Spinoza's Anti-Modernity Antonio Negri |
1. Spinoza, the Romantic The paradox marking Spinoza's reappearance in modernity is
well known. If Mendelssohn wished to "give him new credence by
bringing him closer to the philosophical orthodoxy of Leibniz and Wolff,"
and Jacobi, "by presenting him as a heterodox figure in the literal
sense of the term, wanted to do away with him definitively for modern
Christianity"—well, "both failed in their goal, and it was
the heterodox Spinoza who was rehabilitated."1 The Mendelssohn-Jacobi
debate can be grafted onto the crisis of a specific philosophical model.
It generates a figure of Spinoza capable of assuaging the exacerbated
spiritual tension of that epoch, and of constituting the systematic
preamble of the relation between power and substance—between subject
and nature. Spinoza, the damned Spinoza, had a resurgence in modernity
as a Romantic philosopher. Lessing won out by recognizing in Spinoza
an idea of nature which was capable of balancing the relation between
feeling and intellect, freedom and necessity, and history and reason.
Herder and Goethe, against the subjective and revolutionary impatience
of the Sturm und Drang, based themselves on this powerful image of synthesis
and recomposed objectivity: Spinoza is not only the figure of Romanticism;
he constitutes its grounding and its fulfillment. The omnipotence of
nature was no longer to break off into the tragedy of feeling, but it
was to triumph over it, by opposing it to a kingdom of completed forms.
Spinoza's first reception within Romanticism was thus an aesthetic reception,
a perception of motion and perfection, of dynamism and forms. And it
remained such, even when the general frame and the particular components
of Romanticism were subjected to the labor of philosophical critique.
Fichte, the real philosophical hero of Romanticism, considered both
Spinoza's and Kant's systems to be "perfectly coherent,"2
in the incessant ontological movement of the I. For the Schelling of
the 1790s, the assertion of a radical opposition between critical philosophy
and dogmatic philosophy—that is, between a philosophy of the absolute
I founding itself on the critical philosophy and a dogmatic philosophy
of absolute object and Spinozism—was quickly resolved into an analysis
on which dialectically took on (as Hegel immediately acknowledges) the
weight of the objective.3 Far from becoming antinomial, the absolute
position of the I composes itself into a necessary process which, above
tragedy, exalts the "spiritual automatism"4 of the relation
between subject and substance. The aesthetic dimension of this synthesis
consists in ceaselessly and tirelessly bringing back power and substance,
the productive element and the form of production, to perfection. Romanticism,
according to Hegel, is characterized by a capacity to overcome the pure
objectivity of the ideal and the natural as a true idea of beauty and
truth, initially to destroy the union of the idea and its reality, and
to locate the latter in the difference, so as then to bring to manifestation
the inner world of absolute subjectivity and reconstruct its objectivity
where the overcoming of sensibility is appeased in the absolute character
of the result.5 The filiation of this process is still Lessingian, but
the new dialectic expresses and articulates its motivations, while insisting
on the propaedeutic of the beautiful along the path leading to the absolute.
Spinoza, a certain Spinoza, becomes the central figure in this process. 2. Modernity against Romanticism Are there dissonances in this concert? To be sure—Hegel both
forces the absorption of Spinozism into Romaticism and expresses these
dissonances. For Romanticism and aesthetics only make up a part of
the world, and cannot in themselves exhaust its absoluteness—which is
that of effectivity, history, and modernity. Romanticism and aesthetics
suffer from a lack of truth, which is revealed by the absence of reflection.
But the absence of reflection is the absence of determinations. The
incommensurability of Spinozist being is the sign of a lack [manque]
of determination; it is characterized by a lack [défaut] of truth. Beyond
its extreme originary recovery or cooptation of Spinozist ontology,
beyond the pathetic rivalry that Hegel felt toward Spinoza, it is in
the Logic's chapter on measure that the confrontation and separation
are fulfilled.6 The issue here is not to relate this episode in detail:
others have done so brilliantly.7 It will suffice to identify the negative
concept of being that Hegel attributes to Spinoza, for it is around
this definition (or, eventually, around its refusal) that certain essential
currents of the twentieth-century debate on the ontology of modernity
will develop. Hegel's attack here develops along two lines. The first
is, so to speak, phenomenological: it concerns the interpretation of
the Spinozian “mode”. The latter is defined as the affection of the
substance which posits the determinate determination, which is in something
other than itself, and must be conceived of by another. But, Hegel objects,
this mode is immediately given, it is not recognized as Nichtigkeit,
as nothingness, and therefore as the necessity of dialectical reflection.
