On the Threshold of Dialectic: Jewish Kabbalah and Spinozism in Hegel's Berlin Work

In what follows, I will clarify why Hegel's Encyclopaedia and Logic of Being (1832) assume a Kabbalistic interpretation of Spinozism. To introduce this reading of Spinoza's ontology, I will discuss Jacobi's Spinozabriefe and Maimon's Lebensgeschichte, showing what the two Authors mean with Spinoza's Kabbalism. For Jacobi, Spinoza's nihilism is bound to the Kabbalistic principle ex nihilo nihil fit, which attributes Being to God and Non-being to finite things. For Maimon, Spinoza's system has to be categorized as acosmistic (and not as atheistic), because it affirms - as Jewish Kabbalah - only God's existence. Hegel's use of these concepts suggests that he adopted the same interpretation sustained by Jacobi and Maimon: according to the principle ex nihilo nihil fit, Spinoza's acosmistic system rejects the positive function of negativity within God's undetermined being. The Kabbalisitc assumptions of Spinozism are those historical-philosophical elements, which hinder Spinoza to outline a dialectical conception of reality.