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https://www.academia.edu/17076298/The_Ontology_Wars_A_Review_of_Pierre_Macherey_s_Hegel_or_Spinoza
"The enduring Hegelian concepts of negation, self-negation, contradic-tion and subject are often described as missing or undeveloped in Spinoza.Hegelian Marxists, even more so than Hegelian philosophers, have generallyaccepted Hegel’s critiques of Spinoza, dismissing Spinoza as ‘static’, ‘idealist’, ‘Cartesian’ and supposedly immersed in a ‘dualist’ philosophy. Machereycontests those claims, as have many philosophers since him (Spinozists and Hegelians alike). He brings to light the common ground between the two philosophers, concluding that, in many cases, Spinoza’s philosophies are often better than Hegel’s – even on terrain considered to be traditionally Hegelian.Macherey shows that both Hegel and Spinoza challenge the philosophical tradition of Cartesian dualism, and argues that Spinoza succeeds in a morede definitive critique than Hegel. Macherey further argues that ‘negativity’ is better addressed by Spinoza than by Hegel, and that Spinoza’s non-engagement with the concepts of ‘self-negation’ and ‘contradiction’ makes Spinoza’s philosophy stronger than Hegel’s, rather than weaker. For Macherey, ‘self-negation’and ‘contradiction’ are concepts that need to be either discarded or radically transformed.Macherey convincingly demonstrates that not only does Hegel conspicuously misread Spinoza, but that his misinterpretations of Spinoza are borne of problems in Hegel’s own philosophy. By offering a rigorous encounter, or dialectic, between Hegelian and Spinozist ontologies, Macherey provides an opening to a new kind of Spinoza-informed Marxism that is different from the theories of Spinozist Marxists such as Deleuze, Negri, Althusser and Balibar." (p.3).
"It is generally accepted today within the discipline of philosophy that Hegel severely misread Spinoza—see for example Harris 1984, Kline 1990, and Sharp and Smith (eds.) 2012." (note 2 p.3)
"Chapter 1, in a short 18 pages, lays out Hegel’s critiques of Spinoza so con- vincingly that one may sometimes forget one is reading the work of a dyed-in-the-wool Spinozist. The language is ambiguous enough to make it difficult to distinguish at times between Hegel’s opinion and Macherey’s own. Here we are shown that Spinozism is founded on the identification of concept and being, and on an ‘absolute beginning’ which renders a ‘rigid and unworkable’substance (pp. 15–16). This substance ‘cannot become subject . . . fails in this active reflection of self, which would permit it to undertake its own liberationthrough its own process . . . This is an arrested and dead spirit, which is nothing but that self in an original restriction, which condemns it from the beginning’(p. 18). Spinoza is accused of mistreating or neglecting the concepts of beginning, negativity, and progress. But Macherey begins to hint at the possibility that, in fact, Spinoza was ‘more Hegelian’ than Hegel himself (p. 18).T
This tactic of rehearsing Hegel’s arguments continues through the first pages of Chapter 2 (entitled ‘ More Geometrico’ after Spinoza’s methodology) followed by an exploration of the common ground between the two philosophers. Macherey emphasises the similarities between Hegel and Spinoza, because, he says, there must be a common ground between them in order for them to properly ‘confront’ each other, rather than simply pass each other by. He concludes that both philosophers have the same grandiose goal: ‘Hegel and Spinoza confront each other to the extent that they lay claim to the same conception of concrete, active, absolute truth’ (p. 73). Macherey also showsthat Hegel and Spinoza had very similar ideas about methodology, and similar critiques of their forebears – but Macherey argues that it was Spinoza whoe effected a more thorough dissolution of past (primarily Cartesian) methodology. For Macherey, Spinoza’s methodology does what Hegel wants his ownmethodology to do." (p.
"To Hegel, Spinoza’s method is mathematical, formal and strictly reflexive,and posits an absolute beginning which is ‘the source of truth on which all subsequent knowledge depends’ (p. 35). This type of method is something of a farce for Hegel:
no more worthwhile than a manipulation of sticks of unequal length with the goal of sorting and combining them according to their size – this game that children are absorbed by, and which, beginning from a puzzle cut in many ways, consists of investigating which pieces fit together.
The fundamental error in this method, for Hegel, is the cleavage between theform of the method and its content. For Hegel, Spinoza’s method is exterior in form to its content (p. 38), because formal reasoning cannot engender its object and therefore ‘the object is in fact presupposed’ (p. 40). In Hegel’s own words: ‘the defect in Spinozism is precisely that the form is not understood as immanent within it, and therefore, approaches it only as an external subjective form.’
