Original title and cover

Hegel and Spinoza

January 2026 [at Cambridge University Press] [Amazon]

Events: [June 26, 2026. LMU Munich] more coming soon…

0 Hegel and Spinoza: From Shapeless Abyss to Self-Developing Thought

§0.1 Hegel and Spinoza: Initial Images to Introduce the Chapters Below

Hegel sees the best aspects of Spinoza’s metaphysics as containing something like an energy needed to get systematic philosophy going, to begin with a rough image. But this energy, once it does get going, is supposed to ultimately send philosophy away from Spinoza, and in an entirely new kind of direction—Hegel’s own. This is somehow supposed to be a kind of self-negation of Spinozism, on the way to a philosophy newly somehow centered on negation or self-negation. But making sense of this last idea is difficult, something to build towards; the way to approach it is to begin rather by asking: What is the Spinozist metaphysics that Hegel takes so seriously or thinks so important in this respect?

Spinoza argues that there is only one substance, infinite and eternal, and that is all that there is.

Some might rather hold that reality is only a great disjointed heap of multiplicity, without organization or intelligibility. Spinoza argues for a very different view.

Some might hold that there is a transcendent God, responsible for freely creating a world. That requires at least two substances. Spinoza argues that there is only one. Spinoza sometimes calls his one substance “Nature,” sometimes “God,” and sometimes uses terms like: “the eternal and infinite being, whom we call God, or Nature” (E4Pref).

There being only one substance, itself infinite, is supposed to be compatible with you and me and our family members existing, even though we are many and finite. To again give an image, which will need to be replaced with argument below, picture an ocean, with waves rolling across its surface. Multiplicity would come back to a one: many waves in one ocean. For the waves are not independently substantial. The waves just are the ocean—the ocean insofar as it sways or oscillates. So you and I would exist, but in a surprising and radically limited sense: merely like waves in an ocean. Spinoza’s “substance monism”—the view that all there is is one substance—retains you and me as mere finite “modes” in, or “affections” of, the one substance.

The core of Hegel’s “abyss critique” of Spinoza (as I will call it) is to argue that Spinoza’s own reasons, insofar as they could be reasons for the elimination of anything but one ocean—as it were—would also force elimination of all the waves, or currents, or any determinate features of that ocean. That is to say, insofar as Spinoza has reasons for the elimination of any substances other than one infinite substance, these reasons would force the elimination of anything finite, of anything “in” substance, and of all determinate features of it. Spinoza’s substance would be, Hegel says, “a shapeless abyss.”

I will argue that interpreters have not found and explained something essential by Hegel’s own lights: how the argument provides reason against Spinoza’s system without begging the question. They again and again read Hegel in ways that leave him (whether they note this or not) merely presupposing something Spinoza argues against, or would naturally take himself to have argued against. I think we must solve this problem of a more substantial reason against Spinoza if we are to hope to understand how Hegel uses Spinoza as a pivot toward a supposedly new form of philosophy.

Granted, some are already familiar with terminology expressing a sense of Hegel’s critique and his alternative. Some might begin with: Spinoza is a philosopher of the “affirmative”; Hegel takes this to be insufficient, revealing the need for a philosophy of “self-negation,” or “absolute negation.” But terminology like “absolute negation” is already familiar to interpreters, and yet they have again not (I argue) found the philosophical strength of Hegel’s critique of Spinoza. Indeed we will see that a natural reading of the italicized interpretation would leave Hegel merely assuming some kind of negation antithetical to Spinoza, and so begging the question (§0.2; §2.2.2). For now, then, I seek to rest no weight on such terminology at the start, saving room to rethink and find the strength of the argument, earning my way back to terms like “absolute negation,” or the contrast between our figures on this topic, providing in this sense more philosophical substance (§3.4).

