1.1.1 Mediation in the Sense of Dependence, as an Organizing Thread

I begin by introducing a kind of mediation or dependence-oriented reason, before looking in this light at the ontological scheme and initial demonstrations of the Ethics.

One might think initially that the geometric form of the Ethics lays out all the reasons to easily see, each proposition demonstrated with reference to prior elements, beginning with axioms and definitions. So why ask about Spinoza’s reasons? But we will see that interpreters – from Hegel to our contemporaries – tend to seek simpler common thread(s), organizing the whole, providing philosophical strength.

Hegel himself finds the geometric form in itself misleading, at best. He sees it as, in itself, compatible with an arbitrary choice of definitions and axioms, which would beg the question in philosophical disputes.Footnote ²¹ Hegel quickly dismisses many using this method.Footnote ²² But he finds another spirit in Spinoza – a common thread or threads – lending philosophical strength. That’s why he thinks Spinozism cannot be simply brushed aside on grounds of the geometric form, or anything else, but requires using its own strengths against it.Footnote ²³

As noted above, the initially more approachable kind of reason turns on consideration of forms of dependence, including causality and grounding – all of which Hegel collects under the heading of “mediation.”

The general idea of a Spinoza of mediation – common in Hegel’s context, due to F. H. Jacobi – is that a common thread in Spinoza’s case for monism, lending strength, can be approached in this way: Spinoza exposes popular philosophies of the time as ad hoc in their appeals to such dependence, seeking to protect common sense about things like free will. Spinoza’s strength would be rather thinking through forms of dependence more consistently.

One way in which the Ethics draws on conceptions of dependence, much discussed recently, is in stating and using a “principle of sufficient reason” (PSR). There can be different versions of the PSR. One clear one in the Ethics is: “[f]or each thing there must be assigned a cause, or reason (causa seu ratio), both for its existence and for its nonexistence” (E1P11D2). Striking here is the bi-directionality: not just existence but also non-existence depends on a cause or reason. Call this “Bi-PSR.” Whatever else we say about this, Spinoza does state it, and uses it in demonstrations about God leading up to his monism (again beginning with E1P11D2).

Spinoza also refers to the common “nihilo” form of PSR: nothing comes from or is produced by nothing (ex nihilo nihil fit) (e.g. E4P20S; cf. Short Treatise at CW 66). This expresses the existence side of Bi-PSR: something existing must come from something, that is, have a cause or ground.Footnote ²⁴ Descartes’ Meditations uses a similar statement in its causal proof of God.

There is a radical Jacobi subvariety of the Spinoza of mediation, which I neither assume nor need here. This is to argue that the PSR specifically is the common thread throughout the whole case for Spinoza’s monism. So Jacobi says other philosophers are ad hoc in use of the nihilo-PSR, but the “spirit” of Spinoza is to carry specifically this through most consistently.Footnote ²⁵

Something along those lines, but not always so extreme, is important in the flourishing of philosophical work on Spinoza in recent decades: the idea that the PSR is at least one unifying and strengthening thread throughout the Ethics. An important and seminal text in this work is Garrett’s argument on this score in his 1979 “Spinoza’s Ontological Argument.” Garrett’s recent book tells us early on what we need “to understand the system that Spinoza proposes,” and begins with a PSR as one guiding thread, demanding a cause or reason for every fact (Reference Garrett2018: 13). If there are other facts aside from those concerning existence and non-existence, this might go farther still; I’ll call it a “fact-PSR.”

Della Rocca has more recently identified Jacobi as an influence, and argued for the more radical view that the fact-PSR is the guiding thread or spirit throughout.Footnote ²⁶

But Hegel’s interest in a Spinoza of mediation is broader. It is not limited to a focus on “ground” (Grund) in a PSR or “Satz des Grundes” (e.g. GW §121An), and Hegel treats Spinoza as thinking through many dependence relations in a principled manner. I will try to note as I proceed how this approach might differ from the idea that the PSR specifically is driving arguments throughout the whole of the Ethics. I don’t mean to settle that interpretive issue about Spinoza, but to show that Hegel does not depend on anything as radical as Jacobi: Hegel could allow but does not need attribution of fact-PSR to the Ethics (as opposed to the Bi-PSR and nihilo, explicit in the text), nor attributing any PSR as the single guiding thread, nor thinking the Ethics reasons from the start via a PSR.

Now I turn to the beginning of the Ethics, looking to consideration of dependence relations as providing strength. I will note some difficult spots that would make more difficult and lengthy a defense all the way to substance monism. But targeting those spots would not show his argument going wrong in a way that could save commonsense belief that you and I are substances, unlike mere waves in an ocean. Or so I argue.

1.1.2 Spinoza’s Ontological Scheme

On Hegel’s view, as far as the geometric form itself tells us, Spinoza’s axioms and definitions could be merely arbitrary. I seek to introduce the definitions and axioms important here in a way that opens the possibility that hard-to-resist thoughts about dependence might unify Spinoza’s ontological scheme and lend strength downstream.

We can begin with the “modes,” also known as “affections.” Some popular illustrations: a wave, a dent, a smile.Footnote ²⁷ I take it that Spinoza’s idea here is not merely arbitrary, but a difficult-to-resist thought about dependence: the wave is the ocean, insofar as it is oscillating. To conceive of what a wave is would be to grasp that it is not independent, but in another. In general, a mode or affection is “conceived through” this dependence on something else, being “in” that something else. That is the latter part of the definition of mode:

The first part refers to substance. Spinoza needs no mere assumption that there is any substance; he later gives reason. But to be substance would be, first, to be independent in this sense, or to not be conceived through another.

Commonsense examples of substances are not appropriate, since Spinoza is arguing that all that we ordinarily think is substantial – e.g. you and I – is not.

Spinoza’s definition of substance is not framed negatively, saying a substance is something not conceived through something else. Rather, it says that substance is conceived through itself. Spinoza sees no gap. I think the idea is this: for everything that is, there must be something to it, in the sense of something that would be grasped, in grasping what it is. In this sense, everything would be in principle (if perhaps not in practice, or by me) “conceivable.” We can see this in the second axiom:

This gives an initial sense of why Spinoza thinks – and this will be important downstream – that his ontological scheme is exhaustive: if there is something not conceivable through itself (substance), then it is conceivable through another (a mode).

The story is parallel about dependence in the sense of being “in” something, but I will just note it. The parallel axiom is:

In some sense, substance is in itself.Footnote ²⁸

And so the definition of substance begins by rolling together the considerations of my last few paragraphs:

One of Spinoza’s later statements of the exhaustiveness of his ontological scheme refers to these very definitions and axiom: “nothing exists but substance and its modes (Ax. I and Defs. 3 and 5)” (E1P28D).

In the ontological scheme, it remains to define “attribute.” There are complexities here, but the only thing we need in this chapter is a sense in which an attribute is the essence of substance. I would explain it in this way: Descartes thinks his own mind is a finite substance. What explains the possibility of his mind being affected, in the sense of thinking about Napoleon? Not just that it is a thing: it seems conceivable that there are things that cannot think at all. Rather, that it is a thinking thing. Or: that there is a substance with the attribute thought. So, the attribute explains the possibility of all the ways the substance can be affected: it is that on which all those ways depend. And, in this, nothing comes between substance and attribute, or – roughly – the essence of substance, and substance. So, this does not violate exhaustiveness: if something is not substance (conceived through itself in terms of attribute or essence), it is mode or affection.

The definition of attribute is more complex:

The complexities about the intellect seem related to the issue of whether one substance can have multiple attributes (§2.1.3). This is a difficult spot, to be sure. But it does not matter to the argument defended in this chapter: it cannot block the initial steps towards monism in a way that would save the commonsense that you and I are more substantial than affections. These steps assume nothing about any possibility or account of multiple attributes of a substance.

1.1.3 Demonstrations: Substance is Uncaused; You and I are not Substances

I want to first follow in more detail Spinoza’s argument that substance must be uncaused, along these lines:

We can start with [S1]. Hegel thinks this is obvious from the definitions (VGP 265/Mich. 879). Spinoza offers more detail as to why: E1P4 makes a requirement on any case of distinct things (numerically distinct, which is how I will use “distinct” unless noted). For any two distinct things, something must distinguish them. We can approach the general requirement in terms reminiscent of explanations above: for there to be a numerical distinction, there would have to be something to it, such that one would grasp that something in grasping them as distinct. Initially it might seem that one wave, for example, could be distinct from another in having a different shape.