But Macherey counters that Spinoza’s method is actually very close to that which Hegel proposes himself: it consists of a reflexive understanding [connaissance], in which ‘the form of interior self-movement’ becomes self-aware in the course of which knowledges have produced (following Hegel) ‘the idea of the idea,’ which reproduces the real movement of the idea (following Spinoza). Thus, instead of an oppositional motif in the position of the two philosophers as regards the notion of method, which would be a rigorous justication of Hegel’s critiques, we see emerging out of this argument a common line of thought that reconciles the doctrines, engaged in a struggle against the same adversary." (p.10)
"Hegel’s critique of Spinoza’s philosophy is not that it is completely devoid of negation, but that Spinoza’s negation is merely finite. This, for Hegel, represents a lack in Spinoza’s philosophy, because Hegel’s absolute negation is in fact the ‘unique and immanent movement’ which drives the ‘intrinsically coherent and necessary process’ of the movement of Spirit (pp. 118–19). Hegel accuses Spinoza of collapsing negative into absolute positivity and ignoring the power of the negative, thereby removing any possibility for dynamism (dialectics) within the system. Hegel writes that Spinoza:
remains within negation as determinateness or quality ; he does not attain a cognition of negation as absolute, that is, self-negating, negation ; thus his substance does not itself contain the absolute form, and knowledge of it is not an immanent knowledge.
As such, according to Macherey, Hegel declares that ‘Spinoza’s reasoning engages in irreconcilable or unsolvable oppositions because he has not achieved the rational process of contradiction’ (p. 121)." (p.12)
"Macherey does not follow the trend of many Spinozists who, as Hasana Sharpargues, ‘Reproduce Hegel’s division between his thought and Spinoza’s . . . [by]invert[ing] the value implication of his judgment, without challenging his terms.’ This is epitomised by Deleuze’s characterisation of Spinoza’s philosophy as one of ‘pure affirrmation’.
Instead, Macherey turns the tables on Hegel’s critique of Spinoza (that Spinoza underestimates and collapses the negative into positivity, rendering Spinoza’s philosophy immobile and useless), by arguing that Hegel’s treatment of the negative traps him in a constant return to the positive and a static conception of progress. Macherey argues that for Hegel, the negative is merely a subordinate character to the positive, while in Spinoza the negative has its own equally important existence, whose destiny is not to be reabsorbed into the positive. Macherey characterises Hegel’s self-negation as a process by which the negative provides a path to the positive, in which the negative is in effect subordinated to the positive which ‘sets the stakes and must carry it [the negative] along’ (p. 120).
Macherey then argues that it is Spinoza who, in fact, has ‘chosen the negative, or at least resigned himself to it". Whereas Hegel, in according his share of reality to the negative, makes it into the instrument or the auxiliary of the positive, whose triumph he unwittingly ensures: the ruse of reason’ (p. 118). Spinoza’s understanding of
finite negation stands on its own, has its own force, cause, and efects. Finite negation, for Spinoza, is not necessarily part of a dialectical movement ; it is not one side of a contradiction which propels itself forward into a new positivity. If the negation of some finite body, process, or thing is strong enough to destroy or fundamentally alter that body, process, or thing, this results in true destruction, and is not merely the route to a new positivity." (pp.12-13)
"Macherey also discusses Spinoza and Hegel’s refutation of Descartes’s (free) subject, but claims that Hegel’s argument was ‘less decisive’ (p. 184): ‘By with-drawing subject to the finiteness of its unicity, it again reinforces this internal orientation, this projection of self toward ends that characterize, for all idealist thought, a rational, that is, intentional, process’ (p. 211). On the other hand, Spinoza’s conception of the conatus "eliminates the conception of an intentional subject" (p. 211). This dynamic in Spinozist thought is particularly relevant to deadlocked Marxian dichotomies such as base versus superstructureand determinism versus voluntarism." (p.14)
"Macherey summarises Spinoza’s understanding of substance and subject:
Substance is that which cannot be subject, to the extent that being absolute, thus indeterminate, it cannot be determined as a whole ; inversely, the subject is that which, according to its own limitation, cannot be substance. (p. 129.) He argues that Spinoza’s philosophy in fact invalidates the categories of absolute subject and absolute object (p. 203), while for Hegel, substance is subject,and this subject is characterised by negativity and contradiction. Macherey claims that this marks the Hegelian subject as a remnant of the very philosophies Hegel purports to overcome. He argues that Hegelian Spirit as Subject is an old idea with a new, albeit critical, gloss. For Spinoza, on the other hand, the intentional subject is not adequate ‘either to represent the absolute infinity of substance or to understand how it expresses itself in these finite determina-tions’." (p.14)
-F. T. C. Manning, The Ontology Wars. A Review of Pierre Macherey’s Hegel or Spinoza ?, Historical Materialism, 2015, 23.1, pp.1-20.
