Hegel or Spinoza
1 Image by Steve Chadoriwsky
To begin by summarizing this complex and difficult text of Macherey we might say that the
overall thesis of Macherey s study of Spinoza via Hegel s critical reading of him is not simply
that Hegel misreads Spinoza, but that he does so out of a certain kind of necessity. This
necessity arises out of the trajectory and development of Hegel s thought of the Absolute as
result and end and therefore one in which Spinoza s philosophical system figures as an aborted
project, a beginning in philosophy that grinds to a halt under the weight of its own internal
difficulties. These difficulties that Hegel finds in Spinoza, Macherey claims, are necessitated by
Hegel s own ambition to resolve all contradictions though a teleological movement which
guarantees in advance the transmutation of the negative into the positive and thereby to
complete philosophy or bring it to a close. The stakes of this reading are quite high, because, as
Ruddick notes in the preface to her English translation of the book, Spinoza, again according to
Macherey, provides us with a  materialist dialectic in marked contrast to Hegel s  idealist
dialectic , the major difference between which is that in the former we find an infinite causality
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without teleology, that is, a process of purely immanent causation which cannot be reduced to
the comforting finalism provided by a subject whose emergence is guaranteed in advance.
I will look at this major and rather provocative claim by giving a brief survey of the book, with a
slightly more detailed exposition of Chapter 3,  The Problem of the Attributes , before
suggesting some issues which I feel Machery does not treat entirely satisfactorily in the process
of his rich and insightful exposition of Spinoza vis-ą-vis Hegel.
Chapter 1:  Hegel Reads Spinoza
Machery begins this chapter with the claim that for Hegel, Spinoza s philosophy is not only a
precursor, but an inescapable one. What is inescapable about Spinoza for Hegel is that Spinoza
attempts to think the absolute. That Spinoza begins the Ethics, according to Hegel, with the
radical assertion of the reality of a single, absolutely infinite substance, provides (at least
potentially) the ground for the overcoming of all contradiction, surpassing, at least formally,
Kant s subsequent division of reality into phenomena and noumena, and so marks out the
trajectory Hegel himself must follow in order to overcome or surpass transcendental idealism in
absolute idealism. Yet for Hegel this beginning remains only potential for the following reasons.
First, the absolute is the point of a sheer or absolute beginning rather than a result, meaning
that insofar as Spinoza begins with the absolute substance, he begins abstractly, thus making it
impossible to think the absolute as content. Secondly, to compensate for the abstraction with
which he begins, Spinoza is forced to give the absolute substance an external content in the
form of the two attributes perceivable by the human mind, namely, extension and thought. To
the extent that these attributes are an externalization, there remains unresolved the question of
the transition, how it is that substance gives rise to its attributes. Third, as a result of this
supposed externalization, the reality of substance is diminished: from the plentitude of an
absolute conceived formally and abstractly, the latter is given content only at the cost of
retreating from the plenitude of the absolute toward the exterior that to be determinate must also
be seen as less than complete. Finally, as a consequence of this abstract beginning, there is
thus a relationship of both eminence and hierarchy in the relationship between substance,
attributes, and modes, a situation resulting in the  immobility of the system which can only
claim knowledge of the absolute as an exterior object, thus nullifying the implied activity of the
causa sui.
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At the conclusion to this first chapter Machery suggests that Hegel s objections can be
summarized under three issues which he will treat in separate chapters: the method more
geometrico, the problem of the attributes, and finally, the phrase omnis determinatio est negatio.
 More Geometrico
In this second chapter, Machery presents Hegel s objections to Spinoza s method of exposition
followed by a lengthy discussion of the extent of their validity an investigation which, Machery
will claim, draws Spinoza closer to Hegel despite the latter s attempt to distance himself from
the former. Spinoza, according to Hegel, via the method of exposition more geometrico,
attempts to introduce formal, mathematical reasoning into philosophy, where it has no place.
