Leopardi Beyond Spinoza: Hegel’s Logic of Essence

Abstract

The essay illustrates the meaning of the Absolute that leads Hegel’s Logic of Essence to its conclusion by bringing Leopardi’s conception of Nature to the center. Hegel’s Absolute, I contend, can be best understood as the Nature that appears in Leopardi’s 1824 Dialogo della Natura e di un Islandese (Operette Morali) and in his late poem La Ginestra (1836). Hegel claims that the Absolute of the Logic of Essence “corresponds” to Spinoza’s monistic Absolute expressed as Deus sive natura. This “correspondence” and the criticism of Spinoza it entails have stirred reactions against Hegel’s alleged misunderstanding of Spinoza. Leopardi’s intervention will help us understand the core of Hegel’s position with regard to Spinoza’s substance, and will ultimately allow us to put in a novel perspective the crucial transition from necessity to freedom that this stage of the development of Essence represents.