Kerstin Andermann, speaking at the conference in Leuven, addresses the longstanding tension between Baruch Spinoza and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel on the question of how individuality arises from a unified reality. She shows that Hegel’s interpretation reduces Spinoza’s complex framework to what Hegel calls an “oriental unity” of nature, reality, and subjectivity, culminating in a single, unchanging substance. This reading leads Hegel to conclude that Spinoza’s philosophy lacks a genuine principle of negativity. According to Hegel, Spinoza’s famous statement “omnis determinatio est negatio” points only to an affirmation within substance rather than to a productive contradiction, and Hegel insists that without the “negation of negation,” no true individuation can emerge. He reads Spinoza as failing to demonstrate how finite identities fully separate themselves from an all-encompassing One, for they seem to dissolve back into substance without forming a robust principle of subjectivity or personality.
Andermann observes that Hegel’s comments on Spinoza, especially in his Lectures on the History of Philosophy, revolve around the notion that Spinoza collapses all finite determinations into one absolute totality, leaving no dynamic process to generate free individuality. Hegel criticizes Spinoza’s “oriental view of absolute identity” by arguing that Spinoza recognizes only simple negation—an act that marks a boundary or a limitation—but never incorporates the next moment of negativity, where the negation itself is superseded into a new, enriched affirmation. Hegel calls this higher-level movement “negation of negation,” the driving force of his own dialectic, which, in his view, is essential for any system that truly accounts for the genesis of distinct, free subjects.
In presenting Spinoza’s position, Andermann emphasizes the ways in which Spinoza’s substance already contains thinking and being within itself. His doctrine shows how singular modes differentiate themselves through determinate modifications, each involving negation in the sense of limiting and specifying existence. For Spinoza, the determination of a finite mode implies the exclusion of other possibilities, so that every affirmation indeed incorporates negation, yet Spinoza treats this within the framework of a single substance manifesting itself in infinite ways. He contends in one of his letters that ideas such as shape or number cannot be applied univocally to God, since God’s being is not understood through universal categories but through unique singularity. By insisting that determination is a form of negation, Spinoza suggests a subtle exchange of limitation and positivity that underlies the individuation of finite entities, even as they remain modes of one substance.
Hegel, however, transforms this dynamics into a dialectical sequence of contradiction and resolution, where each negation begets something new through a reflexive movement of mind turning back upon itself. He sees in Spinoza a missing link: if one conceives negativity simply as a boundary, individuality remains subsumed under the overarching unity. For Hegel, one must push further and show how the contradiction within finite modes leads to a dynamic development of subjectivity, culminating in self-conscious thought that understands itself as both finite and infinite. This is where he claims that Spinoza’s philosophy stops short, lacking a robust account of how individuals become self-determining agents within the whole.
Andermann challenges this assumption by highlighting the affective, differential, and processual layers in Spinoza’s work, where mind and body parallel each other as two expressions of the same underlying activity. She argues that Hegel’s insistence on Spinoza’s “deficit of negation” overlooks how Spinozistic substance continually modifies itself through the actual forces and relations of finite beings. These processes are not inert or purely passive but involve continuous interactions—affects—through which each mode strives, persists, and ultimately asserts its own individuality in both thinking and being. By focusing on these immanent transformations, Andermann suggests that the emergence of individuality in Spinoza may be more dynamic than Hegel allows, even though Spinoza does not articulate this dynamism in the same way Hegel does through the “negation of negation.”
She emphasizes that if we want to understand individuation, we must interpret Spinoza’s substance not as a static totality but as a living, immanent field of differences. Negativity then operates through shifting affections, adjustments, and struggles, all of which shape the singular modes. For Hegel, by contrast, negativity primarily operates at the conceptual level, driving thought beyond each partial position until the process culminates in Absolute Knowledge, where thinking and being fully coincide in consciousness. In Spinoza, the identity of thinking and being emerges through the unity of substance but is realized in a more horizontally integrated process of constituting singular entities, each with unique configurations of body and mind. Andermann contends that this perspective shows the value of Spinoza’s approach for contemporary debates on individuation, since it reveals an interplay of material and intellectual factors that brings forth individuality.
Throughout the discussion, she draws attention to the tension between Hegel’s claim that only the dialectical contradiction of identity and difference can open a pathway to individuation, and Spinoza’s own insistence that each finite determination is already both an affirmation and a negation. She points out that Hegel’s strategy of highlighting a purely “affirmative” substance in Spinoza was a conscious move to situate his own philosophy as the next great step in the Western metaphysical tradition. Yet the nuanced reading she defends suggests that Spinoza’s singular substance operates in a manner more intricate than Hegel’s characterization. The passages on reflexive negativity, especially where Andermann discusses the body–mind parallel and the way each mode refers to itself through the other, illustrate how differentiation plays an ongoing role in Spinoza’s metaphysics.
