Review Reports

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The article is well written and very insightful. It sheds light on critical concepts within the Hegelian philosophical system. The authors masterfully distinguish between synthetic unity (or unification) and absolute unity. On the one hand, the synthetic unity has to do with analysis, that is, negation (and determination) of elements and their opposition. On the other hand, the absolute unity has to do with the whole, which is unanalysable and indivisible. Fundamental concepts that in consequence make us realise that our understanding of the reality (and our determinations of it) always occurs through the positing of a compound as if it were the whole (Fichte’s 1804 Wissenschafstlehere will call this Whole the One -Ein-, and our understanding will only operate on the projection or image of that Absolute, which remains unknowable).  As for the functioning of understanding, what the authors wrote is particularly important: “The understanding, therefore, certainly can determine, but only because it is not aware of the assumption from which it proceeds. It assumes, in fact, that it is intervening on the Whole, but it is actually intervening on the “compound”, because only the compound, as we have seen, is analysable” (p. 4). It brilliantly explains why the whole always remains intact and why all the operations of our understanding consist of analysing the compound, which presupposes the parts and vice versa. Particularly important is the discussion on whether to sublate determinations through synthesis (and preserve determinations) or through true unity (which can only be but undetermined and undeterminable; this is the path taken by Hegel on some occasions, and taken systematically by Fichte throughout his work). Only this latter, as the author or authors assert, implies the true overcoming of the finite (pp. 8-10). Only Reason, which is dialectical and negative, can sublate the contradictions of the finite determinations (A only exists in relation to Non A, its essence is in itself and in the other, hence the contradiction and dissolution). And this is done through the immediate relations (Phenomenology of the Spirit), in which the relation between terms is grasped in the “intrinsic structure of both” (p. 11). But this can only be done, as read in Hegel's Science of Logic -the authors claim- through the immanent Synthesis, which, according to Hegel, sublates the separateness of the terms and the indeterminateness of the unity. The authors show with great detail that Hegel’s conclusion to his discussion on achieving true unity is that “the immanent synthesis is unable to lead to unity because, precisely insofar as it is a 'synthesis' (as Hegel himself acknowledged), it still maintains duality, so that the finite has not been overcome at all.” (p. 17) 

The authors’ argument is convincing and coherent. They demonstrate a deep understanding of Hegel’s philosophy and Hegel’s sources. I strongly recommend the publication of this article in its present form. Congratulations to the author or authors for this brilliant research.

Author Response

Reply to Referee #1

We wish to thank Referee 1 for the attention with which he/she read our work and for his/her in-depth understanding of its meaning.

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The submitted paper meets in no possible way the standards of scientific practice. The author does not engage at all with the related secondary literature on the topic of the paper, asides some scarce references to other publications of his/hers. Thus, the reviewer / reader cannot appreciate any possible contribution in the field.

Other that that, the author ignores the standard practice of using English translation of reference, when one aims to publish a contribution on German philosophy in English. Instead of that the author floods the submitted manuscript with a vast amount of long quotes in German, while in other parts using English translation for the respective terms in brackets.

In terms of content, the author draws randomly from various different sources from Hegel's works, thus, ignoring, the different status and scope that that these works have. While, for example, the Phenomenology of Spirit, argues on the level of a developing "Spirit", the Science of Logic abstracts from the fact that thoughts are actually thought by individual agents and, thus, investigates explicitly only the logical relations between the pure concepts of thought. The author disregards this fundamental difference, providing, thus, a confused account of the different reasons that help Hegel substantiate his various claims on logical relations and their adequate conceptualization. This also becomes apparent from the undifferentiated that the author makes of passages from the Science of the Logic that stem either from the main text or from the remarks: the remarks are meant to exemplify and explain Hegel's systematic argument from a non-systematic and/or immanent point of view, which is addressed to the wider audience. On the opposite, the proper grounds for Hegel's argumentation can only be found in the main text.

Additionally, the author introduces terms that do not exist in the Hegelian corpus such as "authentic unity" (p. 14) or "effective unity", without ever trying taking pains to explain the proper content of those terms and to justify their use.

