«Ein Spielen der Liebe mit sich selbst». Hegel e la teoria spinoziana dell’amor Dei intellectualis

Abstract

In the fifth part of the Ethica Spinoza describes the «intellectual love toward God» – arising in the mind that has achieved the scientia intuitiva – as a «part of the infinite love wherewith God loves himself». The aim of the essay is to cast light, at two different levels, on the interesting but rarely studied Hegel’s references to the theory of amor dei intellectualis: firstly, focusing on the Lectures on the History of Philosophy, where the description of intellectual love is included in an historico-philosophical account of Spinoza’s thought; secondly, dealing with the Phenomenology of Spirit and in the Science of Logic, works in which Hegel mentions the amor dei intellectualis in order to express the idea that the Absolute has to be conceived in dialectical terms, as subject and spirit.