Similarly, some might want me to begin by taking a side in debates about this topic, perhaps with something like: Hegel’s philosophy is a version of Spinoza’s substance monism. But many specialists would deny this, and some would even want to hear something more like: Hegel pursues a kind of philosophy that does not take philosophically seriously the metaphysics of Spinoza’s time, seeing it as outdated, naïve, extrinsic to the proper pursuit of philosophy. But these “sides” exist, and yet the philosophical strength of Hegel’s critique of Spinoza has not (I argue) been found. I try to avoid assuming either side-taking claim. I will argue that Hegel’s philosophical reasoning only works by taking the metaphysics he sees in Spinoza as seriously as it can be taken; but in the most philosophically perspicacious sense, this will make his philosophy something other than just a version of Spinoza’s substance monism.

I can now state the two large organizing aims of this book. The first is the defense of Hegel’s “abyss critique.” This organizes my first two chapters and requires a tight fit between them: §1 is on Spinoza’s reasons for his monism, and §2 draws in part on this to show that those very reasons turn against Spinozism—in this way solving the problem that interpreters have not found Hegel’s non-question-begging argument against Spinoza.

But there is another aim, which organizes all three chapters together. I argue that, insofar as interpreters have not found the philosophical strength of Hegel’s Spinoza critique, this suggests that there is still much to learn about the problem of how reasons get themselves going in his new kind of systematic philosophy, in his Science of Logic, the core of his mature system. The problem of reasons in the Logic is harder: it is here that we get more general reasons against the general kinds of metaphysics of which Hegel sees Spinoza as just one example. So I conclude by drawing on results from the defense of the critique of Spinoza, and the general approach that sees Hegel as taking Spinoza’s metaphysics seriously but critically, to propose an approach to that problem of how reasons get going in the Logic, in a supposedly new way. I call the approach to Hegel’s philosophy: taking metaphysics seriously to take it dialectically.

0.2 Tight Focus on Reasons, in an Open-Minded Sense

This section concerns a respect in which I will maintain the tight focus necessary for such a short book: the book is focused throughout on philosophical reasons, in a sense I will now explain.

I start with this point again: I think interpreters have not found the philosophical strength of Hegel’s argument against Spinoza, in the specific sense that they read Hegel in ways that leave him (noted or not) merely begging the question, or merely assuming something that Spinoza would naturally think he had already argued against.

To take an example from far afield, if I argue that there are no universals, it would beg the question to say just: there are universals, so your argument fails. For all that is said, this assumes that there are universals and meets the argument with a mere assumption to the contrary. I think it is natural to say this is not yet any “reason” against the argument.

My idea is that, while Spinoza and Hegel are hard to understand, we can start a general sense of this philosophical lack or failure involved in begging the question, and take “reasons” in an open-minded sense, to be anything that we could understand as remedying the lack or failure. This will eventually lead us to entertain seriously Spinoza and Hegel’s questioning of some natural-seeming assumptions about what reasons must be like, for example, that they must be premises standing in a relation of grounding to a conclusion.[1] Much in this section is then anticipatory: not something to pause and reflect here upon until understood, but something that will be later understood once we begin a paradigm of lack of reason, and then start to find reasons.

My focus on reasons, in this sense, is not limited to Hegel’s response to Spinoza. In general, and so including Spinoaza, I focus on interpreting philosophical works specifically in terms of the reasons animating them.

Why think this sense of “reason” important in Hegel?[EI1] We can take up a guiding passage on Spinoza. It is found at a crucial juncture in Hegel’s Logic: the transition away from a broader kind of metaphysics of which he takes Spinoza as exemplary, and to something meant to be newer. Hegel is clear that he rules out moving on this way in ways that just beg the question with respect to “Spinoza’s system”:

… refutation must not come from outside; that is, it must not proceed from assumptions which lie beyond that system and do not correspond with it. It only requires not to acknowledge those assumptions …

For example, a “refutation” cannot “presuppose” – this passage tells us – “the freedom and independence of the self-conscious subject.”[2] I think this is easy to understand: Spinoza’s defense of his monism argues that everything is, in some sense, necessary, and in so doing argues against the reality of any freedom of the will incompatible with this.[3] If we say “I reject Spinozism because it is incompatible with freedom of the will,,” and try to take this in itself as a philosophical reason against it, then we would merely assume that there is free will, and thus meet the argument with a mere assumption to the contrary. I find it easy to understand Hegel’s insistence that this is something systematic philosophy “must not” do.