At long last, the overall aspiration of the author appears to be the identification of Hegel's term "immanent Synthesis" from the Science of Logic and the term "immediate relation" from the Phenomenology of Spirit: not only the technical terms refer to totally different contexts [the "immanent Synthesis" refers to the relation between Being and Nothing in the SL, the "immediate relation" refers to Consciousness and Self-Consciousness in the PhS] but their content is also totally different: "immanent Synthesis" refers to the semantic inextricably between two concepts that are opposite to each other, as "Being" and "Nothing", made explicit. The "immediate relation", from the chapter of the Phenomenology of Spirit, that the author refers to (p. 18), denominates actually the third person of the Christian Godhead, that is the Holly Spirit, that, according to Christians unites the Christian community with God. This is the reason, why Hegel calls it "immediate relation", because it is still though as a third, independent element, and thus something immediate. Had the author followed Hegel's reasoning until the end, that is, had he/she tried to investigate the following phrase ["Das Bewußtsein, über die Gedankenlosigkeit, diese Unterschiede, die keine sind, noch für Unterschiede zu halten, erhoben, weiß die Unmittelbarkeit der Gegenwart des Wesens in ihm als Einheit des Wesens und seines Selbsts, sein Selbst also als das lebendige An-sich und dies sein Wissen als die Religion, die als angeschautes oder daseiendes Wissen das Sprechen der Gemeine über ihren Geist ist."], he/she would have arrived to the conclusion that the "immediate relation" is only a inadequate way of articulating and understanding the relation between finite human beings and (Hegel's) God as self-relation that needs no third, independent element to come about.

If the author aims to try in the future to produce any original contribution to the field of Hegelian Logic and Metaphysics, he/she is strongly advised, firstly to review the related scholarship and, second, to investigate what Hegel has to say on the concept of Synthesis in in the Introduction of the Doctrine of the Concept and in the Chapter on the Concept of the Concept. There he/she will find Hegel's systematic and mature answer of what a adequate concept of unity logical unity actually is.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Average use of English

Author Response

Reply to Referee #2

We sincerely thank the Referee 2 because, thanks to his/her critiques, we are able to clarify 3 important aspects.

The first concerns the choice of direct comparison with Hegel. The second is the systematic use of original passages, and the third is the distinction between relations intended as types from their occurrences (tokens).

The work we present is of a theoretical-conceptual nature, not historiographical or philological. The theme we reflect on is the concept of relation in Hegel and, in particular, we subject the concepts of “extrinsic relation”, “immanent synthesis”, and “immediate relation” to reflection. Such a comparison has not been thoroughly carried out in the literature (as expressly indicated in note 22), so we have interpreted this fact as the opportunity offered to us for a direct confrontation with the Author’s thought, without mediations that are sometimes more obscuring than revelatory. We have reported the passages in German, because this seems to us the correct practice, but we have always accompanied them with the English translation, carried out by us to render the text in what seems to us the form most faithful to the original. This practice, moreover, seems to us widely consolidated. It should also be noted that there are multiple translations of Hegel's works into English; for example, there are five different translations of The Phenomenology of Spirit alone. The terminology used varies among them, and this difference becomes even more pronounced when comparing these translations of the Phenomenology with those of the Science of Logic or the Encyclopaedia, which were often done by different translators. Of course, one translation could have been chosen over another, but the choice would still have been arbitrary or would have required an explanation. We therefore preferred to provide the original text accompanied by our own translation, so as to give the expert reader the opportunity to compare our interpretation with the original text.