Let me note two ways of thinking of this, without need here to settle the matter. Some see this requirement on distinctness as implied by the fact-PSR, and the fact that one thing is distinct from another.Footnote ²⁹

Here is an optional alternative: We could just focus directly on the claim that distinctness depends on distinguishers. This approach would say that the claim is clear and convincing on its own, and more so than something so general or sweeping as the fact-PSR, which then would not be needed to do work at this early point. This approach could still find strength in Spinoza’s consistency in this kind of appeal to dependence as he proceeds. This might include later (E1P1D2) explicit appeal to Bi-PSR in the cases of existence and non-existence. But one need not see Spinoza’s earlier demonstrations as from that principle.

In any case, if distinctness depends on something, then Spinoza’s exhaustive ontological scheme allows only either an attribute (implied, an attribute/substance pair), or else modes or affections (E1P4).

So, could a sphere and a cube be numerically distinct merely or only in virtue of differing shapes? Note that these features cannot be attributes: the possibility of being a sphere is dependent on, explained by, something else, namely, being extended – so extension would be the attribute that explains the possibility of being so affected. We are considering, then, the possibility that mere affections could distinguish substances. I think the general point is that an affection of a substance just is the substance, insofar as so affected. So, if we are told only of two different affections, we don’t yet know what it is that is so affected. And we would have to know what we are dealing with to ground one of them not being another. So, “if they are distinguished by a difference of affections … there cannot be several such substances but only one” (E1P5).

Now Spinoza’s version of this conclusion involves another difficult spot: he concludes that no two substances can share an attribute. Some think it follows only that attributes must in some way distinguish substances, allowing partially overlapping sets of attributes.Footnote ³⁰ I come back to this to show it does not matter to the early steps towards monism, or block them in a way saving commonsense about our being finite substances.

Substance as uncaused: [S2] is independent of [S1], arguing that causal interaction between substances would require a shared attribute.

Consider this as about dependence: If substances interact, this would depend on something that explains the possibility of interaction. But extension and thought are attributes, so there is nothing beneath them, as it were, on which to depend. For example, in Princess Elisabeth’s famous worry about Descartes: why my mind affects my body rather than yours cannot depend on contact, as this is specific to extension. Now, say we do find something through which to explain the interaction between a mind and a body. But then we seem to have found that thought and extension are not attributes: there is something beneath them, closer to substance, through which to explain interaction of thinking and extended things. Either way, we can see why Spinoza concludes that:

In a letter, Spinoza connects the nihilo PSR: “for since there would be nothing in the effect which it had in common with the cause, whatever the effect had, it would have from nothing” (CW 1–172; Letter 4). But, again, we could take this point to stand best on its own, and then contribute to a broader consistent way of dealing with dependence, including later use of the PSR.

In sum, [S2], substances cannot share attributes; [S1], causal relations require a shared attribute; So, [S3]: “One substance cannot be produced by another substance” (E1P6). Thus, substances cannot be caused to exist.

Now, consider you and me. We both seem to have causes of our existence. And we seem to interact: you are reading something I wrote. If so, then we would be mere affections, conceived through one common substance; in this, like waves in an ocean.Footnote ³¹

Glimpsing monism: This concludes the steps towards monism that I defend and claim rule out objections from commonsense; but I will briefly gesture at the next steps. Spinoza next (E1P7) claims that substance has existence in its nature, or is self-caused or a causa sui in this sense, as defined at the start (E1D1). Perhaps this follows from PSR-based reasoning (Garrett Reference Garrett1979, 205).

Spinoza then notes that, to be finite would require something greater of the same nature, or a limit in this respect (E1D2). He claims it follows that (E1P8) substance must be infinite; Hegel explains:

Still the case for monism is not complete: If Spinoza allows multiple attributes, he has not ruled out there being many substances, each infinite within a different attribute. This matters little for us: it would not save commonsense about ourselves as finite substance; and Hegel’s rejoinder below (§2) would force all such substances to be wholly indeterminate, eliminating all finitude. So I do not dwell on it.

But, in brief, the definition of God is:

Spinoza is going to try to argue via the Bi-PSR, and a case for the impossibility of any cause or ground of God’s non-existence. And if there cannot be attribute sharing, all other substances are ruled out.Footnote ³³

Against commonsense rejoinders: While there is no space to defend those further steps to monism, they are not needed to counter the resistance I find most common: someone finds it objectionably contrary to commonsense to think of themselves as a mere affection. They see this as reason to suspect Spinoza’s argument fails. And they see that there are some difficult spots in the whole argument for monism, some noted above. So, they wish to reject Spinoza’s metaphysics in favor of commonsense.

But we have seen enough to rebuff this: Say we go all the way back to an early difficult spot: Perhaps substances can share attributes, as long as they also have differentiating attributes. But how would this allow us to maintain a commonsense view that you and I are substances? If commonsense is the point, then it will be maintained that you and I and billions of others can interact. So we would all need to share attributes (perhaps, extension and thought), and yet each have at least one attribute that all others lack. This would require billions of fundamental attributes of which no one has any inkling at all, distributed in just the right manner and no other.

I take it Spinoza’s worry here would be that there is nothing to explain why just one person would have a given unknown attribute, and everyone else lack it.Footnote ³⁴ But here I will just say that this picture is at best no more commonsense about what we are than Spinoza’s. Similarly, even if Spinoza cannot rule out multiple infinite substances, he would have ruled out our being substances. So I think I have defended Spinoza’s argument for monism far enough to rule out challenges to monism motivated by such commonsense. Fortunately, Hegel plans something else: immanent critique.

2.1.1 The Nihilo Abyss for Finite Modes

Here is an outline of the case that Spinoza must eliminate finite modes because he would have to, and cannot, derive them from substance. I begin with three premises I think clearly internal to Spinoza’s monism:

We can then try to argue that (4) is internal to Spinoza, forcing (C):

S1 is internal to Spinoza. The critique need not assume the more extreme idea that Spinoza appeals to a broad fact-PSR, nor the idea that any PSR is the single common thread in the argument, nor even just at work throughout the whole. The critique can rest on Spinoza’s clearly stating and using Bi-PSR in E1P11D2 and so in the shortly following case for monism: the existence side of it is S1.Footnote ⁴⁸

S2 also seems important to monism: there is nothing else to serve as cause or reason but God.Footnote ⁴⁹

Even if S1 and S2 were not present, and/or did not support S3, we could just start with S3; it seems core to Spinoza’s monism, and is often stated, e.g.: “God is the … cause of all things.”Footnote ⁵⁰ We will soon see that Spinoza argues from this in E1P28D.

Also internal to Spinoza is the basic logic of using such considerations to eliminate things. Having stated the Bi-PSR in E1P11D2, he argues that there could be no cause of “any other substance but God” (E1P14D), and so he eliminates other substances. Contingency (in some sense that would need further interpretation) could not be caused by God, and so is eliminated (E1P29D).

So finite modes must be eliminated if they cannot be caused by God. Even defenses of Spinoza should concede this much, and often do; I will note some below.Footnote ⁵¹

To deal with Hegel’s texts it is helpful to state the argument as well in terms of the nihilo PSR. Hegel often uses the Latin, but sometimes translates into German: “aus Nichts wird Nichts” (nothing comes from nothing). So here is a parallel to the above:

Hegel often expresses versions of 4* in criticisms of Spinoza, e.g.

