/lit/ - Literature

>>12714180
btfo:

>the difference between Spinoza and Hegel can be formulated in the following way: Hegel becomes God by thinking or writing the Logik; or, if you like, it is by becoming God that he writes or thinks it. Spinoza, on the other hand, must be God from all eternity in order to be able to write or think his Ethics. Now, if a being that becomes God in time can be called "God" only provided that it uses this term as a metaphor (a correct meta- phor, by the way), the being that has always been God is God in the proper and strict sense of the word. Therefore, to be a Spinozist is actually to replace God the Father (who has no Son, incidentally) by Spinoza, while maintaining the notion of divine transcendence in all its rigor; it is to say that Spinoza is the transcendent God who speaks, to be sure, to human beings, but who speaks to them as eternal God. And this, obviously, is the height of absurdity: to take Spinoza seriously is actually to be—or to become—mad.