"The enduring Hegelian concepts of negation, self-negation, contradic-tion and subject are often described as missing or undeveloped in Spinoza.Hegelian Marxists, even more so than Hegelian philosophers, have generallyaccepted Hegel’s critiques of Spinoza, dismissing Spinoza as ‘static’, ‘idealist’, ‘Cartesian’ and supposedly immersed in a ‘dualist’ philosophy. Machereycontests those claims, as have many philosophers since him (Spinozists and Hegelians alike). He brings to light the common ground between the two philosophers, concluding that, in many cases, Spinoza’s philosophies are often better than Hegel’s – even on terrain considered to be traditionally Hegelian.Macherey shows that both Hegel and Spinoza challenge the philosophical tradition of Cartesian dualism, and argues that Spinoza succeeds in a morede definitive critique than Hegel. Macherey further argues that ‘negativity’ is better addressed by Spinoza than by Hegel, and that Spinoza’s non-engagement with the concepts of ‘self-negation’ and ‘contradiction’ makes Spinoza’s philosophy stronger than Hegel’s, rather than weaker. For Macherey, ‘self-negation’and ‘contradiction’ are concepts that need to be either discarded or radically transformed.Macherey convincingly demonstrates that not only does Hegel conspicuously misread Spinoza, but that his misinterpretations of Spinoza are borne of problems in Hegel’s own philosophy. By offering a rigorous encounter, or dialectic, between Hegelian and Spinozist ontologies, Macherey provides an opening to a new kind of Spinoza-informed Marxism that is different from the theories of Spinozist Marxists such as Deleuze, Negri, Althusser and Balibar." (p.3).
"It is generally accepted today within the discipline of philosophy that Hegel severely misread Spinoza—see for example Harris 1984, Kline 1990, and Sharp and Smith (eds.) 2012." (note 2 p.3)
"Chapter 1, in a short 18 pages, lays out Hegel’s critiques of Spinoza so con- vincingly that one may sometimes forget one is reading the work of a dyed-in-the-wool Spinozist. The language is ambiguous enough to make it difficult to distinguish at times between Hegel’s opinion and Macherey’s own. Here we are shown that Spinozism is founded on the identification of concept and being, and on an ‘absolute beginning’ which renders a ‘rigid and unworkable’substance (pp. 15–16). This substance ‘cannot become subject . . . fails in this active reflection of self, which would permit it to undertake its own liberationthrough its own process . . . This is an arrested and dead spirit, which is nothing but that self in an original restriction, which condemns it from the beginning’(p. 18). Spinoza is accused of mistreating or neglecting the concepts of beginning, negativity, and progress. But Macherey begins to hint at the possibility that, in fact, Spinoza was ‘more Hegelian’ than Hegel himself (p. 18).T
This tactic of rehearsing Hegel’s arguments continues through the first pages of Chapter 2 (entitled ‘ More Geometrico’ after Spinoza’s methodology) followed by an exploration of the common ground between the two philosophers. Macherey emphasises the similarities between Hegel and Spinoza, because, he says, there must be a common ground between them in order for them to properly ‘confront’ each other, rather than simply pass each other by. He concludes that both philosophers have the same grandiose goal: ‘Hegel and Spinoza confront each other to the extent that they lay claim to the same conception of concrete, active, absolute truth’ (p. 73). Macherey also showsthat Hegel and Spinoza had very similar ideas about methodology, and similar critiques of their forebears – but Macherey argues that it was Spinoza whoe effected a more thorough dissolution of past (primarily Cartesian) methodology. For Macherey, Spinoza’s methodology does what Hegel wants his ownmethodology to do." (p.
"To Hegel, Spinoza’s method is mathematical, formal and strictly reflexive,and posits an absolute beginning which is ‘the source of truth on which all subsequent knowledge depends’ (p. 35). This type of method is something of a farce for Hegel:
no more worthwhile than a manipulation of sticks of unequal length with the goal of sorting and combining them according to their size – this game that children are absorbed by, and which, beginning from a puzzle cut in many ways, consists of investigating which pieces fit together.
The fundamental error in this method, for Hegel, is the cleavage between theform of the method and its content. For Hegel, Spinoza’s method is exterior in form to its content (p. 38), because formal reasoning cannot engender its object and therefore ‘the object is in fact presupposed’ (p. 40). In Hegel’s own words: ‘the defect in Spinozism is precisely that the form is not understood as immanent within it, and therefore, approaches it only as an external subjective form.’
