Simon Gros

The international philosophical conference Between Substance & Subject: The Presence of Spinoza in Hegel, held in Ljubljana from October 26 to 28, 2023, at the Academy of Theatre, Radio, Film and Television (AGRFT), was a collaborative initiative between the University of Padua and the University of Ljubljana’s Faculty of Arts and AGRFT. This conference was carried out as part of the research project Hegel’s Political Metaphysics (J6-2590), financed by the Slovenian Research Agency. As a scholarly platform, the event brought together established academics, early-career researchers, and doctoral candidates to explore the historically rich relationship between the philosophical systems of Baruch Spinoza and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.

A central axis of the conference was the systematic reconfiguration that Hegel undertook in response to Spinoza’s geometric methodology and metaphysical monism. Hegel, situated firmly in the post-Kantian intellectual milieu, notably declared in his Preface to the Phenomenology of Spirit that in systematic philosophy, “everything hangs on grasping and expressing the true not just as substance but just as much as subject” (GA 3, 18). This assertion signals Hegel’s philosophical ambition to reconceive the fundamental categories of metaphysics by internalizing the static unity of Spinozist substance into a self-mediating subjectivity grounded in dialectical negativity. Hegel’s commentary in his Lectures on the History of Philosophy reinforces this position, wherein he acknowledges the necessity of beginning from Spinoza’s position—”One must be a Spinozist”—yet insists on the imperative not to remain one, pointing toward a dynamic transcendence of Spinozist conceptual foundations.

The conference presentations rigorously engaged with this dialectical evolution. The contribution from Professor Diego Ferrer of Coimbra University, whose research is centered on German Idealism and its contemporary resonances in metaphysics, the philosophy of art, and the philosophy of nature addressed the primary methodological and logical transformations that Hegel introduced in his critique of Spinoza. According to Ferrer, the fundamental transformation lies in the interpretation of negation, whereby Hegel develops a dialectical and synthetic logic that decisively breaks from Spinoza’s geometrically ordered, analytically rigid system. This development has profound implications for epistemology, ontology, and metaphysics—particularly concerning the status of the subject in cognition, the relationship between thought and its object, and the replacement of traditional metaphysics by speculative logic as the core of philosophical inquiry.

Ferrer offered a close analysis of Spinoza’s Ethics, showing its vulnerability to methodological reorientation and showing how Hegel’s engagement results not in wholesale rejection but in conceptual reworking. He illuminated Hegel’s critical reinterpretation of the Spinozist notion of substance, which he characterized as immobile and insufficiently dynamic. For Hegel, Spinoza’s substance—though infinitely expressive—remains inert due to its dependence on an externally imposed geometrical order. This critique extends to Spinoza’s proposition that finite entities are annihilated by external causes alone, which Hegel counters by positing that destruction must arise from internal contradiction, rooted in the essential negativity of being itself. This internal dynamic of self-negation is central to Hegel’s broader philosophical system, which aims to conceptualize self-transcendence, not as a mere annihilation but as a developmental process mediated by dialectical negation.

Hegel’s method, as Ferrer emphasized, integrates form and matter in a unified conceptual movement, which he argues Spinoza fails to achieve. By neglecting to incorporate the cognitive and epistemological dimensions of subjectivity into his system, Spinoza leaves a gap that Hegel seeks to fill through the dialectical unfolding presented most prominently in the Phenomenology of Spirit and the Science of Logic. Ferrer stressed that Hegel’s logic reconceives negation as a generative principle—the motor of conceptual self-differentiation—transforming the Spinozist conatus, or striving of finite beings for self-preservation, into the Hegelian Aufhebung, or sublation, whereby finite determinations are simultaneously negated, preserved, and elevated.

Ferrer investigated the ontological implications of this transformation. While Spinoza’s monism attributes the causal determination of finite things to an immutable substance, Hegel insists that the essence of finitude lies in its intrinsic contradiction, which drives development from within. This repositioning allows Hegel to reconceive substance not as a passive ground but as an active process of self-mediation. The dialectical subject replaces the inert Spinozist unity, enabling Hegel to construct a monism capable of incorporating conflict, differentiation, and historical becoming.

Ferrer also addressed how Hegel applies these principles beyond metaphysics, extending them into the philosophy of nature and the philosophy of art. The capacity of Hegel’s logic to internalize opposition and conflict makes it adaptable to aesthetic and natural domains, where unity must encompass dynamic transformation. Spinoza’s geometric method, while logically rigorous, lacks the flexibility to account for these unfolding processes. Ferrer concluded that Hegel’s reconfiguration of Spinozist substance yields a more robust and integrative framework that does not abandon Spinoza’s insights but rather radicalizes them through dialectical sublation.

The conference as a whole facilitated a wide-ranging exploration of Spinoza’s enduring presence in Hegel’s philosophical architecture. It revealed that Hegel’s encounter with Spinoza constitutes not a mere historical footnote but a central moment in the evolution of modern metaphysical and logical thought. By appropriating and transforming Spinoza’s metaphysics, Hegel succeeded in advancing a speculative logic capable of encompassing freedom, contradiction, and subjectivity as constitutive elements of reality. In this respect, Ferrer’s contribution underscored how Hegel’s critique of Spinoza is simultaneously a preservation and transcendence—a dialectical Aufhebung in the very spirit of Hegel’s own system.