Hegel ή Spinoza

by Pierre Macherey, Τάσος Μπέτζελος (translator)

Σύμφωνα με τον Hegel, η σκέψη του Spinoza δεν είναι ακόμη αρκετά διαλεκτική. Και αν ήταν πάρα πολύ διαλεκτική; Ή, έστω, αν ήταν διαλεκτική με έναν τρόπο που δεν μπορούσε να αποδεχτεί ο Hegel; Η απάρνηση αυτής της διαλεκτικής –ας πούμε, για να μην χρονοτριβούμε, μιας διαλεκτικής χωρίς τελεολογία– στην οποία προβαίνει ο Hegel μέσω του Spinoza, είναι ο τρόπος με τον οποίο συναντά ένα αξεπέραστο εμπόδιο κατά την ανάπτυξη της δικής του σκέψης: πρόκειται για το εμπόδιο ενός λόγου για τον οποίο πρέπει να πούμε όχι ότι δεν είναι ακόμη εγελιανός, αλλά ότι δεν είναι ήδη πλέον.

Ο Hegel και ο Spinoza συναντήθηκαν, ακόμα και αν η συνάντησή τους πήρε, από την πλευρά του Hegel, τη μορφή μιας εκπληκτικής παρανόησης. Αν πράγματι ο Spinoza και ο Hegel δεν βαδίζουν στο ίδιο μονοπάτι, μαζί ή ο ένας πίσω από τον άλλον, από την άλλη είναι γεγονός ότι οι διαδρομές τους διασταυρώθηκαν, ότι κάποιες στιγμές πλησίασαν, για να απομακρυνθούν στη συνέχεια προς τελείως αντίθετες κατευθύνσεις. Από αυτήν την άποψη, αντί για μια σύγκριση μεταξύ συστημάτων, μια απόπειρα καταδικασμένη στην αποτυχία ή σε πολύ εύκολες επιτυχίες, είναι ίσως ενδιαφέρον να αναζητήσουμε ανάμεσα σε αυτές τις δύο φιλοσοφίες επιμέρους σημεία στα οποία τέμνονται. Διότι αυτά ακριβώς τα σημεία εξηγούν το αίσθημα παράξενης οικειότητας που βιώνει κάθε εγελιανός αναγνώστης του Spinoza και κάθε σπινοζιστής αναγνώστης του Hegel.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Theory

336 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1979

About the author

Pierre Macherey is a French Marxist literary critic at the University of Lille Nord de France. A former student of Louis Althusser and collaborator on the influential volume Reading Capital, Macherey is a central figure in the development of French post-structuralism and Marxism. His work is influential in literary theory and Continental philosophy in Europe (including Britain) though it is generally little read in the United States.

Reviews

[robin friedman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hegel Or Spinoza

The philosophy of Spinoza has been receiving a great deal of attention recently, both in Europe and the United States. In reading some of the recent literature on Spinoza, I found frequent reference to Pierre Macherey's book, "Hegel or Spinoza", first published in French in 1977. Upon learning that the book had been translated into English in 2011, I wanted to read it. Susan Ruddick, associate professor of geography at the University of Toronto, did the translation and also wrote an important introduction to the volume. Pierre Macherey (b. 1937) may not be as familiar to American readers as other contemporary French thinkers. He is professor emeritus at Universite Lille Nord de France and a literary critic as well as a philosopher. Macherey was a student and colleague of Louis Althusser. He writes from a distinctly Marxist perspective.

Hegel and Spinoza are frequently paired together for philosophical study. In the late 19th Century, British commentators such as H.H. Joachim read Spinoza through Hegelian eyes. With their emphasis on absolute substance and on the nature of reason, the two thinkers have commonalities. As Macherey shows, Hegel wrote extensively on Spinoza throughout his career. He was highly critical of Spinoza for the lack of teleology in his thought and for his conception of substance, which Hegel found abstract and static and which ignored subject or spirit, or what Hegel called geist.