But Macherey counters that Spinoza’s method is actually very close to that which Hegel proposes himself: it consists of a reflexive understanding [connaissance], in which ‘the form of interior self-movement’ becomes self-aware in the course of which knowledges have produced (following Hegel) ‘the idea of the idea,’ which reproduces the real movement of the idea (following Spinoza). Thus, instead of an oppositional motif in the position of the two philosophers as regards the notion of method, which would be a rigorous justication of Hegel’s critiques, we see emerging out of this argument a common line of thought that reconciles the doctrines, engaged in a struggle against the same adversary." (p.10)
"Hegel’s critique of Spinoza’s philosophy is not that it is completely devoid of negation, but that Spinoza’s negation is merely finite. This, for Hegel, represents a lack in Spinoza’s philosophy, because Hegel’s absolute negation is in fact the ‘unique and immanent movement’ which drives the ‘intrinsically coherent and necessary process’ of the movement of Spirit (pp. 118–19). Hegel accuses Spinoza of collapsing negative into absolute positivity and ignoring the power of the negative, thereby removing any possibility for dynamism (dialectics) within the system. Hegel writes that Spinoza:
remains within negation as determinateness or quality ; he does not attain a cognition of negation as absolute, that is, self-negating, negation ; thus his substance does not itself contain the absolute form, and knowledge of it is not an immanent knowledge.
As such, according to Macherey, Hegel declares that ‘Spinoza’s reasoning engages in irreconcilable or unsolvable oppositions because he has not achieved the rational process of contradiction’ (p. 121)." (p.12)
"Macherey does not follow the trend of many Spinozists who, as Hasana Sharpargues, ‘Reproduce Hegel’s division between his thought and Spinoza’s . . . [by]invert[ing] the value implication of his judgment, without challenging his terms.’ This is epitomised by Deleuze’s characterisation of Spinoza’s philosophy as one of ‘pure affirrmation’.
Instead, Macherey turns the tables on Hegel’s critique of Spinoza (that Spinoza underestimates and collapses the negative into positivity, rendering Spinoza’s philosophy immobile and useless), by arguing that Hegel’s treatment of the negative traps him in a constant return to the positive and a static conception of progress. Macherey argues that for Hegel, the negative is merely a subordinate character to the positive, while in Spinoza the negative has its own equally important existence, whose destiny is not to be reabsorbed into the positive. Macherey characterises Hegel’s self-negation as a process by which the negative provides a path to the positive, in which the negative is in effect subordinated to the positive which ‘sets the stakes and must carry it [the negative] along’ (p. 120).
Macherey then argues that it is Spinoza who, in fact, has ‘chosen the negative, or at least resigned himself to it". Whereas Hegel, in according his share of reality to the negative, makes it into the instrument or the auxiliary of the positive, whose triumph he unwittingly ensures: the ruse of reason’ (p. 118). Spinoza’s understanding of
finite negation stands on its own, has its own force, cause, and efects. Finite negation, for Spinoza, is not necessarily part of a dialectical movement ; it is not one side of a contradiction which propels itself forward into a new positivity. If the negation of some finite body, process, or thing is strong enough to destroy or fundamentally alter that body, process, or thing, this results in true destruction, and is not merely the route to a new positivity." (pp.12-13)
"Macherey also discusses Spinoza and Hegel’s refutation of Descartes’s (free) subject, but claims that Hegel’s argument was ‘less decisive’ (p. 184): ‘By with-drawing subject to the finiteness of its unicity, it again reinforces this internal orientation, this projection of self toward ends that characterize, for all idealist thought, a rational, that is, intentional, process’ (p. 211). On the other hand, Spinoza’s conception of the conatus "eliminates the conception of an intentional subject" (p. 211). This dynamic in Spinozist thought is particularly relevant to deadlocked Marxian dichotomies such as base versus superstructureand determinism versus voluntarism." (p.14)
"Macherey summarises Spinoza’s understanding of substance and subject:
Substance is that which cannot be subject, to the extent that being absolute, thus indeterminate, it cannot be determined as a whole ; inversely, the subject is that which, according to its own limitation, cannot be substance. (p. 129.) He argues that Spinoza’s philosophy in fact invalidates the categories of absolute subject and absolute object (p. 203), while for Hegel, substance is subject,and this subject is characterised by negativity and contradiction. Macherey claims that this marks the Hegelian subject as a remnant of the very philosophies Hegel purports to overcome. He argues that Hegelian Spirit as Subject is an old idea with a new, albeit critical, gloss. For Spinoza, on the other hand, the intentional subject is not adequate ‘either to represent the absolute infinity of substance or to understand how it expresses itself in these finite determina-tions’." (p.14)
-F. T. C. Manning, The Ontology Wars. A Review of Pierre Macherey’s Hegel or Spinoza ?, Historical Materialism, 2015, 23.1, pp.1-20.