In theory, one could try to defend free will in some other way and use this against Spinoza. But Hegel commits to something else, and something that takes Spinoza more seriously. He says:

… True refutation must engage the force of the opponent and must place itself within the compass of his strength … (SL 12:15; JS 215)

Hegel commits to finding strength “within” Spinoza’s metaphysics, and he claims to use that very strength against Spinoza – rather than some consideration from without, as it were.

Imagine then someone saying this: Hegel rejects Spinoza’s substance monism because it excludes some kind of Hegelian negation. I would not say this, as the risk of confusion is too great. Spinoza argues for his metaphysics. If there is some sense of “negation” in which this is excluded, then we cannot give a reason against Spinoza by merely assuming this incompatible negation.[4][EI2]

Certainly, there are senses in which Hegel will conclude that Spinozism fails to do justice to negation, freedom, and much else besides. But Hegel commits to reaching that destination through his immanent engagement with the “strength” of Spinoza’s philosophy. So nothing in the destination or any desire to reach it can serve as a “reason” against Spinoza. In our same guiding passage, this is part of the point here:

… the refutation of Spinoza’s system can consist solely in this, that his standpoint be first recognized as essential and as necessary, but that secondly this standpoint be raised out of itself to a higher. (SL 12:15; JS 2:215)

We reach the supposedly “higher” “standpoint” of Hegel’s philosophy specifically by recognizing and engaging “within the compass” of Spinoza’s “strength.”[5]

I do not use this term “reason” to try to capture Hegel’s usage or his supposedly “higher” “standpoint.” The point is to allow the adjudication of Hegel’s engagement with Spinoza without assuming any of this.[6]

But there are also broader grounds to emphasize “reason” in this sense: At least for Spinoza and Hegel, more generally than the latter’s critique of the former. For neither figure thinks that we can grasp the ultimate objects of their philosophical systems via perception or imagination. If not, then in what terms are we meant to grasp the objects of Spinoza’s and Hegel’s philosophies? Spinoza holds that, trying to infer from something finite to God – applying this form of reasoning is already a misunderstanding of what his “God, or nature” even is.[7] I take this to suggest that God is to be understood in terms of the different reasoning animating the Ethics. And I do think that is Hegel’s view in his case: we cannot grasp his “absolute idea” in the Logic until and unless grasping his unusual form of reasons. These are reasons that engage with positions – prominently including the kind of metaphysics of which Spinoza’s is supposed to be exemplary – and find them destroying or “negating” themselves. In some sense that is difficult to grasp in advance, the ultimate object of the Logic turns out just to be that process of reason, developing through this kind of self-negation (§3.4).

But the point is again precisely not to delay here trying to understand what an “absolute idea” could be, or how reasons could be fundamentally “dialectical.” On the contrary, the point is to begin with just the paradigmatic a lack of reason highlighted in our guiding passage forbidding question-begging. We can then use the term “reason” for anything that remedies this, and open-mindedly search for reasons that might surprise us, seeking to understand Spinoza’s and Hegel’s philosophies in terms of the sometimes surprising reasons that animate them.

