Perseverar y superar (del ‘conatus’ a la ‘Aufhebung’): La crítica de Hegel a Spinoza Persevering and Sublating (from conatus to Aufhebung): Hegel’s Critique of Spinoza

Abstract

In its first part, this paper reviews critically the main points of the reception of Spinoza’s Ethics in Hegel’s Lessons on the History of Philosophy, namely: (1) Spinoza’s substantial monism and its consequences for the individual; (2) Hegel’s claims about the decisive importance of Spinoza’s statement that ‘all determination is negation’; (3) the speculative meaning of Spinoza’s concept of causa sui. According to Hegel, one of the main shortcomings of Spinoza’s conceptions lies in his analytic-demonstrative method, which proceeds from definitions to theorems. By this method, the monist substance appears as a sterile metaphysical construction. The second part of the paper shows that the main point of divergence between the two philosophers can be found in the Prop. III, 4 of Spinoza’s Ethics, on his concept of ‘conatus’ which is totally incompatible with Hegel’s concept of “sublation” (Aufhebung).The third part of the paper reviews Hegel’s dialectical reconstruction of Spinoza’s arguments in the Science of Logic. Here Hegel exposes what he takes to be the “true refutation of Spinozism”, namely the logical sublation of the blind necessity of substance by the subjective freedom of ‘concept’. In this way, Hegel’s version of monism takes conflict and opposition into account in a way that was not possible before him.