The Logic of Expression

Quality, Quantity and Intensity in Spinoza, Hegel and Deleuze

Simon Duffy

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9780754656180
• eBook ISBN: 9781351886420
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

Engaging with the challenging and controversial reading of Spinoza presented by Gilles Deleuze in Expressionism in Philosophy (1968), this book focuses on Deleuze's redeployment of Spinozist concepts within the context of his own philosophical project of constructing a philosophy of difference as an alternative to the Hegelian dialectical philosophy. Duffy demonstrates that a thorough understanding of Deleuze's Spinozism is necessary in order to fully engage with Deleuze's philosophy of difference.

Chapter 1

Spinoza from the point of view of an idealist or a materialist dialectic

Spinoza’s metaphysical philosophy

Hegel’s most coherent understanding of Spinozism is developed in book two of the Science of Logic: The Doctrine of Essence, in which he characterizes both the limitations of Spinoza’s philosophy and the necessary steps required to overcome these limitations. Much of the distinction that Hegel makes between his own approach to philosophy, in contrast to Spinoza’s, is presented as the distinction between metaphysical philosophy and the dialectical development of philosophy. For Hegel, metaphysical philosophy seeks to assert and produce only what comes under the category of being, or substance. He argues that ‘the philosophy which adopts the standpoint of Substance and stops there is the system of Spinoza’.¹ The critical method that Hegel brings to Spinoza’s philosophy is his dialectical logic, one step in the development of which is constituted by his refutation of Spinoza’s philosophy. He outlines his method as follows: ‘The only possible refutation of Spinozism must … consist … in recognizing its standpoint as essential and necessary and then going on to raise that standpoint to the higher one through its own immanent dialectic. The relationship of substance considered simply and solely in its own intrinsic nature leads on to its opposite, to the Concept. The exposition of substance which leads on to the Concept is, therefore, the sole and genuine refutation of Spinozism’.² The question can be raised as to what exactly Hegel considers Spinozist substance to be such that it can be subsumed in the concept according to the dialectical logic? What is required in order to respond to this question is an understanding both of the difference between their respective conceptions of substance, and an understanding of how these different conceptions figure in the development of their respective philosophies. After presenting this difference, the manner by means of which Spinoza is figured by Hegel in the development of his dialectical logic will be addressed, with close attention being paid to those aspects of Hegel’s interpretation of the limits of Spinoza’s philosophy which enable this development. My argument will be that Hegel’s interpretation of Spinoza develops from a misreading of a particular passage from the correspondence of Spinoza. It is this reading which specifically allows Hegel to figure Spinoza within the dialectical logic. By offering a reading of the passage from this letter within the context of Spinoza’s Ethics, a different conception of Spinoza’s substance is presented. One which allows an interpretation of Spinoza that overcomes those limitations presented by Hegel which are necessary to figure the Spinozist system within the dialectical logic.

The Ethics commences with the idea of an absolutely unconditioned cause, or causa sui,³ which Spinoza characterizes as one substance, developed in the set of definitions and principles at the beginning of the Ethics. There is one and only one substance, which varies in an infinite number of ways. Spinoza’s concept of substance is interchangeable with his concept of both Nature and God. This substance has an absolutely infinite power of existing, that is, of producing all things that exist – including itself, causa sui – and an absolutely infinite power of thinking, hence of self-comprehension, which entails the power of comprehending all that is produced. This unique, universal and infinite substance can be understood to be an expression of being, which Spinoza organizes into substance, attributes and modes. Substance expresses itself in an infinity of attributes, each of which is expressed infinitely. Attributes are infinite forms of being which are really distinct, that is, they are irreducible to one another. Although the different attributes express the same thing insofar as they each refer to the same single substance. The essence of substance has no existence outside the attributes, therefore each attribute expresses a certain eternal and infinite essence,⁴ and the essence of each of the attributes together form the essence of an absolutely single substance. In this way the attributes constitute the essence of substance.

Substance is the cause of all things in the same sense that it is cause of itself; that is, it produces things through the very forms that constitute its own essence. It does this by producing things through the attributes. Things in general can therefore be understood to be modifications of substance through the attributes. As Spinoza says: ‘Particular things are nothing but affections of God’s attributes, or modes by which God’s attributes are expressed in a certain and determinate way’.⁵ Attributes are absolutely common to substance and to modes; modes implicate the same attributes that constitute the essence of substance, and these same attributes contain all of the essences of modes. Modes have an essence and existence of their own, but do not exist, and have no being, independently of the attributes in which they are produced.