0.3 Defense of Hegel’s Critique of Spinoza: Into the Shapeless Abyss

This focus on reasons allows further introduction of the first organizing aim of the book: a new interpretation and defense of Hegel’s abyss critique. Section 1[EI3] is an account of Spinoza’s reasons for substance monism, with an assist from Hegel’s view of them; this plays an essential role in Section 2’s defense of Hegel’s case that these very reasons actually undercut Spinoza’s view, by forcing the conclusion that Spinoza’s substance is a “dark, shapeless abyss, which swallows up into itself every determinate content as vacuous” (EL §151Zu).[8] Spinoza’s reasons should force him to deny, to begin with, all reality to anything finite. For Spinoza, this would include the denial of the existence of the “finite modes” supposedly “in” substance. Assuming we are finite, he would be forced to deny we exist in any way at all. He would be forced to deny central features of his own metaphysics.

The key to finding the strength of Hegel’s argument will be to understand a Hegelian distinction between two kinds of reasons potentially doing the work, in Spinoza, of supporting substance monism; that is the topic of §1.

One kind of reason (§1.1) is initially more approachable. We easily reason from a broken window with the cause on which it depends: impact of the baseball. Such reasoning involves causation, one form of what we can more generally call explanatory dependence, or priority-involving dependence: we think of the impact as prior in causing the break, and not being caused by the break. In Hegel’s terms, this is a sense in which the break would be “mediated” by the impact.

What brings Spinoza to the center of debate at Hegel’s time is the idea that popular philosophy uses such easy forms of dependence-based reasoning, but in an ad hoc or unprincipled manner. Spinoza, by contrast, is supposed to provide a way of being consistent about mediation. Very roughly, as a start, being consistent and principled about causal reasoning is supposed to support determinism, and in this way put pressure on the forms of freedom of the will that Spinoza denies.[9][EI4]

A similar idea about Spinoza’s reasons is familiar in recent work on Spinoza, looking to the role in the case for substance monism of a “principle of sufficient reason” (PSR), requiring for anything existing a cause.[10] Some today think (as was popular at Hegel’s time) that this is the common thread throughout the Ethics. But all we need here is the idea that it is an important factor.

Hegel sees a second kind of reason suggested in Spinoza, and this idea is at least familiar in some Spinoza scholarship (§1.2). The idea here would be that we are supposed to have some kind of immediate grasp of the existence of the infinite substance, or God.[11]

The distinction, then, is between reasons of mediation and immediacy. We will see that it corresponds to the distinction between the topics of the first two parts of Hegel’s Logic, the first concerned with immediacy, and the second with mediation. In a sense, Hegel’s own most explanation of how his critiques of immediacy and mediation combine is the Logic. But we begin with Hegel’s many references to (and criticisms of) Spinoza, many of which are found in those two parts, focusing on Spinoza considered as resting monism on immediacy, and then Spinoza considered as consistently thinking through mediation.

I will not argue that Spinoza really rests the weight on immediacy as a reason, nor the claim that this immediacy could really serve as a real reason for substance monism. There is no need. §2 will defend Hegel’s criticism by arguing that, to whatever degree Spinoza’s case rests weight here, he should be forced (as Hegel alleges) to conclude that substance is merely an indeterminate abyss.

Similarly, I will not try to resolve how reasons of immediacy and mediation might be meant to cooperate by Spinoza – or whether one might be meant to carry no weight in the end, bowing out to the other. For Chapter Two will argue that Hegel’s abyss critique is strong regardless: whichever side bears the weight of monism, it forces the abyss.

As we will see, it is most common to read Hegel’s critique as failing, even by his own standard banning question-begging.[12][EI5] Interpreters read it in ways that would leave it failing, whether or not they note the failure.

But interpreters are mistaken. The immanent critique is strong.

One key here is just to remain consistently focused on taking Spinoza’s reasons seriously. As we will see, some (not all) interpreters claim to defend Spinoza by pointing out that he does not think substance is an abyss; he commits, for example, to the reality of finite modes. But this is so far from being any defense against the abyss critique that it is actually part of the critique! The point is the internal conflict of Spinoza’s reasons for monism forcing him, against his intention, to eliminate finite modes and all determinacy in substance.