Spinozian phenomenology is flat, it rests on absoluteness. But in this
case, the world of modes is only the world of abstract indetermination,
from which difference is absent, precisely because it wants to maintain
itself as absolute. The mode disappears in disproportion.8 But — and
here we move from phenomenology to ontology tout court — this difference
and this disproportion, which are revealed by the world of modes, also
apply to Spinoza's definition of being in general. Being cannot reclaim
itself from the indeterminacy of modes. The indifference of the world
of modes is, if in an implicit manner, the whole of the constitutive
indeterminations of being, which is dissolved in that reality. Being
in Spinoza presents itself as Dasein, and can never be resolved. "Absolute
indifference is the fundamental constitutive determination of Spinoza's
substance," 9 and in this indifference, what is lacking is the
reason of dialectical inversion. Spinoza's substance is the absolute
closing of determinations on themselves, in the empty totality that
differentiates them. Spinoza's substance is: [T]he cause, which in its being for itself resists all invasion,
is already subjected to necessity or to destiny, and this subjection
is the hardest. . . . The great intuition of substance in Spinoza is
in itself the liberation from finite being for itself; but the concept
itself is for itself the power of necessity and substantial freedom.10 In conclusion, in Spinoza's substance Hegel (1) recognizes
the capacity of representing oneself as the boundless horizon of the
real, as the presence of being in general; (2) he confirms the immediate
and insoluble aesthetic power of Spinoza's substance, by insisting
on its "in itself character; (3) he attributes to Spinoza's substance
a fundamental inability to fulfill itself in Wirklichkeit, that is,
to resolve itself in the dialectical dimension of the reconciliation
of the real. This means that for Hegel the Spinozist conception of being
is Romantic, but for that very reason, unmodern. Without Spinoza it
is impossible to philosophize, but outside of dialectics it is impossible
to be modern. Modernity is the peace of the real, it is the fulfillment
of history. Spinoza's being and its power are incapable of providing
us with this result. 3. The time of modernity However, there exists another moment, in which, around the
theme of modernity, it is possible for us to evaluate Hegel's positions
faced with Spinoza. This moment concerns the problem of time. We know
that time for Spinoza is, the one hand, the time of presence, and on
the other hand, that of infinite duration. The time of infinite duration
is "the effort by which every thing strives to persevere in its
being." It would indeed be absurd for that power to "involve
a limited time, which determines the duration of the thing," for
its destruction cannot derive from the essence of the thing, but can
only be posited by an exterior cause.11 As for time as presence—i.e.,
as singularity, as determination—it gives itself as the residue of the
deduction of the insignificance of duration for essence12 but, at the
same time and above all, as a positive grounding and ontological transformation
of that residuality: the body, its actual existence, and spirit insofar
as it is tied to the body are gathered together into an idea "which
expresses the essence of the body sub specie aeternitatis."13 Now,
if it is not surprising that Hegel is opposed to the Spinozist definition
of time as indefinite duration, his position on the definition of present
time is not free from ambiguity. The Hegelian polemic against indefinite
duration only serves to provide the new articulation of the polemic
against the indifference of the modes of substance. According to Hegel,
indeed, the indefinite does not avoid, but radicalizes the problems
inherent in the relation between the infinite and finite: its concept
must therefore be overcome. Duration must become measure, and therefore
mediation of quantity towards quality, and, as it makes its way, the
unlimited must arrive at the realization of its own necessity.14 The
reduction of duration to temporality and of abstract temporality to
concrete and historical temporality is therefore the path that Hegel
points to, to remove Spinozian being from its theoretical destiny, namely
being converted into pure nothingness. Here too, dialectics would be
in a position to restitute the being of reality and would contribute,
through this concretization of time, to elaborating the definition
of modernity. What remains is the second Spinozian definition of time,
as presence and opening-up of power, sub specie aeternitatis. Now, how
might one be opposed to that Spinozian definition of Dasein, or rather
of the determinate being of the mode, which in its singularity is irreducible
to Gewordensein, and which radically opposes determinate being to any
dialectical synthesis? Hegel is especially conscious of this objection
when he claims that the dialectical concept of temporality does not
nullify concrete determination—in other words, that the event, the determination
(as act, Bestimmung, as well as as result, Bestimmtheit) remains in
its concreteness. If the time of modernity is that of fulfillment, this
fulfillment of the real could not mystify or conceal the splendor of
the event. The Hegelian dialectic could not in any case give up the
plenitude of singularity. But here the ambiguity hides an unsurmountable
difficulty. Spinozian presence is that of a being full of power, of
an indestructible horizon of singularity. Hegel can well attempt the inversion of power, but this process
takes on the appearance of a sophism, since the goal pursued is to reassert
the same power. Hegel may indeed denounce in Spinozian being the violence
of an irreducible presence and push it towards indifference and nothingness.
