[D-G] Negris Anti-Heglian, Deleuzian Spinoza Interpretation

[Harald Wenk]

Dear List,

Quit some time ago, we discussed
the book of Negri/Hardt and Michael Hardts
dissertationen. 

There were some misundersatndings concerning Negri's "Spinoza" and Gueroult's.

Negri wrote his Spinoza book "the wild anomaly" under very bad conditions.

To make things short, he sticks to a Deleuzian Interpretatione, namely the one from
"Spinoza and the problem of expression in philosophy" and critizies any
"idealistic" tendency, which is present double,
one in France (by Brunschwig) and one in Germany - the later strongly dominated by Hegel - a litlle  Schelling too, 
in spite that Schellings claims explictly to be a Spinozist. 


Now, Gueroult is critzied fore some kind of idealsitic or spiritualistic tendency in
interpretation too,
in spite that he wrote several times, that thinking and extension
are some kind of "physical" entities. 

At that time, only the first volume has appeared and the discussion
has taken more the route of Deleuze, incorporating the Gueroult line. 

Deleuze himslf supervised up to  the end of his life stille dissertations on Spinoza, 
which are very worthwhile reading.

He seems to have devolpped to some kind of very explicite adherence to Spinoza,
fulfilling Lytoards philosophical sentence, that Deleuze and Guattari are "modern Spinozism". 

This is what Negri claimed to be too, in other words of course,
and I think Hardt too. 

The difference to Althiusser are a little bit emphazied, but nowadays
I repeat my sentnece, that Althisser was the one, who inaugurated
the change from Hegel to Spinoza as the real
philosophical giant as backbone in ontology, up to ethics
for the left, including the Marxian one.


Deleuze expressed a fierce Anti-Heglianism, as Marx with his biting critics of Hegel too. 
This shows, that the common thinking in the left is very much greater than the superficial abundance
of differences in fierce polemics and critics of one another are bound to expect.

The left knows, that most of these polemics, again from the times of Marx,
is due to the influence of "revisionistic", id est more or less explicite  
conservative and right political, people and tendencies, which act in some sort of "undercover",
making a lot of unnecessary trouble. 
Not everyone is at every moment of his life aware of all implications and facts,
so that some controversies  become soon institutional and the left is laways in danger to be seperated from another
or put aside or outruled or simply
in the position of minority.

The position of defence and being in minority is a big theme of Deleuze 
and unfortunately a big theme in the left experience of the world - in spite
that they are the "speakers" of the ontological desires of the whole humanity - so to speak. 


best regards

Dr. rer. Nat. Harald Wenk