Title: Spinoza’s Escapes and the Abyss Trap: A New Defense of Hegel’s Critical Interpretation of Spinoza
Abstract:
Hegel claims that the immanent strengths of Spinoza’s own reasoning should show that his one substance is only a “dark, shapeless abyss” without determinacy. My focus is on Spinoza’s reasoning, considered in that light. But the prognosis for Hegel’s claim can seem grim: Those who refer to it positively tend to gloss it in ways that fail as immanent critique. Most who look at Spinoza’s texts conclude that Hegel fails. A few find promising strands of argument in Hegel’s interpretation—from which Spinoza could still escape. I offer a new defense of the immanent critique. I argue there are two distinct strands of immanent critique in Hegel: the PSR abyss and the Parmenidean abyss. We can read Spinoza in ways that allow escape from either. But each escape navigates right into the teeth of the other. And so the abyss trap closes.