But each time that this singular presence reappears, the reality that
Hegel claims to be void, reveals itself on the contrary to be charged
with all positivities, openings, and singular potentialities. Hegel
may indeed consider the perspective of a time conceived as indefinite
duration to be unsatisfactory, but he can only oppose a repetitive and
sterile transcendental movement to a theoretical practice of time where
the latter appears charged with present determinations. It is here that
the Hegelian system is endangered, here, when the time of modernity
as fulfillment of the historical development opposes itself to the emergence
of singularity, of the positive time of Dasein, of Spinozian presence. What then becomes of the Hegelian notion of modernity? Hegel
is obliged to reveal the substantial ambiguity of his conceptual construction.
For the rhythm of the transcendental mediation superimposes itself heavily
onto the emergence of singularity, and if the transcendental wishes
to absorb the energy of the singular, it does not however succeed in
doing it justice. The "acosmic", "atemporal" Spinoza
expresses a conception of time as presence and as singularity that the
great dialectical machine wishes to expropriate, but cannot. Modernity
reveals itself not only to be the adversary of Romanticism, but bears
witness to a frustrated will to co-opt the productive force of singularity.
This frustration does not however eliminate the efficaciousness of
repetition: it posits parameters of domination. With Hegel, modernity
becomes the sign of the domination of the transcendental over power,
the continual attempt to organize power functionally—in the instrumental
rationality of power. Thus a double relation simultaneously connects
and separates Hegel and Spinoza at the same time. For both, being is
full and productive, but where Spinoza sets power in immediacy and singularity,
Hegel privileges mediation and the transcendental dialectic of power.
In this sense, and in this sense only, Spinozian presence is opposed
to Hegelian becoming. Spinoza's anti-modernity is not a negation of
Wirklichkeit but a reduction of the latter to Dasein—Hegel's modernity
consists in the opposite option. 4. The fate of modernity The real, that is, modernity, is "the immediate unity
of essence and existence, in other words, of the inner and the outer,
in the shape of dialectic." Such is the origin of the storm which
has raged in philosophical critique for almost two centuries.15 During
the silver age, and even more during the bronze age of contemporary
German philosophy (that is, in the nineteenth century of the "critique
of critique", and the great fin-de-siècle academic philosophy),
substance and power, Wirklichkeit and Dasein became increasingly separated.
Power was first of all felt to be an antagonism, then was defined as
irrational. Philosophy transformed itself bit by bit into a sublime
effort to exorcise the irrational, that is, to embezzle power. Hegel's
furious will to posit the dialectical hegemony of the absolute substance
was first opposed to the crisis and tragic horizon, and second to the
ceaseless vocation to renew transcendental teleology according to more
or less dialectical forms in an alternation of horizons which—and this
did not escape the irony of the greatest figures, such as Marx and Nietzsche—continually
offers up pale but nevertheless efficacious images of modernity. The
preeminence of relations of production over productive forces detaches
itself from the Hegelian utopia of the absolute and takes on the garb
of reformist teleology. The schemes of indefinite duration, running
counter to those of the dialectical infinite, are renewed as projects
of the progressive rationality of domination. Modernity changes sheets
without changing beds. And this drags on, exhausting any capacity of
renewal, inventing a thousand ways of bypassing the dry, authoritarian
and utopian Hegelian intimation of modernity, which it attempts to substitute
by used shapes of the schematism of reason and transcendentality. This,
until that exhaustion consumes itself and turns reflection upon itself.16 Heidegger represents the extreme limit of this process, a process
which is perfectly integrated, if it is true that one of the goals of
Sein und Zeit is to rethink the transcendental schematism,17 but a process
which, at the very moment when it is starting off again on the usual
tracks, is completely thrown off. "Our aim in the foregoing treatise
is to work out the question of the meaning of Being and to do so concretely.