With respect to the “finiteness,” “how that comes out (herauskommt) of substance is not grasped.”Footnote ⁵² With respect to God: “everything goes only in, not out (nicht heraus).”Footnote ⁵³ Hegel also associates the nihilo PSR with the Parmenides of Elea and the view that there is only indeterminate being, sometimes mentioning SpinozaFootnote ⁵⁴ – and that those who hold the principle may not be aware that it forces indeterminacy.Footnote ⁵⁵

Philosophical defense: We can best defend the force of the critique as immanent by looking to Ethics 1, P28. Spinoza argues by raising a problem about the cause of any one particular finite mode. Spinoza himself denies that God – from the absolute nature of God/an attribute of God, as opposed to God as affected by a mode – could be the cause: “whatever follows from the absolute nature of one of God’s attributes is infinite and eternal” (E1P28D, repeating E1P21). Similarly, God as modified by an infinite mode – whatever exactly that is – cannot cause something finite (E1P28D, citing E1P22). So the commitment is something like: whatever is caused by or comes from something infinite, as infinite – rather than affected by a finite mode – must be infinite (call this ∞ commitment or ∞C).

While not necessary here, for those seeking a deeper internal root of ∞C, Spinoza argues for it in the early Short Treatise on grounds of … the nihilo PSR; some interpreters see the Ethics in this light as well.Footnote ⁵⁶

For any particular finite mode, E1P28 solves the problem of its cause by exhaustive elimination: The absolute nature of the one substance cannot be the cause. And “nothing exists but substance and its modes.” Thus the cause of any particular finite mode must be another finite mode. This does not violate S3, requiring that God causes everything: the cause is God, “insofar as it was modified by a modification which is finite” (E1P28D). Since the point reapplies to the causing mode, Spinoza gets a desired conclusion: these finite causes in substance extend “ad infinitum” (E1P28D).

But the question Hegel raises is not about the cause of the existence of a particular finite mode; it is about the existence of the finite modes at all. Consider “finite reality” in this critique of Spinoza:

And here Spinoza’s own exhaustive elimination of causes in E1P28 supports the elimination of all options for a cause:

The absolute nature of God/an attribute of God cannot be the cause. Nor God as affected by an infinite mode. Whatever is caused by any of this must be infinite, by Spinoza’s own reasoning in E1P28D (∞C).

And Spinoza has argued that the only other option would be a finite mode. But a finite mode cannot cause the existence of the finite modes, or it would cause its own existence; modes are clearly defined as merely contingent on substance.

So: considerations internal to Spinoza force the conclusion that God cannot be the cause of the finite (4/4*) and indeed that Spinoza cannot provide any cause, and so (C/C*) the denial of the existence of the finite.Footnote ⁵⁸

Objections and replies: Neither the Hegel criticism noted here, nor my defense, depends in any way on foisting on Spinoza any uncharitable reading of the geometric method as weak: the key is rather Spinoza’s stating the Bi-PSR, and using it; and Spinoza’s reasoning in E1P28D.Footnote ⁵⁹

Some seem to think to rebut Hegel’s critique by citing text in Spinoza affirming modes and other forms of determinacy, or making commitments that require this affirmation.Footnote ⁶⁰ This is zero rebuttal to the abyss critique on which we are focusing;Footnote ⁶¹ on the contrary, it is part of the critique: Spinoza’s reasons for eliminating other substances force a conception of substance contrary to his intent, first of all, one without any finitude in it.

Some seem to think Hegel’s criticisms fail because of uncharitable assumptions about Spinoza’s intent concerning substance: for example, that Spinoza intends it to be somehow “immobile,” “rigid,” “inert,” lacking “movement” or “life.”Footnote ⁶² But the intent is not the point, again, and this critique and my defense required none of this, only Spinoza’s own way of treating substance in thinking about causes.

Some argue that Hegel here begs the question by assuming Spinoza must “derive” finite modes either in some special distinctively Hegelian sense foreign to Spinoza, derivation by some kind of dialectical negation.Footnote ⁶³ That would be weak. But we have just seen that Hegel’s critique requires only a demand that Spinoza derive the finite in the sense that Spinoza’s own arguments insist on derivation via causes, in the Bi-PSR of E1P11D2, and in the case of a finite mode in E1P28.

Some argue that Hegel fails by overlooking Spinoza’s view of God as immanent cause of the finite, perhaps because this leaves no need for finitude to come out of God if it is always already there.Footnote ⁶⁴

On the one hand, if Spinoza allows God as immanent cause of something finite, he is presumably aware of it; but he still denies in E1P28 that the absolute nature of God can cause the existence of a finite mode. Spinoza’s own E1P28 argument would fail if he allowed: ‘all we need say about this is that a finite mode is always already in God’. He is more demanding. I defended Hegel by simply using Spinoza’s reasoning here against him.

On the other hand, say any version of this defense worked: imagine Spinoza allowed a special kind of X-causation, in which substance can be the special X-cause of the finite. Not only is E1P28 lost, for reasons above, but the case for monism seems to me gravely wounded: Anti-monists can rejoice. For they can with equal right propose a special Z-causality by which God can Z-cause the existence of distinct substances, creating the world out of nothing. This would escape the force of Spinoza’s case for monism from the start of E1P1-6’s denial of this possibility. The case for eliminating multiple substances draws its strength from being more principled; that very strength threatens to eliminate finitude as well.

Some Spinoza interpreters cede the internal issue, and see it solved by Spinoza with some kind of causal mediator(s) between God, as infinite, and the finite.Footnote ⁶⁵ But any anti-dualist, like Hegel, would welcome this attempt, as clarifying the force of the problem. Compare: those worried about Descartes on interaction will see appeals to a mediator between thinking and extended substances as highlighting the difficulty, not solving it. Does the mediator count for the purposes of the ∞C as infinite, or finite? Either way, the problem of the lack of a cause persists on one side or the other.

Some cede the problem and try to solve it by appeal to what Spinoza calls “the whole of nature,” “one individual, whose parts, that is, all bodies, vary in infinite ways” (E2P13SL7s). Perhaps this “infinite individual,” as infinite, could be caused by the absolute nature of God; and perhaps it would not then need to cause the finite modes, as it would already have them as “parts.”Footnote ⁶⁶

I think Spinoza’s commitments should block this. God is not divisible (E1P13), and no substance, as infinite, could be (E1P13S). Spinoza considers the possibility of having finite parts, saying this would leave substance dependent, rather than having existence in its nature.Footnote ⁶⁷ The threat persists as concern that something with finite parts would not be infinite, in anything like God’s sense, and ∞C should block God causing it.Footnote ⁶⁸

I conclude that Hegel identifies genuinely internal reasons, having to do with dependence or mediation and the nihilo PSR, threatening to force the wholesale elimination of the finite. I will return in §2.3 to the way in which further seeming escapes from this argument would be foreclosed by the way it combines with the argument of §2.2.

2.1.2 A Nihilo Abyss for Distinct Attributes?

As I said above, I think losing the finite is enough of a conflict within Spinoza’s philosophy for an immanent critique. But let me say something more brief about Hegel’s worry that Spinoza’s reasons force elimination of distinct attributes as well.

Spinoza’s attributes are obviously not meant to be distinct from one another, nor from God, in the sense of being separate substances. They seem meant to be distinct from one another at very least in the sense that one can be conceived without any other (E1P10). But, after this, Spinoza scholarship reflects wide-ranging debate about even the most basic issues about attributes – too much to allow full defense of Hegel’s critique on this score.

But consider Hegel’s charge in passages like this:

Many see Hegel’s worry as sunk by a misunderstanding: they say substance is not supposed to be prior to its attributes, so that some derivation for the latter from the former could be required; it is rather more that the attributes “are substance.”Footnote ⁷⁰

And it is certainly true that Spinoza treats substance and attributes as so intimately close that we can draw inferences about attributes directly from features of substance: e.g. attributes are conceived through themselves because substance is conceived through itself (E1P10D).

But this does not block a nihilo abyss critique. There is a more general question: What is the reason for or cause of the distinctness of distinct attributes? Hegel, we will see, also auditions other possible answers, aside from substance (§2.1.3), and so does not seem to see the worry as predicated on taking substance as prior to attribute and the only possible answer.

Perhaps the point of the just-mentioned rejoinders to Hegel is that the very question is a mistake, and so without need of an answer, specifically because attributes just are substance. To me this strengthens Hegel’s worry. Say we go all in on attributes are substance; but substance is one and not many; it threatens to follow that attributes are one, eliminating distinctions between them, and so eliminating determinacy in this form.