​Regarding the substantive critiques, we want to highlight that we identify three types of relations and precisely reason about the type, not about its single application. Hegel, in fact, speaks of “extrinsic relation” on various occasions and speaks of it when characterizing a type of relation, that which is situated between terms, rather than in their intrinsic constitution. Likewise, he defines “immanent synthesis” also as “a priori synthesis” and with this expression means the type of relation that is intrinsic to the constitution of each term (the unity of the different) and that binds one to the other in an inseparable form. As is known, Hegel indicates the unity of the different not only in the case of being and nothing. The same “immediate relation” appears repeatedly in his work and certainly not only in the case of the Phenomenology, when speaking of “consciousness” and the “beautiful soul”. What appears as unique in the Phenomenology is the definition of such relation: “but immediate relation, in effect, means nothing other than unity” and we wanted to emphasize that this definition can never be forgotten in the multiple occasions in which this type of relation finds an exemplary determined configuration. This means that, being types (“type”) of relation, they can be considered in themselves, regardless of their particular occurrences (“token”) and, therefore, from the context in which they are inserted. We have attempted to clarify this point in the Introduction to our article and have further clarified it in both footnote 21 and footnote 37. On the subject of dialectics, we have included footnote 7.

 

 

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

• It's a solid discussion of Important issues in Hegel's logic, and it makes a valuable distinction between wholes synthesized out of parts and organic wholes, where the parts lose their independent individuality. It's all about the relation of determinant related parts to the whole. The paper is well written and bolstered by appropriate quotations from Hegel's text. The author takes up the task of correcting Hegel's terminology, argument, and conclusions that perhaps go beyond what Hegel would say. As far as the paper goes, it's nicely done.
• I do have some questions for further thought. It's not so much that there's a mistake in the paper as that it doesn't go far enough, because it leaves the impression that the absolute whole is simply a featureless immediate whole: the night in which all cows are black, which I'm sure is not the intent of the author. Going by this paper, he seems to be taking a position closer to F. H. Bradley, the British idealist: All things are referred back to the absolute. What's missing is explicit discussion of the details of the third part of the logic: the dialectic of Universal, Particular, Individual, And the various modes of unity derived in the doctrines of judgment and the syllogism that allow the concept of dialectical wholes to be applied to things like governmental structures, social classes, and nature. When Hegel says the real is rational and the rational is real, he can't just be saying everything falls together. He has to have some way of telling about how it falls together. This enables him to order and criticize determinate entities and institutions in the world.
• The author has put in place the infrastructure for such a discussion In his claim that determinations must be simply presupposed and not derived from the whole and that relation must not be between two correlated entities, but between two moments, each of which has the other as its constitutive inner essence.
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Comments on the Quality of English Language

The English is fine but the several intrusions of German aut...aut instead of either...or  are jarring.

Author Response

Reply to Referee #3

We wish to thank Referee 3 for the attention with which he/she read our work. Possible lines of development are indicated to us, which we aim to follow in future research, with the proviso that it will certainly be necessary to reflect again on the concept of the absolute, whether it should be understood as a compact unity, thus devoid of both external and internal relations, or whether instead, as Hegel seems to intend it repeatedly, as a structured and organic totality. The point is that in Hegel the concept of unity sometimes indicates a compact one, other times the synthesis. In the latter case, it should perhaps be translated as “unification.” Our work, speaking of “immanent synthesis” and “immediate relation,” precisely intends to question this theoretical-conceptual knot. On this point, we have added note 6 and note 25.

 

 

 

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The author has submitted a minimally revised version of the original paper, that is, the author added a couple of allegedly explanatory lines on his endeavor. The author has not taken into account any of the reviewers recommendations. The author failed to understand the proper attitude towards the reviewer's comments. The author ought to provide a new manuscript that takes into account the reviewer's suggestions, not to engage with counter arguments with the reviewer's recommendations and suggestions.

Author Response

• We thought we had sufficiently justified our objections to the criticisms raised by Reviewer 2 in our first response. He did not regard them as such, and we take note of that; however, we firmly reiterate that this reviewer does not in the slightest take into account the article’s exclusively theoretical approach and insists on judging it through a purely historical-philological lens.
• He asks us to include secondary literature “on the topic”, but he fails to consider the—highly relevant—fact that there is no specific secondary literature “on this topic.”
• Finally, we do not understand why he do noes appreciate, in the quotations from Hegel, the use of the original language, which seems to us a far more scientific practice than citing second-hand translations.
• We note that Reviewer 1 expressed enthusiastic terms about the article and Reviewer 3 showed an equal level of appreciation for it.
• We have nothing to add to what has already been said.