In a study such as this, there are at least three thinkers involved: Hegel, Spinoza, and Macherey himself. Macherey takes an engaged look at the relationship between the two earlier philosophers. He writes in commenting on an instance of Hegel's alleged misreading of his predecessor: "Here we should not be led astray by the cult of the literal. What Hegel read in Spinoza -- and all authentic reading is in its own way violent or it is nothing but the mildness of a paraphrase-- matters just as much as what he actually said, or rather, what counts, is the reaction of these two discourses upon each other, because it offers an invaluable insight for each of them." (p. 113)

Macherey aims to counteract an evolutionary reading of philosophy, much like Hegel's own, in which Spinoza's thought is regarded as a stage on the way to a phiosophically more complete system. Hegel misread Spinoza, Macherey argues, to fit his predecessor into his own manner of thinking while Spinoza for his part had already rejected and rebutted the teachings of the latter philosopher, especially as it involved teleology and idealism. Macherey's book has the character of an imaginary debate and discussion between the two thinkers exploring their commonalities and divergencies. Macherey's approach is historicist in that he finds both thinkers were products of their times. Macherey writes:

"The truth of philosophy is as much in Spinoza as it must also be in Hegel: that is, it is not entirely in one or the other but somewhere between the two, in the passage that is effected between the one and the other....When two systems of thought as well described as those of Spinoza and Hegel react to one another, that is, at the same time one against the other and one with the other, something must emerge,which coming from both properly belongs to neither but rather to the interval that separates them, constituted as their common truth."

Macherey offers a telling parallel in showing the relationship between Hegel and Spinoza. In 1673, Spinoza rejected an offer of a chair in philosophy at the Academy of Heidelburg on grounds that acceptance would interfere with his intellectual freedom. In 1816, Hegel accepted the offer of a similar position while carefully and prudently negotiating for increased benefits, including free housing. Macherey observes that Spinoza's philosophy "reveals the point of view of a recluse, a reprobate, a rebel, transmitted by word of mouth." In contrast, "the philosophy of Hegel is instructed from on high to pupils below: Spinoza's philosophy is transmitted to disciples in an egalitarian manner. Here a difference emerges that we must take seriously." This little story illuminates much of a complex book.

In her introduction, Ruddick aptly observes that Macherey's book is written in such a way that it will eliminate "all but the most serious of readers." Stylistically,this book is extraordinarily frustrating and difficult. In reading it, I could readily sympathize with the turn of English and American philosophy beginning in the early 20th Century which aimed to eliminate Hegelian obscurantism and metaphysics from philolosophy. That tendency remains much alive today. With that said, there is much to be learned from this book about Spinoza as Macherey describes his thought as showing a philosophy of immanence -- a term that has been adopted by many modern students. Macherey's Spinoza is essentially a thorough-going materialist who rejects theological explanations. His Spinoza also rejects simple foundationalism, such as found in Cartesianism, while not becoming a relativist. In his long discussions about the geometrical method of the Ethics, Spinoza's doctrine of substance, attributes, and modes, and transcendence and particularity, Macherey offers much insight into Spinoza. Macherey finds that Spinoza lacks the "dialectic" developed by Hegel; and he opts for a materialistic nontelelogical dialectic of the type he finds in Marxism. Most readers, myself included, will not want to follow Macherey in this path.

In sum, this is not a book for those with a casual interest in Spinoza or for readers who do not wish to explore the labyrinths of contemporary French philosophy. For those readers with a serious interest in Spinoza and a willingness to consider some of the ways in which his thought has been appropriated and interpreted, this book can be worthwhile.

Robin Friedman

[Beauregard Bottomley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Opposites can’t exist. Spinoza uses that to create a substance as a concept which cannot be added to itself such that every determination is a negation of the infinite giving truth as being through an axiomatic system inherently true for itself while Hegel will take the negation of the negation and resolve the contradiction with the aid of the dialectic. Each are aware of the complexity of making truth from using the third law of thought the law that states opposites can’t exist also known as proof by contradiction.

(Sidenote: quantum physics bumps up to the problem with the wave/particle duality measurement problem and the Heisenberg uncertainty principle stating that we can’t know both position and momentum simultaneously, there’s a whole branch of mathematics that is called constructive mathematics that doesn’t allow proof by contradiction but it ultimately becomes moribund through its limitations. One of my favorite books Philosophy of Science by Curd talks about this stuff, but that book can be a difficult read).