Our provisional aim is the Interpretation of time as the possible horizon
for any understanding whatsoever of Being."18 But: If to interpret the meaning of Being becomes our task, Dasein
is not only the primary entity to be interrogated; it is also that entity
which already comports itself, in its Being, towards what we are asking
about when we ask this question. But in that case the question of Being
is nothing other than the radicalization of an essential tendency-of-Being
which belongs to Dasein itself—the pre-ontological understanding of
Being.19 The theme of presence becomes central once again. Dasein is
temporality which is broken and rediscovered at each point as presence,
a presence which is stability and autonomous rootedness with regard
to any mobility and dispersion of the “they” and to any form of cultural
disorientation. The fate of becoming and history is henceforth placed
under the sign of commerce and dejection. Effectivity is no longer Hegelian
Wirklichkeit but a crude Faktizität. Modernity is fate. In the last
pages of Sein und Zeit, against Hegel’s mediation and Absolute Spirit,
Heidegger asserts that Our existential analytic of Dasein, on the contrary, starts
with the 'concretion' of factically thrown existence itself in order
to unveil temporality as that which primordially makes such existence
possible. 'Spirit' does not first fall into time, but it exists as
the primordial temporalizing of temporality . . . 'Spirit' does not
fall into time; but factical existence 'falls' as falling from primordial,
authentic temporality.20 Here, in this falling, while being this "care," temporality
constitutes itself as possibility and self-projection into the future.
Here, without ever falling into the traps of teleology and dialectics,
temporality reveals possibility as the most originary ontological determination
of Dasein. Thus it is only in presence that fate opens up possibility
and the future once again. But how can one authenticate Dasein? In this
tragically tangled skein death is the ownmost and most authentic possibility
of Dasein. But the latter is also an impossibility of presence: the
"possibility of an impossibility" therefore becomes the ownmost
and most authentic possibility of Dasein. It is thus that the Hegelian
theme of modernity comes to fulfillment: in nothingness, in death, the
immediate unity of existence and essence is given. The nostalgic Hegelian
demand of Bestimmung becomes a desperate Entschlossenheit in Heidegger—a
deliberation and a resolution of the opening of Dasein to its own truth,
which is nothingness. The music which provided the rhythm of the dance
of determination and of the transcendental has come to an end. 5. Tempus potentiae Heidegger is not only the prophet of the fate of modernity.
At the same time as he divides, he is also a hinge-point opening onto
anti-modernity, that is, opening onto a conception of time as an ontologi-cally
constitutive relation which breaks the hegemony of substance or the
transcendental, and therefore opens onto power. Resolution does not
just consist in the fact of removing the closure (Ent-schlossenheit)—
it is related to anticipation and openness, which are truth itself as
it unveils itself in Dasein. The d,iscovery of being des not only consist
in the fact of opening up (Ent-decken)that which preexists, but in the
fact of positing the established autonomy of Dasein through and against
the dispersive mobility of the “They”. By giving itself as finite, being-there
is open, and this openness is sight (Sicht): but more than sight, it
is Umsicht, forecasting circumspection. Being-there is possibility,
but it is more than that: it is the power-to-be. " 'We' presuppose
truth because 'we', being in the kind of Being which Dasein possesses,
are 'in the truth'."21 But Dasein—and this is implied in the constitution
of being as care—is ahead of itself each time. It is the being for which,
in its being, the issue is its ownmost power-to-be. Openness and discovery
belong in an essential manner to being and the power-to-be of Dasein
as being-in-the-world. For Dasein, the issue is its power-to-be-in-the-world,
and conjointly, the discovering circumspect preoccupation with inner-worldly
being. In the constitution of the being of Dasein as care, in being-ahead-of-itself,
the most originary "presupposing" is included.21 Presence therefore does not merely mean being present in truth,
in the non-concealment of being, but rather the projection of the present,
authenticity, the new rootedness of being. Time aspires to power, alludes
to its productivity, grazes on its energy. And, when it reverts back
to nothingness, it does not forget that power. Spinoza surges forth
at the heart of this articulation. Tempus potentiae. Spinoza's insistence
on presence fills what Heidegger leaves us as mere possibility. The
hegemony of presence in relation to the becoming which differentiates
Spinozian from Hegelian metaphysics reasserts itself as the hegemony
of the plenitude of the present faced with empty Heideggerian presence.
