Zanan Akin | Hegel, Jacobi’s Spinoza and Equality

Hegel, Jacobi’s Spinoza and Equality: Jacobi’s silent trace in Hegel’s conception of concrete universality and the modern equality ‘between equivalence and indifference’
Consisting of the adjective gleich meaning ‘equal’ and the noun Gültigkeit meaning ‘validity’, Gleichgültigkeit in German means ‘indifference’. Yet, the same word can also mean ‘equivalence’. We can formulate a speculative potential of a movement within this word in the following way: ‘Equivalence may shift to indifference.’ It was Jacobi, who had insight into this potential in Spinoza, claiming that his voiding reason renders everything different to equalized concepts. Unlike Jacobi, Hegel maintains that concrete universality could only be conceived on the basis of the mediation of reason, as humans with reason can distinguish themselves from everything else and also from other humans, for the universal exists for them. If Jacobi’s objection to mediation applies to Hegel, then concrete universality fails; concreteness and particularity are swallowed up by indifference, i.e., Gleichgültigkeit. Historically, this might seem to be confirmed by the fact that abstract human labor being the sole substance of the universal, the principle of equality as equivalence [gleiche Gültigkeit] of differences mediated by capital resulted in nothing but indifference [Gleichgültigkeit]. Yet, what if Jacobi had projected his own nihilism into Spinoza’s thought by claiming a voiding meditation of the universal and individual? This is, indeed, where we can reveal the silent trace of Jacobi in Hegel’s Spinoza reading: where Hegel believes to refute Jacobi through overcoming the lack of individuality in Spinoza by elevating his substance to subject, he affirms Jacobi’s Spinoza reading, that is the idea of mediation between substance and attributes. Yet, what if Spinoza did not need any mediation at all, to think equality?
Zanan Akin is about to complete his PhD thesis which conceptualizes the principle of modernequality with Hegel, Marx, Heidegger and Badiou leaning on the speculative potential of the word Gleich-Gültigkeit which means both Equivalence and Indifference in German. His most recent publications (2023): Thus posted Zarathustra: Übermensch and the Herd of the ‘Rare’ in Logoi Journal, The Ukulele-Effect: A Critique of the Ideology of Creativity in Form of Reckwitz’ Concept of Creative Labor in Jahrbuch für marxistische Gesellschaftstheorie and What can Heidegger tell us about Elon Musk? in Heidegger Circle Proceedings.
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 and will continue within the framework of the Hegel Congress 2024.
Find out more:
www.speculativ...
&
instagram.com/@speculativethought

[@FaradayStanford-y4m]

Williams Edward Perez Michelle Anderson Karen