Equating formal reasoning with the operating principle of logic and mathematics, Hegel
maintains that the latter has not changed since Aristotle, whose formal principles of
demonstration Spinoza repeats. Formal demonstration is an only subsidiary form of truth
because it is effectively removed from the inner necessity of the development of conceptual
content, precisely because it is abstract, and abstraction is what consigns us to the immediate.
The composition of logical rules of thinking belongs to an empirical immediacy because in
abstracting from experience they attempt to render the latter in purified form. But since this kind
of thinking proceeds only formally, it cannot grasp the inner necessity by which the object of
experience is constituted; unable to grasp its internal necessity, formal demonstration is content
to be a merely finite form of knowing, since it remains external to the movement of concepts.
Spinoza s procedure in the Ethics, in seeking to  import mathematics into philosophy , advances
a series of finite determinations connected arbitrarily.
This seemingly damning criticism is then subjected to closer scrutiny by Macherey. In the first
place, Macherey maintains, Hegel s criticisms ignore that Spinoza s method of demonstration
does not conceive of thought as a kind of instrument, as Descartes Discourse on Method surely
does, and so cannot be a merely formal sort of exposition. Second, unlike Descartes, Spinoza
rejects the illusion of an absolute beginning: he does not begin with an attempt to found
philosophy anew at a place where the correct method can be grounded. Instead Spinoza s
process of demonstration neither begins absolutely, nor does it simply start with God (as
Macherey will also argue in more detail in the next chapter) but proceeds  little by little ,
reworking earlier propositions in later ones that follows a method of immanent demonstration.
Spinoza s order of demonstration, according to Macherey, far from being the exercise in
formalism Hegel claims, is in fact a work of immanently necessary combination, showing how
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each moment of comprehension leads beyond itself in the necessity of demonstration leading
toward an increasingly adequate conception of truth. Despite Hegel s refusal to see this,
Macherey argues, Spinoza is here quite close to Hegel himself.
From this perspective, Macherey suggests, perhaps it is Hegel s own dialectical  method of
putting off contradiction until the endpoint of their reconciliation that has more in common with a
classical formalism of thought in that in both of them method exists to guarantee the truth of the
result beyond the possibility of falling into error: both are examples of thought in its regulative
mode rejected by Spinoza. Instead of this, Spinoza presents us with an immanent movement of
thought which, supposedly unlike Hegel s, moves without guarantees. In presenting us with a
causal process without end, Spinoza rejects evolutionary teleology and finality. Instead of
guarantees, Spinoza seeks to present us with adequate ideas, which do not do away with the
possibility of falsehood or with the imagination (since this is impossible since these latter exist
with the same necessity as does the truth), but rather, allows us to modify our relation to them,
minimizing the damaging effects on life. Although Macherey does not make this comparison
himself, what he is suggesting with respect to Spinoza s thinking of the relationship between
reason and passion, truth and falsehood, or the knowledge of the third kind to the imagination,
resembles to a certain extent Kant s distinction in the Second Critique between a moral action
out of duty or rational will and one arising from inclination; although inclination or pathology can
never be eliminated from the human being as a motive, it can be modified or educated by an
understanding of the dignity of the kingdom of ends and the demands of the moral law so that
we act out of duty rather than by inclination. I will return to this point at the end.
 The Problem of the Attributes
In this third chapter, Macherey continues his critique of Hegel s reading of Spinoza by dealing
directly with the problem of causality. To begin with, we recall that Hegel argues that Spinoza
derives the attributes from substance in a causally finite manner. To do this, he must not only
oppose substance to the attributes and claim that the second is illegitimately derived from the
first, but also, he reduces the attributes to two extension and thought while conceiving these
in the manner, first, of a failed attempt to overcome Descartes positing of two substances, and
second, in conceiving of the relationship between thought and extension on analogy with an
opposing subject and object. According to this schema, the intellect becomes a subjective
representation of an object which in turn becomes a phenomenon in a Kantian-like contrast
between phenomenon and noumena (in which substance disappears as into the transcendence
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of an unknowable thing-in-itself). From this Kantian schema of external or finite representation,
Hegel is able to derive all of the problems with Spinoza s system rehearsed above: abstraction,
external determination, hierarchy and emanation.
