Der Endzweck des Staates ist [...] im Grund die Freiheit. - Benedictus de Spinoza

Instead of engaging in this rather boring academic exercise of opposing Spinoza and Levinas, what I want to accomplish is a consciously old-fashioned Hegelian reading of Spinoza - what both Spinozeans and Levinasians share is radical anti-Hegelianism. My starting hypothesis is that, in the history of modern thought, the triad of paganism-Judaism-Christianity repeats itself twice, first as Spinoza-Kant-Hegel, then as Deleuze-Derrida-Lacan. Deleuze deploys the One-Substance as the indifferent medium of multitude; Derrida inverts it into the radical Otherness which differs from itself; finally, in a kind of "negation of negation," Lacan brings back the cut, the gap, into the One itself. The point is not so much to play Spinoza and Kant against each other, thus securing the triumph of Hegel; it is rather to present the three philosophical positions in all their unheard-of radicality - in a way, the triad Spinoza-Kant-Hegel does encompass the whole of philosophy.

Only in relation to our imagination can things be called beautiful or ugly, well-ordered or confused

Tratado político Esta obra densa — e inacabada en 1677, año de la muerte del autor — es más que una teoría política general, pues con ella responde Spinoza a la caída del proyecto liberal republicano en 1672 y el triunfo de la monarquía autoritaria de los Orange.