But perhaps the answer to that concern is that there is some explanation of why attributes should rather be many? Fine. But this seems to recognize the legitimacy of the Hegelian question of the reasons for there being many.

And so it seems to me not so uncharitable to consider the possibility that the question can arise for Spinoza. Here is how I would argue there is some internal pressure to allow it both to arise, and to need answering. Consider Spinoza’s argument, followed above, requiring that “[t]wo or more distinct things (res) are distinguished from one another” by something, either modes or attributes (E1P4). Being consistent or non-ad hoc seems to me some reason for Spinoza to need some cause of or reason for the distinctness of distinct attributes.

Granted, perhaps E1P4 itself is not intended to apply to attributes. E.g. perhaps “things” (res) excludes attributes? But the concern is not insubstantial, as if it were about a word choice; it is about reasons for monism. Including substance but excepting attributes from what otherwise seemed a general principle – namely, that distinction depends on distinguishers – would understandably look to the anti-monist ad hoc, tailored to the desired conclusion of one substance with many attributes. Anti-monists will rejoice that they could, seemingly with equal right, propose an exception by which distinct substances also do not require any distinguishers. That would reject E1P4 – erasing any reason for monism going through the beginning of the Ethics.

To me it seems then not uncharitable to try to defend Spinoza as more principled, even if that means allowing the question to arise, and to require an answer: what would distinguish distinct attributes? E1P4 allows either modes or attributes. E1P5 rules out modes as distinguishers; Hegel cites this (§1.1.3) and we will shortly see him use it to try to push the attributes into the abyss (§2.1.3). What seems left by Spinoza’s exhaustiveness claim is for attributes to distinguish themselves from one another. I think Spinoza could not say this. For that answer seems to require that it would be part of what one attribute is for it not to be the others. That seems to conflict with the attributes being conceived through themselves (E1P10) and involving no negation (E1D6E).Footnote ⁷¹ Compare finite modes: Spinoza says that being finite involves there being something conceivably greater; he agrees that this means finitude involves negation in this way, as Hegel is aware (§2.2.1). (Note: Hegel is often seen as merely assuming that attributes must involve negation; that would be weak, but there is no need for it: the point here is to charitably allow Spinoza these attempts to avoid the abyss, and to point out that this one fails because the attempted defense of Spinoza itself would see attributes as involving negation; see below §2.2.2.)

So, there is at least some reason to think that the distinctness of attributes would have to come from somewhere, or else be eliminated, and that it can come neither from modes nor attributes. To me, someone pursuing this would be charitable to at least allow the question: could Spinoza be saved by consideration of whether the distinctness of attributes could “come out of” or be explained by substance, in some other sense? The critics of Hegel who think that question cannot even arise seem to me to assume and agree with Hegel’s answer: substance cannot be the reason for this attribute not being that attribute. For example, given the attributes involve no negation, and the intimate connection to substance, substance too is purely affirmative.

I make no attempt to canvass all passages and rule out Hegel having a mistaken interpretation somewhere of the substance-attribute relation. But my focus is the abyss critique. Although there is no space for full defense, I have argued in this section that these worries, at least, need not affect it. However, we have not noted all of the possible answers allowed by Hegel to the Spinozist defense of attributes.

2.1.3 Ideality and Acosmism: No Rebuttal to the Abyss Critique

Hegel considers and argues against another way to defend Spinoza: perhaps Spinoza himself advocates a downgrade in the ontological status of the attributes and/or modes, and this evades the problem. In particular, perhaps if attributes and/or modes were downgraded to a merely ideal or mind-dependent ontological status, then the answer to the challenge would be clear: they would not be objects whose mind-independent existence or real existence in substance would need to depend on substance or similar; they would depend on the mind, being something like appearances in this sense.

My sense is that the literature on this tends to portray Hegel’s critique as failing due to an incorrect idealist interpretation of Spinoza.Footnote ⁷² But we have already seen above how the abyss critique attacks both modes and attributes, without need of any such interpretation. There is nothing uncharitable about allowing and considering another possible defense, via idealism. And so it is worth Hegel’s showing that this downgrade in ontological status could not succeed at avoiding total elimination.

Consider again Spinoza’s definition of attribute:

Let us consider the definition in light of Hegel’s nihilo critique, which would ask on what the distinctness of the attributes depends. In this light, it is charitable to allow both possibilities: either the definition does not make the attributes depend on “the intellect,” or it does.

If it does not, then no such mind-dependence can help avoid the nihilo critique in the previous section, which is then complete: the distinctness of the attributes must come from something, and it cannot come from modes, attributes, or substance; so, it must be eliminated.

It is charitable to Spinoza to consider the possibility that attributes are meant to depend on “the intellect,” and that this might resolve the threat.

But Hegel sees and states precisely why this cannot help Spinoza. In the first instance, it would make the nature of the attributes depend on a mode, which violates their priority. Hegel says:

Spinoza does seem to take the “intellect” as a mode:

And Hegel is entirely correct that Spinoza takes modes as posterior, and nothing that could ground distinctness of the attributes, which are prior (Cf. E1P5D; §1.1.3).

Perhaps this is too quick. Perhaps attributes depend not on any finite mind, as a mode, but rather on the attribute of thought (perhaps what Spinoza means by “absolute thought” in the last passage). I see this again as reinforcing Hegel’s critique: what we had taken for other attributes would all depend on the attribute of thought; but for them to be many would now seem again to require negation in the attribute of thought; alternatively, since to be an attribute is to be explanatorily basic, there would be pressure to rule thought the only attribute – and that would eliminate determinate distinctions between attributes.Footnote ⁷³

In sum, Hegel shows that no such ontological downgrade of attributes to ideal status could escape the case that this determinacy must be entirely eliminated, contra Spinoza’s intent.

This topic connects to the claim of Hegel – and many at the time – that Spinoza, contrary to his reputation as an atheist, is an “acosmist.”Footnote ⁷⁴ But this has many meanings in Hegel’s context. Sometimes “acosmism” is used to mean that only God is fully real, and the finite downgraded to less so. Elsewhere it means entirely eliminating the world. Where someone uses “acosmism” in the former sense, they might be an idealist endorsing it in their own name, or reading it as Spinoza’s intent and supporting this. Where used in the latter sense this tends to be a critique asserting that Spinoza fails relative to his intent to avoid wholesale elimination. In this second sense, my topic could be called the “acosmism critique.” But the ambiguity in “acosmism” has allowed Spinoza’s defenders to portray a rejoinder to the former line of thought – to an acosmism interpretation of Spinoza’s intent – namely, as downgrading the finite – as if it could be any rejoinder to the latter critique – to the critique that Spinoza must entirely eliminate determinacy. But to argue that Spinoza does not intend the downgrade in status of the finite does not block any of my defense of Hegel’s critique here: the critique is all the easier if the defense via downgrade need not be considered. To be clear here, then, I favor the term “abyss critique.”

2.2.1 An Affirmation or Immediacy Abyss for Finite Modes

I defend in this section just one prong of the ‘affirmation abyss’ attack: the case that Spinoza’s affirmative conception of God requires the elimination of the finite modes. I will defend my own position on this, namely, that this attack draws its real force from the larger idea I am defending here, about its combination with the nihilo abyss, above, and the distinction between mediation and immediacy. But we can start with an article by Hübner articulating the basic case about affirmation in its own terms. Quoting from Hübner’s premises:

S2 seems expressed by and internal to Spinoza: “ … in fact to be finite is in part a negation and to be infinite is the unqualified affirmation of the existence of some nature” (E1P8S1). If more is needed, then I think it is generally acknowledged that reference to limitation in Spinoza’s account of the finite is also a reference to negation:

Its being finite involves it not being something greater.

Spinoza seems to hold S1. In the Ethics, reality includes only one substance, God. Further,

To clarify, Spinoza adds:

In sum, there is only God, and God’s nature or essence involves no negation.

