The Shapeless Abyss: Spinoza’s God and a Defense of Hegel’s Criticism Jim Kreines – jkreines@cmc.

edu

1. Hegel’s “acosmism” criticism: Spinoza’s monism involves elimination of all  A. Spinozism is a deficient philosophy… Spinoza’s substance is one

indivisible totality; there is no determinateness which would not be
determinacy and finitude.  
contained in this absolute and be dissolved into it… (WL 6:195/472)
2. My old claims to better defend: Hegel’s point, and its strength1  
B. dark, shapeless abyss, as it were, that swallows up into itself every
a. Spinoza’s proof of monism requires a version of PSR  determinate content (§151Zu)
b. A PSR sufficient for Spinoza’s proof of monism would also force  C. even the greatest mind, if it wants to explain all things absolutely… and
elimination of determinacy & finitude  will not otherwise let anything stand, must run into absurdities. (Jacobi
3. Compare responses citing Spinoza to the contrary;2 or those who see the  30/194)
point is about principles,3 but think Hegel imports his own4  D. Boundless explanation addiction (Ungemessene Erklärungssucht)
[MA] (Master Argument): given some rejoinder, if it blocks Hegel’s criticism,  (Jacobi 30/194, translation altered)
then it also blocks Spinoza’s argument for monism.  E. the spirit of Spinozism … certainly nothing other than the ancient a
nihilo nihil fit (Jacobi 14/187)
I. “Explanation Addition”: Spinoza Needs the PSR
F. Ex nihilo, nihil fit… nothing comes from nothing… Those who zealously
4. Using “PSR” as concise label (not Hegel’s label for this)   hold firm to the proposition … are unaware that in so doing they are
1st Juncture: God’s existence (P11)  subscribing to the abstract pantheism of the Eleatics and essentially also
to that of Spinoza. (WL 21:71/61)
a. Ban on attribute sharing (P5), from PSR 
G. at first glance we might seem to have the idea of a fastest motion…but yet
b. A substance must cause itself (P7), from PSR.5  we certainly have no idea of impossible things… (Leibniz PE 25)
2nd Juncture: Monism (P14) 
H. From where (besides God) does the intellect come, which has this
5. Objection: Ontological argument from conception of God alone.6  perception? …
Reply [MA]: Seemingly coherent conceptions of God that are not.   …everything proceeds inwards, and not outwards; the determinations
are not developed out of substance, it does not resolve itself into these
II. Elimination of Attributes: Not Outwards attributes. (VGP 20:173/3:264; translation altered)
6. Hegel may see attributes as “determinate”; Spinoza?; but term irrelevant    I. difference itself now becomes a topic of reflection (WL 5:455/333).
Question1: What explains the existence of distinct attributes?7  J. …the understanding is assumed to be by nature posterior to the attribute
7. Hegel: D4 hides the problem, suggesting attributes perceived as distinct.  (for Spinoza defines it as mode)… True, the absolute is itself also thought
But neither “intellect” as mode nor as attribute could do the work.8   … but … it is in the absolute only as one with extension and hence not as
this movement, which is essentially also the moment of opposition. (WL
8. Maybe D4 is irrelevant, but same problem still generalizes, cf. P4‐5.   6:197/473)
9. Objection: There is more than attributes to essence of God, e.g. power9  K. [T]wo attributes are for this reason empirically assumed (WL 6:196/473)
MA: if so, then anti‐monist standoffs: God and P5.  
L. Differentiation occurs with Spinoza quite empirically – attributes
10. Objection: Q1 is illegitimate. Everyone needs bedrock, and Spinoza’s is  (thought and extension) and then modes, affects, and all the remaining
distinct attributes.             MA: Anti‐monists love this opening.   (WL 5:455/333).
11. Objection: Hegel is wrong to see Spinoza as attempting anything like his 
own dialectical self‐negation.10 Reply: Irrelevant to this argument.  
 III. Elimination of Finitude
12. Room left for Spinoza* to defend monism with only one attribute, with  M. with Spinoza, there is no advance from … absolute substance to the
finite modes?  negative, the finite (WL 5:98/71).
13. Spinoza argues from an ∞ principle, roughly: something infinite cannot  N. …the absolute affirmation of a concrete existence is to be taken as its
cause, insofar as it is ∞, something finite (P28)  referring to itself, it’s not being dependent on another; the finite is
a. But ∞ principle supports P28, then it also prevents an answer to:   negation instead, a cessation in the form of a reference to an other which
begins outside it. (WL 5:291/212)
Question2: Why are there any finite things at all?11 
O. philosophy permits neither a mere offering of assurances, nor
14. Objection: Hegel is wrong to attribute to Spinoza the principle that all 
imaginings (§77; from a section on “immediate knowing”)
finitude is negation.12  Reply: Irrelevant to this argument. 
P. …if this appears false to you nothing further can be said than that you do
15. Objection: Q2 is illegitimate: there is an “indefinite”13 amount of finitude, 
not possess intellectual intuition. The proving of anything, the making it
and no set of all finite modes to ask about.14  comprehensible, is thus abandoned… In philosophy, when we desire to
Reply (MA): If so, defeats PSR arguments for a necessary being. In Spinoza  establish a position, we demand proof. But if we begin with intellectual
the problem is well hidden in P5. I think that’s why P5 is crux.   intuition, that constitutes an oracle... (VGP, on Schelling, 20:435/3:525–
26)
∞ modal descent: 2 substances distinguished by indefinite series of modes. 
16. vs. Boehm on susceptibility of Spinoza to Kant’s Antinomies?15  Q. The opposition between … immediacy of content or knowing and a
mediation … must be set aside (§78; on this, my 2007)
17. Objection: There is some mediator, M, between God and finitude  
R. if substance could be absolutely produced, it would have to be produced
Classic anti‐dualist reply and bonus: If an attribute is such that it requires  from nothing (Wolfson 1934, 95)
finite modes16, then the problem of explanation of attributes is yet worse.  
S. PSR-strong: Everything must have a sufficient reason that is knowable
and comprehensible by us.
IV. Against Appeals to Intellectual Intuition
PSR-weak: Everything must have a sufficient reason. (my 2015, 121)
18. Objection: Instead of PSR, Spinoza rests on intellectual intuition (Earle) or 
immediate knowledge (Wolfson)                MA 
19. Objection: The one substance is the cause that explains the existence of 
finitude and determinateness, but only God can understand how.  
MA: God and P5 again.  
20. Tension in rationalist metaphysics more generally?   