Without ever having entered into modernity, Spinoza exits from it here,
by inverting the conception of time—which others wanted to fulfill
in becoming or nothingness—into a positively open and constitutive time.
Under the same ontological conditions, love takes the place of "care."
Spinoza systematically inverts Heidegger: to Angst (anxiety) he opposes
Amor, to Umsicht (circumspection) he opposes Mens, to Entschlossenheit
(resolution) he opposes Cupiditas, to Anwesenheit (being-present) he
opposes the Conatus, to Besorgen (concern) he opposes Appetitus, to
Möglichkeit (possibility) he opposes Potentia. In this opposition, an
anti-purposive presence and possibility unite that which different orientations
of ontology divide. At the same time, the indifferent meanings of being
are precisely divided—Heidegger orients himself towards nothingness,
and Spinoza towards plenitude. The Heideggerian ambiguity which wavers
in the void resolves itself in the Spinozian tension which conceives
of the present as plenitude. If for Spinoza, just as for Heidegger,
modal presence, or rather phenomeno-logical entities, have their freedom
restituted to them, Spinoza, unlike Heidegger, recognizes the entity
as productive force. The reduction of time to presence opens onto opposite
directions: the constitution of a presence which orients itself towards
nothingness, or the creative insistence on presence. From the same horizon,
two constitutive directions open up: if Heidegger settles his accounts
with modernity, Spinoza (who never entered into modernity) shows the
untamable force of an anti-modernity which is completely projected into
the future. Love in Spinoza expresses the time of power, a time which
is presence, insofar as it is action which is constitutive of eternity.
Even in the difficult and problematic genesis of Book V of the Ethics22
we can amply see the determination of this conceptual process. The formal
condition of the identity of presence and eternity is given before all.
"Whatever the Mind understands sub specie aeternitatis, it understands
not from the fact that it conceives the Body's present actual existence,
but from the fact that it conceives the Body's essence sub specie aeternitatis."23
Proposition 30 goes one step further: "Insofar as our Mind knows
itself and the Body under a species of eternity, it necessarily has
knowledge of God, and knows that it is in God and is conceived through
God."24 The ultimate explanation is to be found in Proposition
32: Out of the third kind of knowledge, there necessarily arises
an intellectual Love of God. For out of this kind of knowledge there
arises (by P32) Joy, accompanied by the idea of God as its cause, i.e.
(by Def. Aff. VI), Love of God, not insofar as we imagine him as • present
(by P29), but insofar as we understand God to be eternal. And this is
what I call intellectual love of God.25 Eternity is therefore a formal dimension of presence. But now
here is the reversal and the explanation: "Although this Love toward
God has had no beginning (by P33), it still has all the perfections
of Love, just as if it had come to be."26 Beware, then, of falling
into the trap of duration: "If we attend to the common opinion
of men, we shall see that they are indeed conscious of the eternity
of their Mind, but that they confuse it with duration, and attribute
it to the imagination, or memory, which they believe remains after death."27
Parallel to this: This Love the Mind has must be related to its actions (by P32C
and IIIP3); it is, then, an action by which the Mind contemplates itself,
with the accompanying idea of God as its cause (by P32 and P32C) . ...
so (by P35), this Love of the Mind has is part of the infinite love
by which God loves himself.28 Out of this we clearly understand wherein consists our salvation,
or blessedness, or Freedom, viz. in a constant and eternal Love of God,
or in God's Love for men . . . For insofar as it [this Love] is related
to God (by P35), it is Joy.29 And the argumentation comes to a close, without any further
equivocation, with Proposition 40: “The more perfection each thing has,
the more it acts and the less it is acted on; and conversely, the more
it acts, the more perfect it is.”30 The time of power is therefore made
up of eternity, inasmuch as constitutive action resides in presence.
The eternity which is presupposed here is shown as the result, the horizon
of the affirmation of action. Time is the plenitude of love. To Heideggerian
nothingness corresponds Spinozist plenitude—or rather the paradox of
eternity, of the plenitude of the present world, the splendor of singular- 6. Spinoza's anti-modernity "This Love toward God cannot be tainted by an affect of
Envy or Jealousy: instead, the more men we imagine to be joined to God
by the same bond of Love, the more it is encouraged."31 Thus an
additional element is added to the definition of Spinoza's anti-modernity.
