"Dialog on the Dialectic": Spinoza

There is a multi-faceted revival of interest in the 17th century philosopher Benedict de Spinoza from theologians in Iran's Green Movement, personified by the controversial philosopher/theologian Abdolkarim Soroush, out to separate "mosque and state", to the Spinozist philosophic ground of the post-modern "Marxist" work Empire by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri. This installment of an ongoing series, "Dialog on the Dialectic", will present an overview of Spinoza and engage his appeal to a contemporary audience as well as his relation to the Hegelian/Marxist dialectic. Hegel gave a whole new meaning to a Spinozist formulation, found in a letter, namely, "all determination is negation." In Capital, this Spinozist formulation is precisely what Marx cites when he asserts that Hegel's dialectic is the "source of all dialectic" (p. 744). Does this speak to today's search for a way out of capitalism's total crises of permanent economic malaise, impending ecological disaster, and permanent war and terror?