Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews on Hegel or Spinoza
[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).
By: Caroline Williams
Story Date: 2012-08-04T00:00:00