Macherey then proceeds to present the illegitimacy of this reading of Spinoza as a kind of
precursor to Kant provided by Hegel. To begin with, for Spinoza, the attributes are not
represented: they do not conform to the categories of a subject, finite or infinite, and since they
do not, the perception of the attributes is not an instrument deforming what it represents through
its action. Secondly, however, this does not mean, in an opposite way, that Spinoza conceives
of the intellect as a mirror, passively reflecting the attributes as its content. Macherey at once
disqualifies both of the objections Hegel brings against Kantian categorical knowledge in the
Phenomenology, further disqualifying Hegel s reading of Spinoza. This leads into one of the
most rewarding sections of the book, Macherey s presentation of immanent or infinite causality.
This is brought forward with Macherey s assertion that the attributes are not in the intellect as
either categorial representation or mirror-like reflection, rather, the intellect which grasps the
infinite attributes of substance, does so because it is directly, as intellect, substance itself. But to
understand this claim we need to understand the nature of immanent causality in Spinoza.
In doing so we must follow a logic in which what has to be presented as diachronic moments of
demonstration are in fact also synchronic structures rather than evidence of an absent cause.
Macherey establishes this through a number of claims that I attempt to reproduce in abbreviated
form: 1) the attributes are not externalizations, predicates, or names of substance, but are the
direct essences or concrete reality of substance itself, they are  different names for the same
thing ; 2) This identity of attributes and substance is not an indifferent unity, nor is each attribute
merely what the others lack (they are not negative determinations). Rather, the attributes
compose an  identity in difference by the realization of an immanent causality. Here we must
distinguish between a finite and an infinite manner of conceptualization. As Macherey writes, the
attributes do not compose substance through a numerical combination, since if we proceed in
this way we will never arrive at an absolutely infinite substance which precisely cannot be
grasped as something numerical (since if it could be it would be finite). Rather, we must pass
directly to the infinite substance, since only an infinite substance could be the unity of an infinite
series of attributes, that is, the unity of substance is not an arithmetic (finite) unity but is the
always already constituted expression of an infinitely diverse reality. 3) This immanent causality
cannot be conceived as a genesis of attributes through substance. Consistent with the claim
that substance is not an arithmetic unity, Macherey argues that for Spinoza, to think the infinite
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is to exclude divisibility, because the infinite is not a number. A crucial consequence of this idea
is that it is impossible to think of substance as somehow composed of its attributes in the way
that the whole might be composed of its parts, since it is again impossible to think the infinite in
this manner. Instead, the infinite is what is given directly in, but not through, all of its attributes,
altogether and all at once. 4) The infinity of each attribute that is infinite only in its kind is not a
diminution or limitation. There is no room to oppose the attributes to one another, as though
one is what is lacking in another, and thus there is no possibility of supposing an external point
of view of representation. In contrast, when Spinoza claims that the order and connection
between things is the same as the order and connection of ideas, he is proposing that precisely
because we have knowledge of an infinite substance as immanent cause of the infinity of its
kind of the attributes we do know, this same causality will express itself equally and in the same
way in the others which we do not know because of our limitation as finite mode, as beings
composed of the two attributes of extension and thought.