Ironically, precisely those who fail to see the philosophical strengths in Spinoza’s metaphysics – those who think they are somehow beyond such metaphysics – must miss the philosophical force of Hegel’s critique, and consequently its importance to him. It is only by finding strengths in Spinoza’s reasons that Hegel can hope to turn them against Spinoza.

The real unnoticed key, however, is how the distinction of two kinds of reasons highlights two strands of critique. Given one strand alone, it will seem to leave ways to defend Spinoza. But interpreters have missed the ways in which their defenses against one strand will give force to another side of the critique that they missed. It is the combination of strands that will be so strong in critique of Spinoza (§2.3)

In a sense, one organizing aim of the book should be complete at this point. The very reasons for Spinoza’s monism (§1) leave substance a shapeless abyss (§2).

0.4 Hegel as Taking Metaphysics Seriously but Dialectically: To Self-Determining Thought

How might understanding Hegel’s engagement with the kinds of metaphysics he sees in Spinoza contribute to an understanding of how reasons get themselves going at the start of Hegel’s own project in theoretical philosophy, his Science of Logic? I think my just-summarized results, in the first two chapters, will make it natural to suspect that there is more to learn in response to this problem, and more difficulties to be faced; and also make it natural to suspect defense of the abyss critique can help to that end. Why is this natural? I would explain in three steps:

First, the issues arising with the kinds of metaphysics Hegel sees in Spinoza seem to be wired into the structure of the Logic. The guiding passage above, for example, concerns immanent critique of Spinoza and occurs at a crucial transition to the final part of the book. Furthermore, as we will see, the Logic begins and gets its reasoning going with discussion of indeterminacy – the kind of position to which he thinks Spinoza is pushed, with added commentary here on Spinoza.[13] Finally, Hegel’s case that thought of Spinoza turns against itself is an example of the “dialectic” that will also structure the Logic. He says, for example:

The realization that the dialectic makes up the very nature of thinking and that as understanding it is bound to land in the negative of itself, i.e. in contradiction, constitutes a cardinal aspect of logic. (§11An).

Second, interpreters have again not solved the problems of reasons (in the sense of Hegel’s prohibition of begging the question) in his immanent critique of Spinoza.

Third, the problem of reasons animating the Logic is similar, but more difficult. The Logic begins with immediacy. Roughly, Hegel thinks a beginning is precisely something not mediated by prior steps. And the Logic finds reason here to think that such immediacy forces elimination of determinacy. In the engagement specifically with Spinoza, this is enough: Spinoza is deeply committed to the determinacy of finite modes, and so we would have an internal conflict. But to get reasons moving in the Logic, this is not enough. For the issue here is a reason why it is proper to the metaphysics of immediacy to embrace indeterminacy, as Hegel thinks is the case with Parmenides. Could we reject this on grounds that there is or should be determinacy? That would presuppose something begging the question, by the standards of the reasoning or thinking of the Logic. So the challenge of reason or non-question-begging thinking in the Logic is greater.

I therefore think it natural to see interpreters’ not finding the strength of the reasons in the critique of Spinoza to suggest that there is still much to learn in the more difficult case of finding reasons animating the Logic. And to suggest that defense of the abyss critique in the face of this kind of problem might help with the broader issues of the Logic.

Granted, the whole of Hegel’s Logic is in almost every sense beyond the scope of this small book – and Hegel’s whole system even more so, and the literature on all this, and so on. What I mean to do in my third chapter is just to initiate or propose an interpretative approach, allowing space constraints to impose a number of limitations. For example, I bring to bear only the specific results concerning Spinoza, and the general seriously dialectical approach. And interpret in detail only at the beginning of the first part of the Logic (“Being”), on immanent critique of immediacy and the immediacy reason to eliminate determinacy, to try to understand how Hegelian reasons can get moving in the first place in the Logic. There will be space then only to show that this interpretation does not foreclose, but opens space for approaching the other junctures in the Logic’s broadest three-part structure: a second part (“Essence”) focused on mediation; and a third part (“The Concept”) ending up with something supposed to be new.