Also, Descartes assumes the world away and tries to nullify Aristotle and makes truth equal to being through his certainty of the self and his cogito and extended things and thinking things which never really meet each other. Spinoza gives the one substance (one reality) infinite attributes and things a conatus (struggling or striving). The author details the relationships between Descartes, Spinoza and Hegel.

Spinoza is a reaction to Descartes. My favorite book for the year was definitely The Radical Enlightenment by Jonathan Israel. He’ll show the connections between Spinoza and Descartes. He also points out how Spinoza is the heart and soul of the Enlightenment. Spinoza uses the given paradigms of the times to show the paradigms were wrong. Spinoza and Hegel break metaphysics by showing the inherent truth within the ideas of the ideas coming from different perspectives and this book will tie them together more than Hegel thought allowable.

Hegel believed Spinoza was part of his process of the Absolute Spirit becoming aware of itself and to make it fit his dialectic would at times mischaracterize what Spinoza was really saying. This book actually does a good job of demonstrating that.

There is a translator’s note in this book which highlights the connections that are somewhat obscured by the way Hegel sublimates and mischaracterizes Spinoza’s system such that a reader of Heidegger, Foucault, and Adorno will miss each philosopher’s obvious debt to Spinoza rather than Hegel. When I read Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit or Heidegger’s Being and Time Spinoza jumps out at me from each text. Heidegger starts his book with Hegel and ends it with Hegel, but I don’t think he acknowledges Spinoza though their thought at times does overlap.

In Schopenhauer’s Will and Representation he mentioned how contradictions (opposites can’t exist, also known as the third law of thought) can never lead to truth and how faulty they are as a basis for knowledge. Oddly, that aligns nicely with Hegel’s thought too. I’m not the only one who thinks Schopenhauer has more in common with Hegel than most people realize, Bryan McGee says that in his wonderful book The Philosophy of Schopenhauer.

I’m glad a Goodreads’ friend made this book ‘want to read’ on this book. I would have never have come across this book otherwise. It has a 1977 vibe to it which makes it all the more fun to read today.

[Derek · Rating 4 out of 5]

Macherey is a sharp logician and an excellent scholar of Spinoza, Hegel, Kant, and Descartes.

[Nima · Rating 4 out of 5]

این اثر یکی از متون محوری در افق اندیشه چپ است و تاثیری شگرف بر دلوز، نگری و بدیو داشته است. مولف، پیر ماشری، منتقد ادبی مارکسیست و شاگرد آلتوسر، با ظرافتی مفهومی از پسوند "یا" در عنوان کتاب عبور می‌کند، چرا که این "یا" تنها به مقایسه محدود نمی‌شود، همان‌طور که ماشری تصریح می‌کند، عنوان اولیه hegel sive spinoza بود، گویی تلاقی و هم‌نشینی این دو دستگاه فلسفی را نشانه می‌گیرد. با این همه، در ادامه روشن می‌شود که رویکرد ماشری در واقع اسپینوزایی است. او می‌کوشد نشان دهد خوانش هگل از اسپینوزا تحریف‌آمیز و ناقص است و این نقد را در چهار محور کلیدی توسعه می‌دهد:


۱-خوانش هگلی از اسپینوزا
هگل اسپینوزا را نقطه آغاز ناگزیر اندیشیدن به مطلق می‌داند، لیکن به دلیل فهم جوهری ایستا از مطلق، سوبژکتیویته و دینامیک درونی مغفول می‌ماند. مفهوم "علت خود" هرچند ارزشمند است، اما در ساختار جوهر محو می‌شود و به آزادی تحقق نمی‌یابد.اسپینوزاگرایی، اگرچه مرحله‌ای ضروری، اما ناقص است و هگل با تبدیل جوهر به جوهر-سوژه و از طریق نقد سه‌گانه خود روش هندسی، صفات و اصل هر تعینی نفی است کوشش به رفع این نقصان دارد.