The way Macherey discusses the infinite here brings us close to the concept of mathematical
infinity, which we can think of on analogy with the way infinity is thought of in set theory. A
mathematically infinite set is composed of innumerable elements, such that it composes a unity
which is not derived from its parts. Adding elements to an infinite set, or conversely, taking
elements away, does not change the nature of the infinity itself, since infinity is not numerical
(i.e. infinity plus or minus one is still infinity). In this sense, to say that something is infinite is to
say that there is a kind of immanent causality operating within it such what makes it infinite
cannot be arrived at through a numerical or finite combination of elements, just as, at the same
time, the elements are not what comprises the infinity of the set but are in some sense its
immanent expression. This stipulation rules out either a relationship of combination or the
typical hermeneutical gesture by which the meaning of the absent or non-present whole is
reconstructed via an interpretation of the elements composing it. The whole is, in a paradoxical
manner, both within the parts but also thinkable as something separate from them although
not outside of them. This is evidently the way Macherey wants us to understand Spinoza s
causa sui: there is both a process or movement that leads up to the constitution of substance in
the demonstrations of the Ethics but at the same time this order of demonstration arrives at
what was there all along: the immanent causality of the infinite.
 Omnis Determinatio est Negatio
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This final chapter of the book is both very important and extremely long (in my opinion it should
have been divided into more than one chapter). Since I ve already said a lot, I will only
summarize the main thrust of the argument in each of the chapter s sections: First, the phrase,
as Macherey claims, can be seen in a positive light. Everything which is determined is a
negation, that is, in a sense quite similar to Hegel s, determinations, by virtue of their negation,
their separation from other things, have a positive or determinate content. The supposed
immobility of substance denounced by Hegel, Macherey writes, begins to move a little. Again,
Hegel distances himself from this concept of determinate negation in Spinoza by claiming that
the latter, in negating all determination, is left finally with a pure negativity which is just the
inversion of the affirmation of substance as purely positive. Substance is once more
transformed into an inert positivity which negates everything it is not, and so does not develop.
Secondly, in applying this phrase to the attributes, as we have seen, Hegel derives the
attributes from one another by negation: each attribute is what it is only by lacking what belongs
to the others. But this is, in effect, to create an infinite series of delimited forms which cannot
move: the negative within them cannot become a positive that overcomes them, and instead
simply becomes a series of sterile oppositions, a bad infinite, and so Spinoza does not
overcome the perspective of the imagination. Macherey attacks this reading of Spinoza by
maintaining that the infinite is not something arrived at through accumulation (i.e. from the
modes to attributes to substance as exterior relations) which would pose the infinite as a kind of
limit. There is instead to paraphrase Macherey only one order of infinite substance which
expresses itself immanently as both absolute and as relative and which is understood
differently from the perspectives of the intellect and the imagination.
Third, the next section on determination argues that instead of thinking of substance as
indeterminate, as Hegel does, it is instead the case that substance in Spinoza is determined
according to the immanent necessity or cause of its nature. Such an immanent cause ignores
positive and negative and so chooses a path to the absolute that is not dialectical in the manner
of a negation of the negation.
Next, in a lengthy section, Macherey argues that immanent causality necessitates the removal
of the perspective of finality, that is, the idea of a final cause. The latter is posited by the
imagination in seeking a reason for apparent contingency. It thus reasons from a finite series to
a cause which is actually another finite thing only imagined to be the cause of that series of
events: for example, god imagined as a finite being who as cause initiates a series of effects.
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The perspective of reason goes in the opposite direction, moving from the infinite to the finite,
and so unmasks the idea of final cause as an illusion of the imagination. Contingency, from this
perspective, is something only apparent, since it marks the limit of our ability to enumerate the
endless series of causes giving rise to some determinate effect. But from the perspective of the
laws of nature which determine such contingency, it is possible to know how this apparent
contingency arises rather than simply to imagine a cause in the same finite manner as the
series itself. In this way Spinoza shows that it is the finite, rather than the infinite, which is
opaque to knowledge, in a manner quite close to the way Hegel proceeds to show, in the
Phenomenology that the immediacy of the senses is the most impoverished type of knowledge.
The laws of nature are not external causes, but instead, everything that occurs in the infinite
series of finite events, is the complete working out of immanent necessity.