With respect to S2, above, Hegel is aware that Spinoza thinks the finite involves negation. For example, in discussing Spinoza: “That, in virtue of which a single thing is, is negation.”Footnote ⁷⁷ “The negative” is taken by Spinoza “to be the determinateness of finite things.”Footnote ⁷⁸ And Hegel states in this way the threat of affirmation abyss: modificationsFootnote ⁷⁹ are not present in being or reality in itself or in truth:

And:

Now I want to take a step back from Hübner’s outline, plugging this into my idea here, about the two-part mediation/immediacy structure; so, first: Say we relieve the PSR pressure towards the nihilo abyss, above, by shifting the weight to a claim to find reason in an immediate grasp of God as existing. We then face pressure towards this affirmative conception of God as containing no negation, a reason Spinoza not only does but must hold this. We could also call this also an immediacy abyss, even though the threat arises anyway so long as Spinoza treats God as purely affirmative (thus my main term, ‘abyss of affirmation’).

Second, I can grant here a sense in which the affirmation-abyss criticism on its own can seem weak: Hegel’s passages draw the inference that seems to follow, namely, that finite things have “no true reality,” and are “nothing in and for themselves.” But perhaps this should be obvious, intended by Spinoza as a mere downgrade to their ontological status to not being “in and for themselves”, rather than wholesale elimination?

I would defend the worry by asking: given the purely positive, infinite God, what sense can we make of some non-eliminated but downgraded or not in-itself status for the modes? The answer can seem obvious: the modes derive from God, and in this sense have no place in reality in itself, while not being totally eliminated; their status is that of a merely dependent rather than in-itself reality.Footnote ⁸¹ But the context in my treatment shows the problem with this: it drives us right back into the teeth of the nihilo abyss defended above (§2.1), in arguing that Spinoza cannot account for any derivation of the finite from God.Footnote ⁸²

Perhaps there are other ways of making sense of a downgraded-but-not-eliminated status of modes? For example, say we try this: the modes are part of God, and in this sense not any aspect of being or reality in itself simply because too partial, as it were. But God, again, as infinite substance, cannot have parts; it would merely depend on them (E1P13). Hübner says, for Spinoza, “To think of being as differentiated through negation into finite particulars is an error analogous to thinking that substance has ‘really distinct’ parts” (223).

Another possibility, considered by Hegel and Hübner, is that modes are not any aspect of anything in itself, but still have some status – and escape total elimination – insofar as they are for us. Certainly Hegel at least considers this, referring to “mere modifications which only exist for us apart from God” (VGP 3:270/Mich. 882). Hübner argues that there are texts in Spinoza which might help such a reading of Spinoza’s intent. But whether or not this “for us” status is intended by Spinoza, and whether or not Hegel thinks it is, or just considers it – I don’t see reason any of that would blunt the force of the affirmation abyss critique. For we saw Hegel’s clear and precise point above about mind-dependence failing to save the attributes from total elimination (§2.1.3). And that point applies just as well to show that this cannot save the modes: modes are not only not prior to attributes, they are also not prior to themselves. We cannot parry the threat of total elimination of the finite by saying it exists but merely as for finite minds – that, as Hübner puts it, begs the question about the existence of the finite.Footnote ⁸³

I will add only one point here, about Hegel’s association of Spinoza with Parmenides when discussing Spinoza in the context of immediacy.Footnote ⁸⁴ Hegel takes Parmenides to hold that there is only being, itself purely affirmative, involving no negation; and to take being as entirely indeterminate in the sense that there are neither determinate differences within it, nor is there anything else from which it differs, or any determinate time at which it could have come to be, and so on. Interpreters often think to defend Spinoza against Hegel by pointing out that Spinoza is not a Parmenidean, in the sense that much that he writes is incompatible with this view.Footnote ⁸⁵ But once again this point about his intent is not a rejoinder to Hegel, but part of Hegel’s critique about an internal tension. The affirmative abyss discussed here then also amounts to the idea that Spinoza, in treating God as involving no negation, raises the danger of getting pulled along in Parmenides’ case against determinacy.

In sum, I have defended a second strand of Hegel’s abyss critique, from Spinoza’s view of God as purely affirmative: an affirmation abyss. With this we can begin to see that the real force of the overall abyss critique lies in the combination: For perhaps the nihilo abyss critique can be parried by shifting the weight of monism onto immediacy; but this requires the view of God as purely affirmative, and inflames the problem of the affirmation abyss. The latter can also be parried, for example by seeing it as only downgrading the status of the finite to merely derivative; but this will inflame the former critique.

2.2.2 All Determination is Negation? No Threat to Hegel’s Abyss Critique

Interpreters often defend Spinoza by claiming that Hegel’s critique is question-begging in (supposedly) assuming a principle that Spinoza would reject, namely, all determination is negation, omnis determinatio est negatio (I call this the ‘omnis principle’).Footnote ⁸⁶

I agree that Spinoza would reject the “all” (omnis) part of this: he takes negation as constitutive of the finite, but not the attributes / God. I have no objection to critics arguing that Spinoza never included the “all” (omnis).Footnote ⁸⁷

But the first thing I want to say about this issue is that none of the arguments above assume any such principle: Spinoza states and uses the PSR, and I have defended a case from his own principle to the elimination of finite modes, and more briefly given reason to worry it threatens determinate differences between attributes as well (§2.1). Meanwhile, in the case of the finite modes, they again seem threatened by Spinoza’s affirmative conception of God, where there is reason to think that an appeal to an immediacy reason would require that conception (§2.2.1). Again: none of that requires the omnis principle. So, whatever Hegel’s view of Spinoza’s view about the omnis principle, I don’t see how this could encourage any worry about the combination of all of the above strands of abyss critique. (I will come back to the case in the Logic for the radical indeterminacy (ruling out anything like modes or attributes) for any object of such immediacy (§3.1).

There is a lot Hegel could try to show and in this way say about the omnis without necessarily begging the question. There would be nothing question-begging about Hegel trying to develop, through genuinely immanent critique, his own final position, different from Spinoza’s. While there will be neither space nor need here for complete defense, I will argue below (§3) that Hegel sees the Logic, through immanent critique of the metaphysics of immediacy and mediation, as deriving the position that all determinacy is negation.

Further, there would then be nothing question-begging about Hegel trying to retrospectively explain in these terms why Spinoza fell into the abyss: it can be independently shown that he suffers from internal conflicts, but he might have avoided them, we see much later, had he seen that all determination is negation. Consider this:

Hegel is under no illusion that Spinoza would apply the principle to God; this is a criticism: Spinoza does not apply the principle to everything, and leaves God purely affirmative; for immanent critique all that is needed is that a purely affirmative God, Hegel argues (without assuming omnis, as far as I can see) brings abyss troubles.

And while there is no space for defense here, there would then be nothing question-begging about trying to argue that Spinoza should have seen that all determinacy is negation. Perhaps because he thinks mediation and immediacy through so far that he should have seen the abyss, and through this that all determinacy must rather be negation.

Granted, Hegel does call the omnis “Spinoza’s proposition,” and seems to think Spinoza wrote down the words “omnis determinatio est negatio” (SL 21:101). So it is possible for all I argue that Hegel sometimes argues that one internal problem for Spinoza is that he wrote the word “omnis” (or Hegel thinks he did). Even if true, this would be a shockingly insubstantial critique: from this alone it would only follow that Spinoza could and should cross out that one word! I think it is clear that Hegel thinks Spinoza’s position faces substantial immanent threat, from which there is something important philosophically to be learned. And my focus has been to argue that Hegel does identify such threats (§2.1–2), and to defend them, without reliance on any assumption about the omnis.

3.2.1 Beginning, Without Mediation by Something Prior: Being, Pure Being

The beginning of the Logic claims to find reason that a systematic philosophy, thinking without presuppositions that would beg the questions to come, would begin claiming immediate grasp of “being,” and “being” as indeterminate.Footnote ⁹¹ We can very roughly compare the Spinoza of immediacy, claiming an immediate grasp of the existence of God as the one substance; but not, we will see, Spinoza’s own position so much as the position to which Hegel argues Spinoza is pushed, indeterminacy and all.