According to the dynamic of his own system, which takes shape essentially
in Books III and IV of the Ethics, Spinoza constructs the collective
dimension of productive force, and therefore the collective figure
of love of divinity. Just as modernity is individualistic, and thereby
constrained to search for the mechanism of mediation and recomposition
in the transcendental, similarly, Spinoza radically negates any dimension
external to the constitutive process of the human community, to its
absolute immanence. This becomes completely explicit in the Tractatus
Politicus, and already partially in the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus,
for it is probably only the Tractatus Politicus which can assist us
in understanding the line of thought governing Proposition 20 of Book
V of the Ethics, or better, in clearly understanding the whole of the
arrangements of the constitutive movements of intellectual Love as a
collective essence. What I wish to say is that intellectual Love is
the formal condition of socialization, and that the communitarian process
is the ontological condition of intellectual Love. Consequently, intellectual
Love is what sheds light on the paradox of the multitude and its becoming-community,
since intellectual Love alone describes the real mechanism which leads
potentia from the multitude to determining itself as the unity of an
absolute political order: the potestas democratica?32 On the other hand,
modernity does not know how to justify democracy. Modernity always understands
democracy as limit and therefore transfigures it into the perspective
of the transcendental. The Hegelian Absolute only gives an account of
collective productive force, or of the potestas emanating from it, once
all singularities have been reduced to negativity. The result is a concept
of democracy33 which is always necessarily formal. And the true result
of this operation is merely to subject productive forces to the domination
of relations of production. But how can the unsurmountable instances
of singularity, the desire of community, and the material determinations
of collective production let themselves be reduced to such paradigms?
In the most sophisticated conception of modernity, this relation of
domination is transposed to the category of the "unfinished",
by means of a process which again, as always, reduces and reproduces
presence through duration34 No, the triumph of singularities, their
way of positing themselves as the multitude, their way of constituting
themselves in an ever broader bind of love, do not amount to anything
unfinished. Spinoza does not know this word. These processes, on the
contrary, are always complete and always open, and the space which gives
itself between completion and opening is that of absolute power, total
freedom, the path of liberation. The negation of Utopia in Spinoza takes
place thanks to the total cooptation of the power of liberation onto
a horizon of presence: presence imposes realism as against utopia, and
utopia opens presence onto constitutive projection. Contrary to what
Hegel wished for, measurelessness and presence cohabit on a terrain
of absolute determination and absolute freedom. There is no ideal, nothing
transcendental, no incomplete project which could fill the opening,
satisfy or fill a gap in freedom. Openness, disproportion, and the Absolute
are completed and closed in a presence beyond which only a new presence
can be given. Love ren ders presence eternal, the collectivity renders
singularity absolute. 7. Spinoza redivivus The cycle of definition of modernity inaugurated by Hegel—in
other words, the cycle in which the reduction of power to the absolute
transcendental form reaches its apex, and consequently, in which the
crisis of relation is dominated by the exorcism of power and its reduction
to irrationality and nothingness—thus reaches completion. And it is
here that Spinozism conquers a place in contemporary philosophy, no
longer merely as an historica1 indicator but as an active paradigm.
