Abstrakt
The proposed paper applies Hegel's "refutation" of Spinozism on Marx. First, it illuminates Hegel's conception of philosophical critique and contrasts it with a mere polemic - the clash of one brilliant mind against another.
Against this background, Hegel's refutation of Spinozism excels as a case of philosophical critique and not a mere polemic. Philosophical critique demands for itself to be immanent.
It does not enrich the criticised philosophy with anything external. Rather, it observes (zusehen) how the criticised philosophy overcomes itself.
Hegel's famous comprehension of substance also as subject, or as Spirit, can serve as an example of such self-overcoming. What this comprehension actually does is that it provides the ontological meaning for what Hegel calls "external thinking", which, at first sight, gives the impression to be ontologically meaningless, to be a mere ideology, affection or, more or less, adequate idea.
This "ontologisation of thinking" is, for Hegel, the only genuine refutation of Spinozism. The paper proposes that the same "ontologisation" - let us call it the "ontologisation of ideology" - is to be observed in order to genuinely refute Marx's philosophy.
This self-overcoming of Marx's philosophy is to be observed in Hegel's deduction of the concept of the State form the concept of civil society. The logical or conceptual transition from civil society to the State developed by Hegel corresponds to the re-conceptualisation of substance into Spirit.
This re-conceptualisation genuinely refutes Spinozism as well as Marxism.