۲-مسائله روش هندسی
هگل روش هندسی اسپینوزا را صوری و بیرونی می‌داند، زیرا ضرورت و حرکت درونی مفهوم را نمایان نمی‌سازد، قضایا همچون پازل کنار هم قرار می‌گیرند و زنده بودن حقیقت مفهومی از بین می‌رود. اسپینوزا اما روش را حاصل فعالیت عقل می‌بیند، نه پیش‌شرط معرفت، ایده‌ها از درون علت خود برمی‌خیزند و معرفتی عینی و غیرذهنی را امکان‌پذیر می‌سازند. هگل نقد خود را در جهت ارتقای اسپینوزاگرایی به حرکت مفهومی و جوهر-سوژه به کار می‌گیرد.


۳-مسئله صفات
هگل صفات را صوری، سلسله‌مراتبی و محدود می‌بیند، در حالی که در اسپینوزا صفات خود جوهرند، همزمان بی‌نهایت‌اند و وحدت جوهر در کثرت آن‌ها تحقق می‌یابد. ماشری نشان می‌دهد هگل با این خوانش، اسپینوزا را ایستا و فاقد سلبیت معرفی کرده است، حال آنکه فلسفهٔ او پویا، علی و سازنده است. نقد هگل نه از تمایز بلکه از تحریف مفهوم این‌همانی جوهر و صفت ناشی می‌شود.


۴-اصل هر تعینی نفی است
برای هگل، اسپینوزا تا آستانه دیالکتیک می‌رود اما تناقض‌ها را در جوهر ایستای واحد حل و خنثی می‌کند، در نتیجه تصویری سلبی و انتزاعی از نظام او می‌سازد. اسپینوزا اما تعین را هم‌زمان ایجابی و سلبی می‌فهمد، صفات و حالات واسطه‌های ایجابی‌اند و جوهر فاقد حرکت نفی درونی است. بنابراین آنچه هگل مرحله‌ای ناکامل می‌خواند، در حقیقت مقاومت اسپینوزا در برابر ادغام در ایدئالیسم هگلی و بستر امکان دیالکتیک غیرایدئالیستی مبتنی بر ایجابیت مطلق است.

[Tom Pepper · Rating 4 out of 5]

Macherey demonstrates why Hegel was unable to read Spinoza correctly, why he was forced by his own understanding of the dialectics and the subject to misread Spinoza. As Macherey puts it, Spinoza "refutes the Hegelian dialectic," and so to understand him aright would have disabled Hegel's project. This extended discussion of a case of misreading is very useful, enabling us (me, at least) to better understand both Hegel and Spinoza.

The book remains at a level of abstraction which can sometimes be frustrating, I think. That is, I was left with a feeling of "now that I know that, what do I do?" The discussion of metaphysics and epistemology never employs any concrete application to clarify their significance. Of course, that's the nature of this kind of work, which is meant as a clearing of the ground, establishing the place we begin from. At the end, the suggestion is that now we can begin, from here, to try to produce a thoroughly materialist dialectic. A big task, and one we wouldn't want to begin by accepting idealist assumptions. It's sort of like trying to find a cure for a disease: first we need to clear away conceptions of illness as something like an imbalance of humours, then substitute the idea of illness as the effect of a virus--but then, of course the work of finding the cure is only made possible, not yet completed.

Overall, a great book if you already know some Hegel and Spinoza. (It is in no way an introduction to this debate). Now, if some ambitious scholar would just undertake a translation of Macherey's commentary on Spinoza's Ethics, for dim folks like me who don't read French well enough to read the original.

[Iñigo · Rating 5 out of 5]

An amazingly careful and in-depth reading of Spinoza, in abrubt contrast with its reading of Hegel, which takes a lot for granted

[Ceena · Rating 4 out of 5]

"no longer taking the “laws” of chronology into consideration, we can say that if Hegel seems to not have always properly understood Spinoza or to have not wanted to understand him, it is because Spinoza himself understood Hegel very well, which, from the point of view of a teleology, is evidently intolerable." p. 212

The best description of the book is provided by the English translator:
Hegel or Spinoza is first of all an interrogation, with surgical precision, of the exact points of misreading of Spinoza by Hegel—an interrogation that attests, contra Hegel, to the immanent power of Spinoza’s work. And it can be read in relation to our own present—in relation to our own questions about the role of the negative (and the positive) in the politics of ontology and the ability to renew Marxism not as a science but as a theoretical practice and a philosophy. {however} Neither Hegel nor Spinoza is cast strictly as the negative of the other; each is read in terms of his own adequate truth. What is inadequate in Hegel is his necessary misreading of Spinoza, a reading that situates Spinoza from Hegel’s point of view, that separates Spinoza’s philosophy from what it can do, the adequate truth that is Spinoza.

