Abstract

Since it began, the Frankfurt School’s Critical Theory has aimed to provide a justification for criticism based on the object it addresses: criticism is immanent criticism. Despite its “variationsµ, the immanent critique has continued to operate within the Hegelian coordinates of bestimmte Negation. After briefly summarizing the meaning of determinate negation, I show how, in the Science of Logic, Hegel inaugurates a truly self-reflective movement, capable of both displacing and deepening determinate negation (and thus immanent critique). The self-reflection of determined negation means resolving its aporetic tension between the immanence of the object and the transcendence of its justification. The nuances of this deepening can be reconstructed from what Hegel defines as the “confutation of Spinozismµ.