Stephen Houlgate | Hegel's Critique of Spinoza

Hegel's Critique of Spinoza
Hegel’s aim is to interpret Spinoza’s thought through the concepts he takes to underlie it: namely, the absolute and substance, as they are conceived in his Logic. Yet Hegel’s account of these concepts shows that Spinoza fails to understand either one adequately. In my view, this problem remains even when we correct the errors in Hegel’s reading of Spinoza. Even in this case, from the standpoint of Hegel’s Logic Spinoza fails to understand fully what substance, attributes and modes are.
Stephen Houlgate is professor of philosophy at the University of Warwick. He is the author of Hegel, Nietzsche and the Criticism of Metaphysics (1986), An Introduction to Hegel. Freedom, Truth and History (1991, 2nd ed. 2005), The Opening of Hegel's Logic (2006), Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit (2013), and Hegel on Being, 2 vols. (2022). He served as Vice-president and President of the Hegel Society of America, and he was editor of the Bulletin of the Hegel Society of Great Britain from 1998 to 2006. He is currently President of the Hegel Society of Great Britain.
The international philosophical conference Between Substance & Subject. The Presence of Spinoza in Hegel (26-28 October 2023, AGRFT, Ljubljana) was organized by the University of Padua and the University of Ljubljana - Faculty of Arts & Academy of Theatre, Radio, Film and Television. The conference was carried out as part of the project Hegel's Political Metaphysics (J6-2590), which is financed by the Slovenian Research Agency.
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Summary
Professor Holgate delves into Hegel’s critique of Spinoza, highlighting Hegel’s interpretation of Spinoza’s concepts of substance and the absolute. Hegel, while acknowledging the depth of Spinoza’s thought, engages critically with what he perceives as fundamental shortcomings in Spinoza’s philosophy.
Hegel begins by praising Spinoza for his rigorous focus on the one, absolute substance, and for renouncing the determinacy of particular aspects in favor of a more unified, philosophical approach. This renunciation, Hegel argues, marks the beginning of all true philosophy. However, he quickly moves into criticism, noting that Spinoza’s concept of substance, though profound, remains rigid and unmoved. According to Hegel, Spinoza fails to develop substance into a self-knowing Spirit or to differentiate it into various attributes and modes. Instead, Spinoza presupposes these attributes, like thought and extension, without logically deriving them from substance. This results in a system where everything is thrown back into the one absolute substance, but nothing emerges from it, leaving the substance static and undifferentiated.
Hegel further critiques Spinoza for basing his philosophy on definitions and axioms that are merely presupposed rather than systematically derived. For Hegel, this approach leads to a form of dogmatism, as it assumes the truth of these definitions without proper justification. He contrasts this with his own demand for a presuppositionless philosophy, which begins with sheer indeterminate being and derives its concepts systematically.
Another critical point Hegel raises is Spinoza’s failure to fully grasp the concept of negation. While Spinoza understands that determination is negation, he does not, according to Hegel, appreciate the dialectical nature of negation-that it must be self-negating and thus, through this process, become affirmative. This lack of dialectical movement in Spinoza’s substance leads Hegel to conclude that Spinoza’s system ultimately lacks the dynamic, self-developing character that Hegel sees as essential to a true speculative philosophy.
Hegel’s critique culminates in his view that Spinoza’s substance remains fundamentally different from Hegel’s concept of the absolute. For Spinoza, substance is the ultimate cause to which all modes point back, but for Hegel, the absolute comes to be itself through its modes, reaching its true nature only at the end of its process of self-realization. Thus, while Hegel recognizes certain merits in Spinoza’s philosophy, he ultimately finds it lacking in the dialectical development that he believes is necessary for a complete understanding of substance and the absolute.

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Are any of these papers published somewhere? Where can we access them? Thanks.

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The contributions will be available as a edited volume in the coming months.

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