Northwestern Hegel and Spinoza: Substance and Negativity (Diaeresis)

Gregor Moder’s Hegel and Spinoza: Substance and Negativity is a lively entry into current debates surrounding the issues raised by Hegel’s readings of Spinoza, from the Lacanians and Deleuzians to the Althusserians and Heideggerians. Hegel and Spinoza have inspired generations of scholars and sparked two of the most influential philosophical traditions that persist in theoretical debates to this day. Just as German Idealism of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries legitimated itself through its attempt to transcend the determinacy of Spinoza’s system by reserving within it a place for the freedom of the subject, so one may also say that the twentieth-century French materialism of Althusser, Deleuze, and others legitimated itself by deploying Spinoza as the champion of anti-Hegelian materialism. This alternative, or rather a mutual theoretical rejection, is perhaps nowhere quite as evident as in the controversies between contemporary Deleuzians and Lacanians. Contemporary materialist philosophy is either Spinozist or Hegelian―it either abolishes the concepts of the subject and negation, arguing for pure affirmation, that is, the vitalistic production of differences, or it makes a case for the productiveness of concepts of the negative, nothingness, and death. Hegel and Spinoza: Substance and Negativity both traces the historical elements of the alternatives and explains contemporary discussions as its variation, persuasively demonstrating throughout that the best way to read Hegel and Spinoza is not in opposition or contrast, but together: as Hegel AND Spinoza. Review " Hegel and Spinoza is a serious book by a gifted and insightful thinker." --Richard Boothby, author of Sex On The Couch: What Freud Still Has to Teach Us About Sex and Gender and Freud As Philosopher: Metapsychology After Lacan "Philosophy famously has no beginning, but on the question of Hegel and Spinoza, one must now start with Gregor Moder's book. Hegel and Spinoza is a lucid and important contribution to contemporary theory--and best of all, it is refreshingly original in the way it deals with everything from first principles to the enormous influence of both thinkers over the centuries. Moder brilliantly reframes the entire conversation about what Hegel read into, and out of, Spinoza, and he provides memorably new readings of both philosophers in their own right." --Andrew Cole, author of The Birth of Theory "With exemplary clarity and striking originality, Moder shows us how to think Hegel and Spinoza together again, at last. His book will make a signal contribution to current philosophical debates and could become a classic commentary." --Nathan Brown, author of The Limits of Fabrication: Materials Science, Materialist Poetics "In Gregor Moder's latest book Hegel and Spinoza: Substance and Negativity, what we find, page after page, goes way beyond the dry presentation of this issue through the history of epistemology, offering an exhilarating investigation of its theoretical importance. As a responsibly technical work, Moder presents the tension between both positions of this battlefield through engaging to all possible combinations of this clash of Titans: Hegel and Spinoza of the title, encompasses the troubles of presenting the tension of Spinoza and Hegel, Spinoza or Hegel, Hegel vs. Spinoza or perhaps, Spinoza vs.Hegel... Each chapter of the book reveals additional layers of complexity to this inevitable and interesting tension; already at the Introduction we can sense the tone of this breathtaking theoretical discussion. Needless to say that this is an accomplishment only reached through the articulate and beautifully written construction of the book." -- Continental Thought & Theory About the Author Gregor Moder is an assistant professor on the Faculty of Arts at the University of Ljubljana.