V. Towards Hegel’s Metaphysics

21. Objection: No possible compatibility of Hegel’s metaphysics with assertion 
that monism requires PSR, and PSR forces a “deficient” elimination.  
Reply: No question here of a complete reading, but I sketch my view of 
Hegel’s metaphysics to show in principle compatibility, and so some 
reason in favor of compatible readings.   

  2
 22. How could Hegel possible think that that monism requires elimination, and 
that elimination would make a philosophy “deficient”?   T. Any sensible consideration of the world discriminates… what truly
a. Kant: reason has an interest in conditions or grounds and their  merits the name ‘actuality’…
What is rational is actual /and what is actual is rational… (EL §6)
completeness or “ideas” of “the unconditioned”; Hegel agrees 
b. PSR seems natural for a philosophical program so‐guided  U. nothing other than the Absolute Idea fully is… That’s monism (Bowman
2017, 159 on Kreines 2015)
c. “deficient” points out an ironic fate for such programs 
V. PSR-degree?: “Things exist to the extent that those things are intelligible
23. My alternative approach to Hegel’s metaphysics  (Della Rocca 2012, 20).
a. There is something completely or absolutely self‐explaining. 
W. the absolute cannot be a first, an immediate. Essentially the absolute is
b. Things that are, are; but they have different degrees of explicability,  rather its result. (11:376/473)
actuality, truth, etc. Some are what I’ll call ‘incompletes’.   
Objection: That is monism (Bowman) and/or that is Spinoza (Della Rocca 2012) 
Reply: PSR needed to demonstrate monism. Incompletely explicable things rule 
out the PSR. So recognizing incompletes is giving up on a case for monism. 
24. Hard, but very distinctively Hegelian, anti‐foundationalism: the absolute 
self‐explainer must also be dependent (in a non‐explanatory sense) or 
“mediated” on incompletely explicables.   
 
                                                            
1
 My earliest attempt at Hegel vs. monism is (2004, 55 and 67‐8); the claim I defend today is better formulated at (2007, 327).   
2
 E.g. E1P16 and 2P7S respectively, appealed to in this way by Melamed 2010, 90. 
3
 Parkinson 1977, 456; Hübner 2015, 227.  
4
 E.g. a principle about determinacy and negation: Parkinson 1977, 454; Bartuschat 2007, 111. Melamed 2012, 187‐8. 
5
 In general I am following Garrett in my reading of this first juncture: “the four proofs …. rely on” PSR (1979, 198). 
6
 I return to this thought in Wolfson (1934) and Earle (1973) below, following Garrett’s (1979) presentation of the options.  
7
 Compare the questions posed by Joachim (1901, 103f.) and Della Rocca (2006, 30).  
8
 It is often objected that such appeal to “the intellect”, especially as mode, is just not Spinoza’s view (e.g. Sandkaulen 2007, 260). But I think this irrelevant to the force of 
Hegel’s argument. Hegel is allowing consideration of different possible escapes; if they are not available, then so much the better for Hegel’s case.   
9
 This passages is used to counter Hegelian worries in Melamed 2012.  
10
 See Bartuschat’s case (2007, 2013) that Hegel’s “outwards” demand is foreign to Spinoza. And Melamed on dialectical negation 2010, 82.  
11
 Compare similar questions in Leibniz (PE 281), Newlands (2011, 104) and Nadler (2012). 
12
 Parkinson 1977, 454; Bartuschat 2007, 111. Melamed 2012, 187‐8. 
13
 Spinoza, Letter 29. 
14
 The objection is inspired by Levey (2016).  
15
 Boehm 2014, 92.  
16
 Nadler considers a similar proposal, with respect to extension in particular (2012, 233). 

  3