Hegel’s refutation of Spinozism

Hegel conceives of substance as only one part of the system of his dialectical logic. At the beginning of the Science of Logic, Hegel attempts to think the primitive concept of being. But to think being is only to think it as absolutely opposed to its contrary category – nothing. The thought of pure, indeterminate being thus ‘passes over’ into the thought of nothing. And similarly, the thought of nothing ‘passes over’ into the thought of being. The difference between the primitiveness of these categories collapses; each thought ‘passes over’ into the other, its immediate opposite.⁶ The concepts of being and nothing are therefore seen not as singularly coherent and isolable concepts but as aspects of some broader thought determination – becoming. Therefore, the thought of pure being becomes the thought of pure becoming. In turn, the category of becoming can also only be thought as a contrastive determination. Hegel’s point is that thought determinations are premised upon a relation of contrastive determination, the elements of which are contradictory. The progress of thought is determined by the development of more complex categories which resolve the contradictions which emerge between thought determinations. Progressively, and by this mechanism, an increasingly complex conceptual structure is developed. This is the structure of Hegel’s dialectical logic. The attempt to specify the concept of being develops into a dialectical progression which goes beyond the positing of dichotomies, such as being and nothing, to the positing of new determinations within which these contradictory determinations are subsumed, in this case, within the thought of pure becoming.⁷

This evolving structure constitutes the topic of book one of the Science of Logic, ‘Being–logic’. Being–logic is a dialectical structure, the thought of which is developed by a contrastive determination with the structure of what Hegel calls, in book two, ‘Essence–logic’. The general determination of essence, in the essence–logic, is the negation of the starting point of being–logic, namely being – the immediately given. This negation determines being as merely posited, or as appearance, that is, that which is immediately given must be negated to determine the underlying essence. The determinations which make up the structure of being–logic and essence–logic are subsumed by a further negation into the structure of the ‘Concept–logic’, introduced in book three. In this way, the concept is the subsumption of being and essence. The definition of essence is the result of the first negation of being, which has thereby become appearance, and the Concept is the result of the second negation, or the negation of the negation. Hegel argues that ‘substance is essence insofar as it is united with being … Consequently, the Concept has substance for its immediate presupposition; what is implicit in substance is manifested in the Concept’.⁸ Therefore, the application of the dialectical logic to substance, in which being and essence are subsumed, results in the production of the Concept, which is the exposition of the process of its becoming.

The final concept of the Science of Logic is that of self-determination – what Hegel calls the ‘absolute idea’. The true content of the ‘absolute idea’ is the entire system of the Science of Logic, the development of which I have been considering so far. This idea is the pure form of the Concept. Hegel argues that the Concept ‘is the unity of the subjective and the objective idea’.⁹ What he means by this is that the logical rational structure of our thought is simultaneously the structure of the real or the ‘true’. Hegel considers the rational structure of the absolute idea, that is, the structure of the entire Science of Logic, to provide the schematic means for undertaking philosophical, as opposed to empirical, inquiries into the nature of what he calls ‘spirit’.¹⁰

Hegel considers subjectivity or self-consciousness to be identical to that which he designates as the Concept. ‘The Concept … is none other than the ‘‘I’’ or pure self-consciousness’.¹¹ The substance from which subjectivity or self-consciousness is determined is the objective cultural realm within which the individual self-conscious subject is situated. The characteristic which determines consciousness is its negativity, that is when consciousness stands in opposition to an object which it regards as other than itself. In determining itself as a conscious subject in relation to substance, an individual becomes conscious of itself both in its relation to substance, and in its distinction from substance, that is, in its relation to itself or its identity as self-conscious through a process of reciprocal negation. In this process, substance itself...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction – Spinoza and the problem of expression
• 1 Spinoza from the point of view of an idealist or a materialist dialectic
• 2 The differential point of view of the infinitesimal calculus
• 3 The metaphysics of the calculus: Extensive quantity
• 4 From Scotist univocity to Spinozist immanence: Intensive quantity
• 5 The distinction between intensive and extensive parts
• 6 Spinoza’s theory of relations
• 7 The transformation of the characteristic relations of modal existence
• 8 The mechanics of joyful passive affections
• 9 The distinction between the duration of a finite existing mode and its eternity
• 10 The logic of expression and the construction of a philosophy of difference
• Conclusion – Expressionism in Philosophy
• Bibliography
• Index