Taking Sides: Hegel or Spinoza?

Abstract

Pierre Macherey’s arguably most important book is called Hegel or Spinoza. Its recent translation into English sparked yet another debate on the tension between Spinoza and Hegel. Due to the structure of this chapter, I will limit myself to presenting the main argument of this book: according to Macherey, Hegel was not fully capable of understanding Spinoza’s system, and at the same time, the latter serves as a critic avant la lettre of the former. Similar to this, the recent translation of Frédéric Lordon’s Willing Slaves of Capital: Spinoza and Marx on Desire argues that it is through Spinoza that we can comprehend the structures of capitalism. In this regard, Lordon argues that “the temporal paradox is that, although Marx comes after Spinoza, it is Spinoza who can now help us fill the gaps in Marx.” Lordon points out a very important aspect of Marx’s work, which holds true for Althusser’s work as well: Marx’s work, and especially the critique of political economy, can be understood only if it is positioned to or read from the philosophical perspective. Balibar rightly argued that “whatever might have been thought in the past, there is no Marxist philosophy and there will never be; on the other hand, Marx is more important for philosophy than ever before.” As explained earlier, Althusser’s abandonment of Hegel has to be understood in the terms of refutation of French Hegelianism. How should we understand this? The first thesis concerns the philosophical and political conjuncture in the postwar France. According to Althusser, “the fact that, for the last two decades, Hegel has had his place in French bourgeois philosophy is not a matter to be treated lightly.” The philosophical conjuncture in France, or the “extraordinary philosophical chauvinism” or as Althusser characterized it, was dominated by phenomenologists, Lebensphilosophie, and bourgeois appropriation of Hegel. The return to Hegel, in the postwar period, took a specific form: