms,…where all principles are preserved' and contribute to the 'one truth' 1 But then a question arises. Is Hegel interpreting Spinoza's system to suit his own purposes? For Hegel claimed that 'in every other science the subject matter and the scientific method are distinguished from each other', 2 and the purpose of his philosophical system is that they should coincide, the subject matter of philosophy being thought or reason. But Spinoza's ultimate aim with his philosophy was to ascertain whether there is some real good, whether there is 'anything of which the discovery and attainment would enable [him] to enjoy continuous, supreme, and unending happiness', 3 his concern primarily being with whatever leads us 'to the knowledge of the human mind and its highest blessedness'. 4 That is, he was not solely concerned with understanding, he also wanted to know how to act.
Research in Phenomenology, 2021
This essay re-examines Hegel's critique of Spinoza's Ethics, focusing on the question of method. Are the axioms and definitions unmotivated presuppositions that make the attainment of absolute knowledge impossible in principle, as Hegel charges? This essay develops a new reading of the Ethics to defend it from this critique. I argue that Hegel reads Spinoza as if his system were constructed only according to the mathematical second kind of knowledge, ignoring Spinoza's clear preference for knowledge of the third kind. The Ethics, I argue, is a book with several layers: it is at once a deductive mathematical system, and a handbook to aid the intuitive power of the active philosophical reader. The letter of each text may be identical, but they have little else in common-Pierre Menard's rewriting of Don Quixote given systematic philosophical form.
The Beginning of Hegel's Logic
Philosophy Compass, 2023
This article discusses two topics, both commonly referred to using the label "the beginning of Hegel's Logic": (1) Hegel's justification for the claim that a science of logic must begin by considering the concept of "pure being". (2) Hegel's account of the concepts "being, "nothing", and "becoming" in the first chapter of his Logic. Discussing recent work on both of these topics, two primary claims are defended: Regarding (1): the strongest interpretations of Hegel's case for beginning a science of logic with the concept of pure being are those which take him to argue that this concept must be necessarily both "immediate" and "mediated" at the same time. Regarding (2): The widespread tendency to take Hegel's treatment of the concepts of being, nothing, and becoming as an example with which to illustrate his "dialectical method" should be replaced with an interpretation of that chapter which understands it to rather make possible the kind of dialectical transitions which make up the rest of Hegel's Science of Logic.
Thought and metaphysics: Hegel's critical reception of Spinoza
Spinoza and German Idealism, 2012
In this chapter I examine Hegel's criticisms of Spinoza in order to address the ongoing dispute about Hegel and metaphysics. This debate is consistently framed in terms that refer to Spinoza as a philosopher with a robust metaphysical view. The assumption is that if Hegel is shown to be closer to Spinoza than to Kant, his view should be considered metaphysical. 1 By examining Hegel's criticism of Spinoza, focusing especially on the relation between thought and substance, I clarify some of the central issues in the debate over Hegel's metaphysics and situate his position on metaphysics in relation to both Spinoza and Kant.
Hegel's Logic and Narration of Contingency A Lógica e a Narração da Contingência em Hegel 1
The paper's main aims can be formulated as follows: a) Hegel has a strong notion of contingency. Contingency is for him not simple absence of necessity, and not simple under-determinedness either. Contingency is an original notion, having the same logical and metaphysical weight and dignity as the notion of necessity; b) this " strong " notion of contingency is decisive for Hegel's conception of subjectivity. Insofar it can be tracked up to his real philosophy. Other than assumed in many commonplace interpretations of Hegel, I will suggest that the power to go from necessity to contingency makes up an essential part of subjective freedom as much as the power to go from contingency to necessity. This has important consequences especially in the philosophy of history, which is shown to be not aprioristic and dogmatic, but open to contingency (though not to sceptical conclusions); and c) consistently with the recognition of the irreducibility of contingency to a priori concepts, Hegel also recognizes the need for a non-philosophical narration of contingency and gives us some interesting clues about it and its relationship to philosophy. Throughout my argumentation of these three theses, I hope to provide evidence for the thesis that dogmatic constructions on Hegel's philosophy of history (including, but not limited to the so-called thesis of the " end of history ") can be undermined by referring to Hegel's understanding of contingency. On a more general scale, this also shows that the logical groundwork of Hegel's real philosophy cannot be abandoned without jeopardizing the potential of Hegel's thought to contribute to current philosophical debates. My argument is structured as follows. I will, first of all, comment on some passages of Hegel's Science of Logic from the beginning of the " Subjective logic " regarding the logic of