The text of the Logic is famously difficult and unusual. Just for example, it begins without a complete sentence: “Being, pure being – without further determination” (SL 21:68). Here I propose drawing from the account of Spinoza above to approach this:

To work by analogy, imagine this approach to Spinoza, distinguishing three levels, 1–3, in the Ethics. Perhaps the point in Spinoza’s Ethics is (1) cognition of God. Some of its text would lie closer, and some farther from that point. For example, comments about Descartes in prefaces (E3Pr, E4Pr) do not bother to demonstrate Descartes’ existence; that is unneeded insofar as such text is presumably illustrative and meant to lie far (level 3) from cognition of God (level 1); Spinoza denies that God can be conceived through a finite individual. Presumably, his strict demonstrations lie at very least closer to the point. But if the point of the demonstrations were to elicit our intellectual intuition of God’s existence, then even the demonstrations would be at a level 2, distinct from something supposedly superior at level 1.Footnote ⁹²

That may or may not be the real Spinoza, but the point is to apply it to propose this: Hegel’s Logic is supposed to be (level 1) purely systematic thinking. Hegel, famously, says that the beginning of this thinking is a “resolve to want to think purely,” to proceed in the “absence of any presupposition” (§78); while there is debate about what this means, I will extend the above by taking it as thinking or reasoning without presuppositions that beg the questions raised. Meanwhile, some text in the Logic would fall (2) closer, and some (3) farther from such pure thinking. Examples of farther texts (level 3) are those I will call “commentary,” often after Hegel’s title “remark,” which include any references to figures from history like Spinoza. The Logic is not about Spinoza. What I will call rather the “main” or “body” text lies closer (level 2) to its point, akin to Spinoza’s demonstrations. But at least at the start, we will see that this text is not itself the systematic thinking that is the point. In Hegel I take as a paradigm of the main text the famous first paragraph in the body of the SL, on being, to which I now turn.Footnote ⁹³

Here is the first paragraph, not as something that should be understandable yet, but as reference for a close reading to come:

So, what is the reason to begin with being? In some sense, this is the start. And, more to the point: this is immediate. So there cannot be a reason for this in the sense of a distinct premise standing in a mediation relation of justification or ground. So, why being?

My point here is to draw on specific results above. So here I would use the above consideration of the Spinoza of immediacy: Garrett again sees Spinoza’s first proof of God’s existence as inviting us to consider a seeming alternative: substance as non-existent. And our (supposedly) discovering immediately an impossibility in coherently doing so. The idea would not be to establish a distinct mediate premise, and then from there the existence of substance; it would be to recognize immediate grasp of substance as existing. So let us harness our study of that idea by thinking of Hegel as inviting us to consider seeming alternatives: non-question-begging thinking starting not with “being” but something else. Let us say we are linguistic-turn philosophers, and we want to take language as first.

But, first, I think we would be meant to see that the point for such philosophy would essentially involve the idea that there is language. (Or at least a concept of it.) In this sense, their beginning would be complex, with language in relation to something else: that “is”. Or with being as mediated by the specific determination or way something could be: as language. So it would not be coherent to think of the example as showing how it could make sense to begin without being. And we can think of beginning with being as not begging the question against others but offering them just the slightest resource that they too will need, and (for all we know now) could use: the is.

Second, I think we would be meant to see complex mediation within language. We can think of this as the distinction between subject and predicate, and think very roughly of predicates as unsaturated and incomplete and in this sense dependent (or mediated by) subjects.

I think it is not difficult to understand why Hegel would think we cannot conceive a non-question-begging thinking beginning with this complexity and mediation. He would just think that such a start would presuppose reality (or thought, or both) as structured in just the way language is structured by subject/predicate, or precisely corresponding to this. Merely presupposing the correspondence would beg the question against metaphysics that might reject thisFootnote ⁹⁴ – such as in the forms of Buddhist philosophy Hegel himself mentions near the start.Footnote ⁹⁵ So we would be supposed to not be able to think of a truly systematic philosophy, resolving not to beg questions, could so begin.

Hopefully we can have a sense, then, of alternative beginnings (not “being”) as complex in at very least in also requiring that “is” (e.g. language is), and complexity in the relation between whatever else (e.g. language) as determining being. And a sense, in this, of how results above can contribute to understanding the difficult idea of immediate reason to begin with just the is or being. So the EL, considering some alternative beginnings, says: “insofar as mediation is already present within each of these forms, they are not truly the first” (§86An). And the SL insists on beginning with the “simplest of all simples, the logical beginning” (SL 21:56).Footnote ⁹⁶

Carnap says Hegel is nonsense here (Reference Carnap1932: 233), because confused by an ambiguity in “to be” (sein), between the “is” linking subject and predicate vs. the “is” of existence; and confusing the latter with a predicate or concept, supposed “Being” (Sein). But I don’t think Hegel is either unaware of or unfriendly to such distinctions. His point is that systematic philosophy must first try to avoid presupposing them. It is not that Hegel is trying to establish a foundation free of such distinctions, a mediate conclusion to ground still more. Hegel himself will claim that this immediacy generates a contradiction, in which careful attention would bring to light an otherwise hidden central problem for philosophy, and eventually would provide reason to move on to such mediation and distinctions.

Here is a way in which use of Spinoza, above, now makes sense of the unusual text at the start: Hegel must write in language. So the main text (level 2) begins in a way that gestures to something that would not presuppose subject-predicate structure, specifically by leaving out that structure: “Being, pure being – without further determination.” The language would not be fully adequate: it cannot distinguish between a subject without predicate vs. something beyond the distinction. But it would gesture or invite us to consider the seeming alternative – beginning with just a thought of being, as distinct from being itself; or vice-versa – and in this see the point (level 1).

If there is supposed to be reason within this thought of immediate being, then, reason for what? Again, there cannot be separate premises mediating in the sense of grounding a conclusion. Nor the structure within such steps required for them to stand in inferential relations. But note what immediacy would have to do for Spinoza, if it would promise any evasion of Hegel’s critique: it would have to provide, independent of steps of demonstration like those licensed by a PSR, an immediate grasp of the existence of substance (§1.2; 2.2–3). Here in the Logic, note commentary on the next page comparing Parmenides: “being is and nothing is not absolutely” (SL 21:70). Let us say that the “friends of being,” or “Parmenideans” (taking this to just refer to Hegel’s interpretation, regardless of the historical figure), claim an immediate grasp of being immediately ruling out the non-being of being. No mediating steps of a syllogism are required.

One great difficulty is understanding how Hegel could find a strength of reason here, in part because he so immediately turns to allege there is a contradiction here. But extensive work with Spinoza above can help, insofar as it suggests that the point is to find reason in the metaphysics of immediate being, in the sense of something strong enough to render any external attack inadequate, because question-begging; that leaves room for immanent critique, and the contradiction, to follow.

How can we understand the Parmenidean’s reason as resistant to external attack? Hegel’s commentary reinforces the idea that what the Parmenidean is ruling out is the non-being of being, by pointing to a Kantian objection to an “ontological proof.” Think of a Kantian saying: This Parmenidean claim of immediate access to ‘being is’ would merely be a form of ontological argument (OA), even if it is unusual taking God as just Being. Still, it falls to “Kantian criticism” of the “ontological proof” (SL 21:76). Like any OA, it is left clarifying a mere concept, like a concept of <being>, and this can never establish that being is, or exists, because – as Kant famously holds – being is not a predicate that could be added to such a concept.Footnote ⁹⁷ (Carnap’s worry about Hegel’s “Being” follows Kant’s famous claim.Footnote ⁹⁸)

Note that I do not introduce the comparison to an OA in my own name. Whatever it might promise, it threatens much distortion: immediate being is too immediate to be an “argument” in the natural sense of conclusions mediated by premises; there is here no determinate traditional concept of God, only Being; and we are about to see why Hegel thinks this reason could not support God in any determinate sense.Footnote ⁹⁹

The question, then, is why Hegel thinks this Kantian attack would be, applied to the Parmenidean thought, merely external and question-begging. The answer is not difficult to see: The friend of immediate being is from the start putting forward the view that, for immediate being, “concept” and “being are unseparated and inseparable” (SL 21:77). For a reply it would be philosophically unsatisfying to assume the contrary, to begin claiming there is always a distinction between concept and object, essence and existence, or similar.Footnote ¹⁰⁰

Those favorable to Kant or Carnap will want to know why their Parmenidean opponent got to speak first, subjecting their point to the standards for a reply. But here is where we see the reason for the indeterminacy: We have noted Hegel’s reasons for thinking that consideration of simple being must come first. The strength of reason in the face of Kantianism could not attach to any claim for a God in any sense of being determined in some way, as wise, good, etc.