She concludes that Hegel’s perspective, although fertile in underscoring the necessity of active negativity for genuine freedom and individuality, misses the constructive powers of differentiation already present in Spinoza’s ontology. If one reads Spinoza with careful attention to how finite modes live out the reality of substance through continuous modifications, it becomes clear that there are forces of individuation in his thought—forces that hinge on movement, affect, and the unfolding of material and mental capacities. This approach does not negate the significance of Hegel’s dialectic but instead opens a path to re-examining the relationship between thinking and being in Spinoza without assuming that Spinoza’s substance dissolves all difference into an undifferentiated oneness. Andermann, thus, lays out a vision of how modern questioning into identity, subjectivity, and the real might build on these classical positions without resorting to oversimplifications, and she shows the importance of recognizing how both thinkers wrestle with the unity, difference, and negativity as catalysts for the emergence of free and determinate individuality.
In classical teaching, Spinoza’s concept of individuation rests on a monistic view of reality. He holds that there is only one infinite Substance—God or Nature—that manifests through infinite attributes, including those of Thought and Extension. Individual entities in Spinoza’s system are modes of this Substance, specific determinations that exist as “singular things” within the whole. Since Substance itself is the cause of itself, nothing is truly independent of it, and individuals emerge as finite expressions of the infinite. They do not arise from a separate principle but from the continuous unfolding of Substance in myriad ways, each mode defined in part by a privation or negation of the fullness of being. Consequently, Spinoza’s philosophy is often viewed as one of “pure positivity,” since it does not grant a productive role to negativity. Even though he famously states that “all determination is negation,” he treats such negation as a limitation or boundary that sets one finite thing apart from another; ultimately, all finite beings remain integrated in the all-encompassing Substance.
Again, as philosophical doxa states, Hegel’s concept of individuation diverges sharply by placing negativity at the core of reality. For him, “Substance must become Subject,” meaning that the one reality must differentiate itself into finite parts through contradiction and dialectical development. This process is inherently dynamic, requiring that something be negated in order for a higher-level identity to emerge. Hegel transforms Spinoza’s dictum into “all determinateness is negation,” reinterpreting it to mean that the determination of a thing depends on negating something else. Dialectical contradiction, encapsulated by the “negation of negation,” forges the path from bare being to concrete individuality—finite minds, natural objects, and ultimately spirit’s self-awareness. The principle of negativity is both destructive and generative, enabling the self’s passage from limited perspectives to the unity of Absolute Knowledge. Unlike Spinoza’s more integrated unity, Hegel’s philosophy views conflict and resolution as essential motors of individuation.
Placing these two perspectives side by side, scholars such as Yitzhak Melamed, Pierre Macherey, Robert Stern, and others have analysed the distinct ways Spinoza and Hegel envision the formation of finite beings. While Hegel charges Spinoza with lacking a robust mechanism to differentiate the many from the one, modern interpreters point out that Spinoza does account for finite entities through the concept of modes as partial expressions of Substance. However, because Spinoza views reality through a lens of parallelism, where thinking and extension proceed simultaneously, the transformation of modes may seem less dramatic than Hegel’s vigorous dialectical unfolding. In turn, Hegel’s system introduces contradiction as a necessary moment in the emergence of subjectivity, making it appear richer in its explanation of how discrete individuals can attain self-conscious freedom.
Kerstin Andermann’s analysis reveals that these two metaphysical frameworks need not be at total odds. By examining the role of affects and the constitutive processes that produce and shape finite modes, she argues that Spinoza recognizes a more active exchange of difference and transformation within Substance than Hegel’s reading suggests. At the same time, Hegel’s emphasis on negativity offers a salient critique of any purely affirmative or seamless conception of unity, because it highlights how real conflict and opposition help form genuine individuality.
By contextualizing Spinoza’s and Hegel’s accounts in contemporary debates—ranging from transindividuality theory to new materialism—Andermann shows why rethinking individuation matters for broader questions about subjectivity, agency, and social ontology. The conversation between Spinoza and Hegel thereby remains not only a historical footnote but a vital resource for understanding how the singular emerges from the universal, how mind and body relate, and how human beings can be both part of a whole and authors of their own freedom.
Simon Gros 
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