Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews on Hegel or Spinoza

"(Pierre) Macherey's French text likewise had important theoretical effects upon the philosophical scene in France when it was originally published in 1979."

macherey_hegel cover[Excerpt]

Spinoza's philosophy, Macherey argues, does not, therefore, require a subject, or consciousness, to figure as the logical moment of negativity, the genesis of history, or the local pattern of a knowledge, however embodied this subject might be. Indeed, Macherey positions Hegel and Spinoza in close proximity here, since neither configures a logic of the subject. What might be named subject, by Hegel, can only 'express itself in the totality of its process' (p.203). For Spinoza, the only place for the subject is as 'a relation between existences' (p.201).  His philosophy better describes a physics of being as individual (conceived in a broad, pre-modern sense -- See Ethics II Propositions 13): 'a certain assemblage of elements of the same nature that agree among themselves . . . in terms of their existence' (p.175).

Published in: Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews
By: Caroline Williams