Macherey genuinely serves as the mediator in a meticulously conducted debate involving the two primary philosophers, Hegel and Spinoza, with occasional mentions of other figures, particularly Kant and, to a greater extent, Descartes. Macherey probes both philosophies with such scrutinizing mastery that resembles a scientist exploring a phenomenon from every possible aspect. His approach is very detective-like. He knows both philosophers very well but he's smart enough not to go overboard condemning Hegel; he simply points out flaws in Hegel's reading of Spinoza. Macherey testifies blatantly that “… , our objective is not to compare these two philosophies in order to distinguish them from each other; this would not be possible except at the cost of an abusive simplification of their content, which would lead to a real distortion of their meaning. Rather it is to place in evidence a phenomenon that is highly disconcerting: Hegel declares himself furthest from Spinozism exactly at the point on which the two doctrines appear to coincide.”

I enjoyed reading this book a lot. In my view, Hegel appears to have misinterpreted Spinoza's ideas to bolster his own philosophy (something in-line with what the author perhaps doesn’t announce quite loudly). Labeling Spinoza as static seems to be a significant misconception. I can't help but draw an analogy between Hegel's interpretation of the [Spinoza’s] substance and the concept of black holes! Hegel criticizes Spinoza’s geometric presentation of his philosophy, as if Spinoza had tried to declare the truth of the substance in a geometric pattern! This is far from the case however, as the presentation is only for the sake of the intellectual (the reader). Macherey dismantles Hegel's interpretation of Spinoza's notions regarding attributes, substance, modes and a very thorough analysis of his famous notion “all determination is negation” by close examination of several texts, reaching a level of scrutiny akin to that found in the natural sciences, displaying precision and accuracy.

BE AWARE: Without a prior understanding of Spinoza's work (at least Ethics the first 3 chapters), navigating through this book will be quite challenging. Fortunately, my memory of the Ethics was still fresh, but perhaps one needs the Ethics to refer to for a more in depth reading.

[Uğur · Rating 4 out of 5]

either spinozism or philosophismlessness


we would not be exaggerating at all if we said that Hegel, who was so influenced by spinoza, essentially created his entire philosophy based on the current of spinozism put forward by German idealists at that time. in fact, there is no intellectual support among them. Dec. and the part that makes the job beautiful starts right here. because the fact that he chose spinoza as his target and tried to refute him led Hegel into a mistake and reached a whole wrong assessment. therefore, while spinoza was the primitive version, Hegel became the first version with the false opposition of the philosophy of being. our writer Pierre Macherey tells us exactly this tragedy.

the essence of the tension is revealed by the idea of "pantheism". to make an evaluation by getting out of the illusion of the process that made Spinoza irreligious, Spinoza's treatment of the nothingness of every phenomenon by considering god to be the universe itself created a rather radical language of discourse during the period he lived. we can also see the reflections of this with what he experienced when we read about his life. spinoza, who said "everything is god," accepted the absolute sovereignty of god in a spiritual sense, but this acceptance raised question marks along with it. -which has become known as the contradiction of pantheism. some of these problems are if everything is God, how do non-believers exist? if everything is nothing in the sight of God, what is good and evil, how is it determined?

hegel, on the other hand, opposes Spinoza here and says that "subjectivity and individuality" are missing in the substance he has created. therefore, the subject and the individual begin to derive from the substance. that is why Hegel, saying "being a follower of spinoza is the basic beginning of philosophy", tried to save spinoza from the criterion of pantheism-atheism of the period and saw it as the basic philosophical starting point of a philosophy in which everything was melted into him with the idea that "god is the cosmos", while he also did his best to surpass spinoza. a footnote here: the name that surpassed spinoza was karl Marx. and the name that surpasses him in terms of spinoza, as you can imagine, will be Nietzsche.

the author tells us about the beginning of this amazing philosophical discussion process, which began between spinoza and Hegel and Decayed to Nietzsche's will to power. as Marx said, the thesis clashes with the antithesis and reveals the synthesis.