Further, imagine the above resistance to Kant were claimed for any determinate concept of God, say, God as F. This would seem to distinguish God’s existence from a concept or essence of God, and lose the strength of reason in denying such a distinction before Kant can then reply.

For pure being, we got at least a sense of a reason it would come first. But to take such being seriously suggests that its friends should themselves accept, welcome, or even insist on the total indeterminacy of being.

Some might object with confusion about the topic: Is this an indeterminacy of being itself, or rather of a grasp of being (a thought, intuition, concept, etc.)? Again, the point is to try to think independently of assuming such a distinction. Again, the text on indeterminacy gestures at this: Of being, “[t]here is nothing to be intuited in it, if one can speak here of intuiting; or, it is only this pure empty intuiting itself” (GW 21:69; he then adds the same for thought as well as intuition). If we could here distinguish grasp from object, we could say the topic is an immediate grasp of being as indeterminate; or that being itself is indeterminate. I think the text withholds ascent from the antecedent, and thereby gestures behind the distinction, as it were.

We can understand in these terms something implicit above: Say we make a claim of immediate grasp of something’s existence, which is to say: without mediation by steps of argument or syllogism. The Logic finds reason that we cannot resist taking this as well as a commitment about what that something itself must be in itself (for such appeal to provide any reason): it is simple, without standing in mediation relations with something else, or having any mediation relations within. Immediacy in grasp, and in itself. The supposed distinction collapses here; immediacy and indeterminacy encompass any distinction between sides here.Footnote ¹⁰¹ Immediacy would eliminate determinacy in all forms, prior to the Spinozist having a chance to define attributes or modes; if they want a substance that mediates modes “in” it, then they will need arguments for this that turn on mediation.

I emphasize that there is not meant to be here a stable conclusion established, a Parmenideanism accepted as a basis from which to mediate or ground further inferences about being, making Hegel’s results a subvariety of Parmenideanism. This is rather the occasion for the dialectical reversal to which I now turn.

3.2.2 Deeper Into the Abyss: Being is Nothing

This section seeks to understand how the main text’s first paragraph finds reason to reverse the starting point of the Logic, concluding that being “is in fact nothing, and neither more nor less than nothing” (SL 21:68–9). The above should initially heighten the sense of difficulty here, or give a useful perspective on why matters are so difficult: insofar as the Parmenidean has reason to welcome indeterminacy, and yet presumably not the idea that being is nothing, this is a specific and specifically large gulf. It separates where Hegel has reason to start, and where he claims reason to go. To put it another way, we have just seen the most general case that Spinoza, if appealing to immediacy, would lose all determinations: but how could we possibly give immanent critique of a Spinoza who welcomed this, namely, Parmenides as Hegel sees him?

It is of course not unusual to note difficulties in this move; Houlgate says, “[o]f all Hegel’s statements in the Logic,” being is nothing “is the one that has perhaps invited the most ridicule … .” But results above allow clarifying a sense in which the difficulty is greater for Hegel’s statement than Houlgate says here: “[i]n Hegel’s view … it is trivially true: pure being is utterly indeterminate and vacuous and as such is completely indistinguishable from sheer and utter nothingness” (Reference Kreines2006: 264). Results above suggest rather this: What would be vacuous would be the claim that there is nothing by way of determinations in Parmenidean being; but the text moves from there to an idea about what being is, not what it is indistinguishable from. It is “nothing”: “Nichts,” with the capitalization of a noun, suggesting this is not just nothing by way of determinations.Footnote ¹⁰²

Now that we take more seriously the Parmenidean friends of being, we can see them as having an obvious objection to Hegel, along these lines: Yes, when we look to being from a perspective that can only think in terms of determinations, we indeed find nothing (“nichts”) in it. But that is because a determination is a limit. Not because being in itself is nothing (“Nichts”). There is too much of being for it to be determined, as it were, rather than too little.

Paradigmatically insufficient attempts to defend Hegel, by the lights of the Logic, would include those beginning with: everything involves negation (§2.2.2). Or if we begin by taking proper philosophy to concern specifically a question like: how could there be any determinate being? Or: how could an object be determinately knowable or judgeable? The idea would have been to infer that being, to be determinately what it itself is, would require a reference – a negative reference – to non-being, or nothing. But these responses make external presuppositions that Parmenideans would, so far, have no reason to accept.

My position is that this seeming gulf cannot be dispelled without putting the approach above to use by no longer trying to exclude from supposedly proper philosophy Parmenideanism, or the position to which Spinoza is pushed, or indeterminate being; only by instead taking it yet more seriously as philosophy. The idea is that the Parmenideans’ immediacy reason actually supports yet more: a kind of monism, in ruling out there being any distinctions.Footnote ¹⁰³ In my view, this is at least part of what Hegel means in insisting that philosophy must begin with Spinoza (carried through, as Hegel sees it):

I think Hegel’s Parmenides-inspired reason for this dissolution of distinctions is supposed to be this: If we take seriously the Parmenidean being is, then we seem to take seriously the other side of this as well: “being is and nothing is not absolutely” (SL 21:70). If we immediately rule out the non-being of being, so too the being of non-being. But distinctions internal to being would involve there being the non-being of something on one side of it, that is present on the other side. Or, there being nothing of this on one side. Matters would be similar with an external distinction between being and something else. The something else presumably is not being, and our immediacy reason should rule that out. Our main text’s first paragraph has already, prior to the equation with nothing, denied that there are any distinctions in either respect: “Being … has no difference within it, nor any outwardly” (SL 21:68–9).Footnote ¹⁰⁵

But the twist is that the Parmenideans’ own reason now eliminates their objection to Hegel’s move to equate being and nothing. They cannot allow any distinction between a limited perspective (thinking only in determinations) vs. being in itself. So they cannot say that, from a merely limited perspective, there is nothing to being, without threat to being in itself. If it made sense to speak of perspective, they could allow only the perspective of being. And so our taking them seriously contributes to our understanding that there is nowhere else to lodge the “nothing” (nichts) found, but in being itself: it is “Nothing” (Nichts).

Again, this is not meant to be a stable conclusion to mediate or ground further inference; it is the beginning of a long path of dialectic, and is meant to be fully and adequately understood in terms of how that path proceeds (§3.4).

Finally, there is much else to be said about this paragraph. What I have argued here is that results and the approach above provide a useful perspective on the difficulties here, the difficulty of finding a genuinely immanent and non-question-begging form of reason to start the Logic moving; and they contribute to resolving those difficulties.

3.3.1 Preparing for Reasons Structuring the Logic

Hegel characterizes “dialectic” as essential to the form of reason animating the Logic, involving the uncovering of “contradictions” and their “resolution” (e.g. EL §11).Footnote ¹⁰⁶ So it is not surprising that he sees a contradiction in the result that being is nothing.

All I want to point out here is how the above might contribute to the understanding of why this should be a contradiction: We have found and taken seriously an immediacy reason to deny distinctions between being and anything else. In this sense, it is reason to hold that there is only being. But now we get something further and problematic out of the idea that being is nothing. We get the idea that there is nothing. And that is a help: We need only get some sense of why there being nothing would have to involve there being something.

Consider the matter in this way: Say my pen is on my desk. Perhaps we can make sense of this entirely in terms of the ordinary objects: my pen and my desk. But it seems different to think that there is nothing. There is nothing like the pen, or desk. We could try to do without any such objects to be referred to in the claim – a desk or pen or even “the nothing” – by just thinking that there is a fact, namely, the fact that there is nothing. But if there is nothing, there is no fact.Footnote ¹⁰⁷ In Hegel’s terms, the idea is that we must contradict ourselves in distinguishing being and nothing (in taking there to be something), and yet identify them for reasons above (SL 21:77).