I again call the approach I propose here: Hegel as taking metaphysics seriously, but dialectically. I mean specifically: the metaphysics of immediacy and mediation, which Hegel finds throughout the history of Western philosophy.

I am carefully saying that I will propose this seriously dialectical approach, arguing for the promise of this in addressing difficulties in the Logic. My point is not to express personal reservations; I defend other aspects of the approach in other work on Hegel, along with corresponding views of his contemporaries in work on classical German philosophy.[14][EI6] My point is rather to highlight the limits of what can fit in one chapter of a small book.

0.5 Last First Notes

In §1, I seek the strengths in Spinoza’s reasons for his monism. I do not imagine that all readers will give up allhope of any counter-argument. Indeed, I will also defend (§2) the strengths of Hegel’s reasons against Spinoza. I do not seek to portray Hegel as somehow beyond all possible counter-argument. The standard of success in this kind of history of philosophy is to find, in anything worth considering at length, reasons strong enough to learn from, philosophically speaking. Compare Hegel on Spinoza: he sees weaker points and stronger points; he focuses (wisely, in my view) on the stronger points, the ones from which philosophy has the most to learn.

In this way we can take Spinoza and Hegel seriously, without having to try to pretend to declare a final victor beyond any possible challenge, and also without making one seem the same as the other.

Some might object that Hegel’s kind of reasons is supposed to be somehow absolutely decisive. Perhaps. But I think it is difficult enough, and a good first step, to approach by trying (as I do here) to get some sense of how they could be reasons at all.

I do not take my focus on reasons to conflict with the need to understand philosophers in their historical context. It is one essential way of doing that: understanding philosophers in terms of the reasons with which they engage their past and contemporaries.[15][EI7]

In focusing on reasons animating forms of philosophy that are distant – historically and/or culturally – I seek to avoid portraying reasons as similar to anything popular in journals of philosophy here and now, or assumption that this is what it would mean to defend them. I would not defend Hegel by saying, for example: don’t worry, it is more like an account of the normativity of meaning than anything more distant or unfamiliar today. I would apply the same approach not just to Spinoza and Hegel but also to the forms of Buddhist philosophy mentioned briefly below (§3.2.1). My commitment is not antiquarianism. It is the opposite. The point is to look to distant philosophy to contribute to forward-looking expansion of the perspective of today. Engagement across differences contributes to forward progress, and it is lost if we reduce distant philosophy to the recently popular.

I would not dismiss, and I do elsewhere defend the importance of in-context worries about systematic projects like Spinoza’s and Hegel’s. I have said most about Jacobi’s worries, and less about Kierkegaard, Adorno, and so on. But part of the significance to me of Spinoza and Hegel is to show that there are forms of systematicity there that are philosophically worth the engagement given to them in system-critical philosophy.[16][EI8]

This book would be misunderstood if read as trying to cohere with everything in my Reason in the World(2015[EI9] ): that book now seems to me too deflationary on some points, and (not unrelated) insufficiently attentive to the importance of Spinoza.[17]

Similarly, this book would be misunderstood if taken to pursue my old argument (2006[EI10] ) that proponents of what was then called the “non-metaphysical” Hegel would and should drop that unconvincing idea, and advance their broadly Kantian approaches in ways no longer supposed to be distinct from or other than metaphysics. I think this already happened in the years that followed. The issue in this book is different: Assume for the moment the term “metaphysics” is used just for the forms of metaphysics of which Hegel thinks Spinoza typical. Hegel thinks his own philosophy is distinct from “metaphysics” in that sense. But not everyone reads Hegel as, or as pursuing a project that would allow, taking seriously such metaphysics; and that I think misses the nature and strength of the reasons animating Hegel’s work. This project does not require assumptions about, or haggling over a single best overall use of the term “metaphysics,,” and there is no space here for that.