Indeed, Spinozism has always represented a reference point in the critique
of modernity, for it opposes to the conception of the subject-individual,
of mediation and the transcendental, which inform the concept of modernity
from Descartes to Hegel and Heidegger, a conception of the collective
subject, of love and the body as powers of presence. Spinoza constitutes
a theory of time torn from purposiveness or finality, which grounds
an ontology conceived as process of constitution. It is on this basis
that Spinozism acts as the catalyst of an alternative in the definition
of modernity. But why should one deprecate a time-honored position
of radical refusal of the forms of modernity by defining it with the
restrictive term 'alternative'? On the terrain of the alternative, we
find compromise positions well-versed in the art of mediation—such as
those of Habermas, who over the course of the long development of his
theory of modernity 35 has never successfully overcome the feeble and
bland repetitiveness of the pages where Hegel constructs modernity phenomenologically
as absoluteness forming itself in interaction and incompletion. No,
that is not what interests us. Spinoza redivivus is elsewhere—he is
where the break at the origin of modernity is taken up again, the break
between productive force and relations of production, between power
and mediation, between singularity and the Absolute. Not an alternative
to modernity, then, but anti-modernity, powerful and progressive. Certain
contemporary authors have happily announced our definition of Spinoza's
anti-modernity. Thus Altbusser: Spinoza's philosophy introduced an unprecedented theoretical
revolution into the history of philosophy, probably the greatest philosophical
revolution of all time, to the point that we can regard Spinoza as Marx's
only direct ancestor, from the philosophical standpoint.36 Why? Because Spinoza is the founder of an absolutely original
conception of praxis without teleology, because he thought the presence
of the cause in its effects and the very existence of structure in its
effects and in presence. "The whole existence of the structure
consists of its effects . . . the structure, which is merely a specific
combination of its peculiar elements, is nothing outside its effects."37
For Foucault, Spinoza transforms this foundationless structural originality
into a mechanism of the production of norms, which base themselves on
a collective present: And thereby one sees that, for the philosopher, to posit the
question of belonging to this present will no longer be the question
of belonging to a doctrine or a tradition, it will no longer be the
simple question of belonging to the human community in general, but
that of belonging to a certain "We", to a We which relates
to a cultural whole which is characteristic of its own actuality. It
is that We which becomes the object of his own reflection for the philosopher,
and thereby the impossibility of ignoring the philosopher’s questioning
of his singular belonging to that We is asserted. All of this,
philosophy as problematization of an actuality and questioning
by the philosopher of that actuality of which he is a part, and in relation
to which he has to situate himself, might well characterize philosophy
as the discourse of modernity and on modernity.38 It is from this position that Foucault can propose a "political
history of truth" or a "political economy of the will to know"39—from
a position which reverses the concept of modernity as fate to show it
as presence and belonging. For Deleuze, lastly, Spinoza pushes the immanence
of praxis in the present to the limit of the triumph of the untimely
over effectivity—and the subject, here, finds itself as collective subject,
presented in Spinozist fashion as the result of a reciprocal movement
of the inner and the outer, on the flattened presence of a world which
is always reopened to absolute possibility.40 Anti-modernity is therefore
the concept of present history, recast as the concept of a collective
liberation. As limit and overcoming of the limit. As its body and eternity
and presence. As the infinite reopening of possibility. Res gestae,
historical practice of theory. NOTES 1. Manfred Walther, "Spinoza en Allemagne. Histoire des
problemes et de la recherche," in Spinoza entre Lumieres et romantisme
(Les Cahiers de Fontenay 36-37 [March 1985]), p. 25. 2. Peter Szondi, Poesie et poetique de I'idealisme allemand
(Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1975), p. 10. 3. Antonio Negri, Stato e diritto nel giovane Hegel (Padua:
Cedam, 1958), p. 158. 4. Martial Gueroult, "La philosophic schellingienne de
la liberte," in Studio, philosophica, Schellingsheft 14 (1954),
pp. 152, 157. 5. G.W.F. Hegel, Asthetik (Berlin: Aufbau, 1955), trans. T.
M. Knox, Aesthetics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), II, iii. 6. G.W.F. Hegel, Wissenschaft der Logik, ed. G. Lasson (Hamburg:
Felix Meiner, 1967),I, iii;Science of Logic, trans. A. V. Miller (Atlantic
Highlands: Humanities Press International, 1989), pp. 327-385. 7. Pierre Macherey, Hegel ou Spinoza (Paris: Maspero, 1979). 8. G.W.F. Hegel, Logic, p. 329; Martial Gueroult, Spinoza I.
Dieu (Paris: Aubier, 1968), p. 462; Ernst Cassirer, .Das Erkenntnis-Problem
in der Philosophie und Wissenschaft der Neueren Zeit (Berlin: B. Cassirer,
1952). 9. G.W.F. Hegel, Logic, p. 382. 10. Hegel, Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences
in Outline, ed. E. Behler, trans, S.A. Taunebeck (New York: Continuum,
1990), II, C, #108, p. 101. On this passage, see Cassirer's Das Erkenntnis-Problem.. 11. Spinoza, Ethics, 1I1P8, Demonstration (11/147, 5-6). All
quotations from Spinoza will be cited from Spinoza
Opera, ed. Carl Gebhardt (Heidelberg: Carl Winter Verlag, 1972), 4 vols.