But have my results then foreclosed understanding how this contradiction, or this kind of contradiction, could power the rest of the Logic? Again I think not. To just show that an approach is open, I would again sketch mine. I would note that Hegel’s commentary redescribes the reason against stopping with immediate being as a challenge specifically for those who would resist the equation of being and nothing:

In particular, say we wish to ignore Hegel’s results and go on philosophizing; this would no doubt mean taking the objects of our philosophy to be. But the Logic found reason to begin as it does, and found reason to think this would be – barring further development – a contradiction that precludes a stable conclusion. So it would then be question-begging to take there to be some other object for philosophy – language, or whatever – without answering Hegel’s challenge.

Granted, in the pure systematic thinking of Hegel’s Logic – level 1, as it were – we are never supposed to confront this problem as such.Footnote ¹⁰⁸ One reason is that the Logic never encounters its negations without supposedly already finding something more developed. In the present case, Hegel thinks this is the movement between being and nothing, and back again, which he calls “becoming.” And that of course will not be a conclusion but an occasion for further movement.

Another reason is that the very point is that there is so far no stable way to think being, and so strictly speaking no way for purely systematic thought to pose the problem.Footnote ¹⁰⁹

What I want to propose about this is just that discussion above of immediacy can help: Perhaps Spinoza invites us to entertain substance as nonexistent, expecting we will immediately rule this out – rather than as conclusion mediated by premises. I suggested we think of the beginning of the Logic this way, as inviting us to entertain seemingly alternative beginnings. And then we could see each step of the Logic as inviting us to entertain the idea of concluding there; but, at each step short of the end, we would be expected to see that we would be taking something to be, but could not yet, due to the contradiction. And that would reveal what powers further progress.

This approach could then connect the broadest three-part structure of the Logic by noting that, at transitions to the second and third parts, it states the ideas to be considered in those parts as offering accounts of “the truth of being.”Footnote ¹¹⁰ Next, the “Doctrine of Essence,” reason for and then immanent reason against its first words: “The truth of being is essence” (SL 11:241).

3.3.2 The Metaphysics of Mediation: The Truth of Being is Essence

In the broadest sense, the kind of view considered in the “Doctrine of Essence” is unremarkable: it is unremarkable to find philosophers’ projects organized around a mediation or dependence relation like that between grounded and ground, conditioned and condition, justified and justifier, and so on. My aim in this section is to argue that results above have not foreclosed the Logic having reason to reject both the metaphysics of immediacy in general, and the metaphysics of mediation (including, but not limited to, Spinoza’s case). Again, I argue this by pointing out an approach that is not foreclosed.

To begin with, then, Hegel thinks some reason is needed to organize philosophy around mediation. So consider again the problem of being and nothing: there turns out to be no determinate distinction; and that turns out not just to be something that many (including Spinoza) would reject; it is supposed to turn out to be a contradiction forcing further movement. There are many ways of doing without mediation or priority-involving dependence – many ways considered in the first part of the Logic. They are in many respects different than the first step, above. But we could approach the difficulties here in terms of the idea that determinate distinction is supposed to be lacking so long as mediation is excluded. For example, Hegel quickly comes to the idea of a supposedly determinate “something”; he argues not just that it requires reference to what lies beyond its determinate limits, but that this “other” is no different than the “something” – again, determinate distinction lost.Footnote ¹¹¹

Contrast philosophers’ ordinary ideas of the topic in “Essence”: priority-involving explanatory dependence relations, like causality. The promise, at least, is of a different kind of determinate distinction: between the priority of cause, and the posteriority of effect.Footnote ¹¹² So the Logic invites us to consider whether it could conclude with some such mediation relation, and not continue to fall into an abyss of indeterminacy. For reasons above, this would mean appeal to causal priority in order “to state what, then, is being” (SL 21:79–80), without falling into indeterminacy and back into the initial contradiction. And the result is not so unusual as one might have expected for Hegel; an example would be accounting for being in terms of causality in the sense of an Eleatic principle: to be is to have causal power.

Or, to think in terms of ground, Hegel’s approach is to consider something like: to be is to have a ground. We would be supposed to think nothing as distinct by subtracting the ground. Insofar as ground/grounded would be a determinate distinction, we would find through it a determinate account of “the truth of being.” And I think this is how the Logic understands the promise of principle of sufficient “reason” (Grund): it “means nothing but this: Anything which is, is to be considered to exist not as an immediate, but as a posited … ” (11:293). So here the Logic would find reason for the PSR: to do without it (or at least anything like it, concerning priority-involving dependence) would fall back into an abyss contradiction of indeterminacy.

Broadening out from grounding, Hegel takes the general idea of being as mediated as this: being is what results (in the sense of some mediation relation) from a source that is prior. Hegel’s most general term for the source of being is “essence” (Wesen); he notes that gewesen is the past-participle of the verb to be, suggesting that being is what flows from something prior. And that is what the approach here suggests is meant by the first words of Part Two in the SL: “The truth of being is essence” (11:241).

If we have that reason for the metaphysics of mediation, the way is open for approaches to both why a reason against this should be difficult, and how to nonetheless find its own reasons turning against it.

As to the difficulty, it is familiar to note this sort of Hegelian worry about a philosophy of grounding, for example: to be a ground is to have a grounded (Hegel claims); but then the grounded grounds the ground being a ground. So the determinate priority distinction between ground and grounded is lost.

But what could be the reason for thinking that: to be a ground is to have a grounded? The approach above suggests this is not an easy case to make: approximately no philosophy built around priority-involving mediation would admit this.

To illustrate, Hegel engages in “Essence” with various forms of Spinozism built around dependence relations, such as causality. But we could not meet such a Spinozist simply with a claim that substance cannot cause anything, without itself being dependent on that something, conceived through it, and no longer substance. They would see this as external, and question-begging.

Can we argue that all determination is negation, so that to be substance-as-cause would involve not being whatever is caused by substance, thus depending on the latter? But we have seen this principle to beg the question against Spinozists (§3.2.2). So we have yet no adequate reason for thinking there is any internal difficulty in the metaphysics of mediation.

But results here also can contribute to approaches to a genuinely internal reason. Here is an approach: Say we have a reason for a metaphysics appealing to ground-grounded “to state what, then, is being” (SL 21:79). But then this (even if not necessarily any reference to ground) does seem to require an account of what it is to ground, or what it is to be a ground. The grounding theorist would not be able to reply that we have immediate access to the priority and so distinction of ground to grounded: immediacy would have already been shown to force elimination of determinate distinction.Footnote ¹¹³ So an account would seem required. And such a metaphysics of mediation would have no something else, X, below grounding to reach for in its account – else it would be a metaphysics of X, rather than grounding. To appeal to ground to account for ground would be immediacy. So nothing would be left but to account for ground except in terms of the grounded, saying something like: to ground is to have a grounded. And then the Hegelian charge would stick: ground would need grounding in the grounded; the priority difference would disappear. In Hegel’s terms, ground “is ground only insofar as it is ground of something” (§121An).

Why might this be a contradiction? The idea would be that we need to affirm ground as distinct from and prior to grounded, to avoid the abyss contradiction of indeterminacy. And yet to so use grounding would turn out to deny that very priority distinction. Compare something Hegel says of cause-effect: “the inseparability is one determination, the diversity the other, that is contradiction” (VL 168/23,2:770).

With respect to the forms of Spinozism considered in this part of the Logic, they would be considered in light of previous results: A Spinoza of mediation would require an account of what it is to be. And would have to seek this in a mediation or priority relation. Then it is easier to see, as above, why such a Spinozism might be vulnerable to the charge that its supposed priority relation would invert or collapse.

This would be the Logic’s most strict and general version of an abyss critique of the metaphysics of the PSR or grounding, finding there indeterminacy and contradiction: an argument that making such mediation central eliminates all determinacy (modes, attributes, whatever).

Space allows only this glance at this one form of the many problems in “Essence,” and the large family of mediation relations there.Footnote ¹¹⁴ My aim here has only been to show that results above open an approach to this: On the one hand, finding serious reason for the metaphysics of mediation in the treatment of being and nothing above gives a distinctive perspective on why non-question-begging critique of mediation should be so difficult; on the other, the same treatment can contribute to resolving the difficulties: the reason for the metaphysics of mediation would also force indeterminacy and contradiction.