By Hegel’s Logic, I mean here both the self-standing Science of Logic (SL); and “First Part: The Science of Logic” (EL) of the Encyclopedia. My priority is the SL. I use “Hegel,,” unless noted, to refer to the mature Hegel, by which I mean the period beginning with publication of first parts of the SL (1812) through Hegel’s death, shortly after the last published revisions (1831). I try to rest on continuities during this time, even if there are also differences that would be important to other kinds of studies.

And so my focus is not covering everything in Spinoza’s Ethics, in Hegel or his Logic, or everything that Hegel has to say about Spinoza; comprehensive intellectual influences; Hegel’s work earlier than 1812 or his development; what Hegel’s engagement with Spinoza leads him to concerning topics like human freedom, religion, etc. I hope this short book is also of use to those who would focus elsewhere.

[1] There is some reason to think Spinoza appeals to a contrasting form of immediacy (§1.2), and Hegel takes this seriously but critically (§3.2). Hegel himself thinks if “reasoning from grounds” (Raisonnement aus Gründen) was all there was, then this would be empty (SL 11:311); but it is not all: The core of reason is speculative-dialectical reason. Again, this is all to be understood later.

[2] The text here goes beyond, but includes my point.

[3] On necessity (E1P29), on free will (E1P32) vs. an accepted sense of freedom (E1D7).

[4] It is widely recognized that such an appeal to Hegelian negation would violate Hegel’s commitment here, even by those who think that Hegel does make such appeal, e.g. Parkinson 1977, 454; Bartuschat 2007, 111; Melamed 2012, 187–88.

[5] There is much else to be said about the destination, and how things would look judged retrospectively. For example, in some sense the end of the Logic circles back to its beginning (SL 12:252). But this cannot provide the promised reason against Spinoza, through which one first gets to the end. Similarly, Hegel promises a reason here that could not be provided by a claim that Spinoza’s philosophy will turn out later not a competitor but in some sense a “moment” of Hegel’s; cf. Rödl 2018 on the lack of competition.

[6] If I refer to something specific to either, I will note this and use provide their term in the original language.

[7] E2p10s2.

[8] See the note in §0.5 about the relation to “acosmism..”

[9] This is part of Jacobi’s idea in 1785, along with the more radical insistence that this is the guiding thread throughout the Ethics; I defend the philosophy side of this in my 2025a and 2025b.

[10] There are more specific variations on this, §1.1.1.

[11] In Spinoza scholarship, Garrett (2018, 57), following up Earle (1973) and Wolfson (1934).

[12] E.g. with question-begging assumptions about negation, again: Parkinson 1977, 454; Bartuschat 2007, 111; Melamed 2012, 187–88.

[13] As well as Parmenides, for example, to whose position Hegel argues Spinoza is pushed.

[14] Beginning with my 2020, and recently in 2025a and 2025b.

[15] I give elsewhere complimentary accounts of Hegel’s context and figures important to Hegel: Kant (2015); Jacobi (2025a); and German Idealism generally (2025a, 2025b).

[16] I have defended Jacobi’s system-critique in this way in my 2025a.

[17] I’m especially indebted for responses from Brady Bowman, Franz Knappik, Jake McNulty, and Clinton Tolley.

[EI1]AU: (Global) Please confirm if underline can be removed from here and from other similar instances.

[EI2]AU: Please confirm whether Melamed 2012 is a or b in fn 10?

[EI3]TA; Link all section cross references.

TS: Link for 2025a and 2025b in fn 15 with Kreines, J. (2025a [EI4]) and Kreines, J. (2025a [EI4]b) respectively.

[EI5]AU: Please confirm whether Melamed 2012 is or b in fn 18?

TS: Link for 2020, 2025a and 2025b in fn 20 with Kreines, J. (2020), Kreines, J. (2025a [EI6]) and Kreines, J. (2025b [EI6]) respectively.