Citation will give volume number, page number and line numbers. Translations
are from Collected Works, ed. and trans. Edwin Curley (Princeton :
Princeton University Press, 1985), with some modifications. 12. Ethics IV, Preface (11/209, 1-10). 13. Ethics VP23, Scholium (11/295, 29-30). 14. On what follows, see Hegel, Logic, I, iii, and Cassirer's
Das Erkenntnis-Problem. 15. Karl Lowith, From Hegel to Nietzsche, trans. D. Green (New
York: Columbia University Press, 199P). 16. Antonio Negri, chapters VIII ("L'irrazionalismo")
& IX ("Fenomenologia e esistenzialismo") in La filosofia
contemporanea, ed. Mario Dal Pra (Corno-Milan: Vallardi, 1978), pp.
151-175. An attempt at a reevaluation of Neo-Kantianism, on the contrary,
is to be found in Jiirgen Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity,
trans. F. Lawrence (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1987). 17. The project is announced at the end of the introduction
of Sein und Zeit. But see also Martin Heidegger, Kant and the Problem
of Metaphysics, trans. R. Taft (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
19904). 18. Being and Time, trans. J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson (New
York: Harper & Row, 1962), p. 19. 19. Ibid, p. 35. 20. Ibid, p. 486. 21. Ibid, p. 270. 22. In The Savage Anomaly: Power and Politics in Spinoza, trans.
M. Hardt (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991), I argued
that Book V of the Ethics presented deep contradictions, and that two
different orientations coexisted in it. Today, after having evaluated
the numerous critiques that have been raised against my interpretation,
I retain above all those which insisted on the excessive linearity of
the separation. I retain in particular, as I will emphasize later, that
the conception of intellectual love (amor intellectualis) as elaborated
in Book V, can be re-read from the Tractatus Politicus—and hence re-evaluated
in light of the whole of Spinoza's system. 23. Ethics VP29 (11/298,10-14).
25. Ethics VP32, Corollary (11/300, 22-27. 26. Ethics VP33, Scholium (11/301, 6-8). 27. Ethics VP34, Scholium (11/301, 30-31, 1/302,
1-2). 28. Ethics VP36, Scholium (11/302,18-25). 29. Ethics VP36, Scholium (11/303, 2-9). 30. Ethics VP40 (11/306,2-3).
31. Ethics VP20 (11/292, 15-17). 32. I would like to emphasize again here how the relative ambiguity
of Book V of the Ethics may be resolved by means of a reading which
integrates the conception of intellectual love and the process of constitution
of democracy, as it is described in the Tractatus Politicus. Against
this position, see C. Vinti, Spinoza. La conoscenza come liberazione
(Rome: Studium, 1984), '' chapter IV, which uses the interpretive proposition
I developed in The Savage Anomaly and radicalizes it so as to find a
permanence of transcendence in Spinoza's system. 33. I am referring to the liberal-democratic interpretation
of Hegel, as developed by Rudolf Haym, Franz Rosenzweig, and Eric Weil. 34. Jürgen Habermas, Kleine Politischen Schriften I-IV
(Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1981), pp. 444-464. 35. From "Labor and Interaction" [1968], in Theory
and Practice, trans. J. Viertel (Boston: Beacon Press, 1973), to "Modernity,
An Unfinished Project" [1980], published as "Modernity vs.
Postmodernity" in New German Critique 22 (1981), and The Philosophical
Discourse of Modernity [1985], trans. F. Lawrence (Cambridge, Mass.:
MIT Press, 1987). 36. Louis Althusser et al., Lire le Capital (Paris: Maspero,
1965), vol. II, p. 50, Reading Capital, trans. B. Brewster (New York:
Pantheon, 1970), p. 102 (translation modified). 37. Ibid., p. 171; translation, p. 189. 38. Michel Foucault, L'ordre du discours (Paris: Gallimard,
1971); trans. R. Dwyer, "Orders of Discourse," in Social Science
Information 10:2 (April 1971). 39. Michel Foucault, La volonte de savoir (Paris: Gallimard,
1976); trans. R. Hurley, The History of Sexuality, vol. I: An Introduction
(New York: Pantheon, 1978). 40. Gilles Deleuze, Foucault (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1986);
trans. S. Hand, Foucault (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
1988). |
| Translated by Charles T. Wolfe. This article first appeared in Les
Temps Modernes 46:539 (June 1991). It is printed in Graduate Faculty
Philosophy Journal Volume 18, Number 2, 1995. Hacked from it is printed
form and publicized by korotonomedya in May 2002.And subsequently
thieved by us. Thanks people! |