At this point the book seems to lose focus, at least to this reader. There is a lengthy section on
contradiction, the gist of which is that contradiction in Spinoza cannot be understood merely as
a logical operation, as it is in Descartes or Leibniz. For Spinoza, because each thing manifests
the immanent power of substantial reality in the conatus to preserve its being, contradiction is
not primarily logical but is oppositional in the sense that two objects can be incompatible. The
real physical incompatibilities can only be resolved physically not mentally through the logic of
contradiction.
There is also a distinction of essence and existence here which is not very clear. The essence
of a thing is its eternal nature understood through God, while its existence is contingently
conditioned. Macherey argues that there is no subject that pertains to the essence of things but
that the subject arises only through the external relation of things in their contingent existence.
This reminded me of Simondon s suggestion that subjectivity arises in a moment of adapting to
obstacles encountered in the world but that individuation is not inherently subjective. Still, I am
unclear as to the relation between essence and existence in Spinoza when it comes to modes;
he seems to have in mind something like this: The essence of humanity is given eternally as a
particular affection of the power of God, but the existence of this or that human being is
contingent. But this would appear to create a kind of conflict between the laws of motion that
would determine whether or not an individual human being appears and the expression of the
human as essential power of God, suggesting in turn the existence of unresolved contradictions
in substance.
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In the final section of the book on Teleology, Macherey returns to argue that Spinoza s
philosophy, unlike Hegel s, does away with teleology and dispenses with guarantees or
regulative functions. Hegel, according to Macherey, reads Spinoza the way he does because he
recognizes their similarity while wanting to banish from thought the alternative (that of an infinite
process without guarantee, subject, or resolution) that Spinoza provides. Assessing these
claims would depend on whether a) Hegel s account is in fact teleological or provides the kind of
regulative function Macherey seems to think it does, and b) whether Spinoza s account entirely
escapes abstraction and regulative functions. Here it seems that Macherey s claim throughout
the book that Hegel and Spinoza are closer (theoretically speaking) than Hegel wants to
acknowledge, can also cut in the other direction. While this possibility would merit further
consideration, it cannot be developed here.
I have already suggested a type of regulative function in the parallel with Kant between reason
and inclination on the one hand and knowledge of the third kind (basically reason) and the
imagination on the other. For neither philosopher is it possible to definitively escape inclination
or imagination, as these are constitutive of human existence as corporeal entities subject to
physical causation, or finite modes composed of the attribute of extension. But in both there
appears the possibility of at least partly escaping this condition through the regulation of the
inclinations/imagination through the use of reason. Of course what reason tells us might be
somewhat different in each case. In any case the division between the inclinations and reason
in Kant or between the imagination and knowledge of the third kind in Spinoza suggests a
hierarchy wherein the human good is located in an admittedly partial escape from and
regulation of corporeal existence. In this sense both philosophers would remain within quite
close to classical philosophy.
If there is the trace of hierarchy in Spinoza, at least as it is found within (human) finite modes,
perhaps it is necessary to ask how knowledge of the third kind is arrived at in Spinoza. From
this perspective it might be possible to see Hegel s critique of Spinoza having more purchase
than Macherey wants to admit. While Hegel gives us a process through which apparently finite
entities come to grasp the conceptual nature of the absolute in time, according to the arguments
put forward by Macherey, Spinoza seems to position a radical break between finite
conceptualization and the immediate grasp of the nature of the infinite through the intellect. Is it
entirely clear that at least in this sense the infinite is not, as Hegel charges,  shot from a pistol
all at once? If so, is the break proposed by Spinoza between finite and infinite knowledge
arrived at more abstractly than Macherey and Althusser as well might want to believe? The
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answer to this question would turn on whether the demonstrations leading up to the grasping of
an infinite substance in Book One of the Ethics can be favourably compared to the  science of
the experience of consciousness proposed by Hegel in the Phenomenology. Yet here I think
that Spinoza s proofs remain much closer to purely logical demonstrations than anything like an
experiential process.
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