Spinoza’s Philosophy between Ilyenkov and Negri: Being, Action and Dialectics

For the philosophy of the XX century, the figure of Spinoza becomes very crucial, it was at this time when the ideas of the Dutch philosopher received a new perspective and acquired a whole variety of interpreters. This is especially noticeable in the camp of Marxist philosophy, which tries to trace the conceptual relationship between the theories of Marx and Spinoza. The Soviet philosopher Evald Ilyenkov clearly expresses in his writings the idea that Spinoza is an actual thinker for contemporary Marxism. Spinoza was “ahead of his time”, he thinks dialectically, and his concepts are able to shed light on many contemporary philosophical discussions. The Italian philosopher Antonio Negri repeats the motif of Spinoza’s contemporaneity and acknowledges him as a “Savage Anomaly” that stands out from the intellectual landscape of his era. Marx and Spinoza find themselves in the same camp of thinkers, but what really makes it possible to justify the unity of this camp? It is impossible to reconstruct this consonance of Spinoza’s philosophy with Marxist thought of the XX century without referring to the works of Ilyenkov and Negri. The aim of this article is to highlight the relevance and main problematic of the two different approaches to Spinoza`s legacy in XX century Marxism. Ilyenkov’s figure in this issue is particularly interesting because he goes against the current of Marxist thought, which tries to banish dialectics from the very foundation of materialist philosophy. Louis Althusser has already clearly voiced this turn from dialectics towards the study of objective structures, and Negri, considering dialectics rather an outdated philosophical language, proposes a project of a materialistic biopolitics of the “common” and the immanence of being. The question of dialectics in this matter becomes important, since Ilyenkov does not seek to abandon it, as well as the legacy of Hegel’s philosophy. The problem of thinking and action is at the center of Ilyenkov’s attention when he reads Spinoza as a contemporary author. Ilyenkov’s philosophy in dialogue with the materialism of “immanence” is able to bring new perspectives to the study of Spinoza’s reception through the prism of contemporary Marxism. 

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