What is at stake in modern thinking, at first expressed by René Descartes,
can be characterized as the attempt to overcome scepticism. After all,
scepticism threatens to be the result when the self-evident certitudes of
religious belief are undermined. With his essay The Relation of Scepticism
to Philosophy (1802), the young Hegel already participated in this debate.
In this book, Ioannis Trisokkas not only develops a conscientious
analysis of Hegel’s argumentation against Pyrrhonian scepticism, but also
argues that Hegel has elaborated in his Science of Logic a theory of judgement
in which scepticism can be definitely refuted.
There are three important reasons to include this work in our series
Critical Studies in German Idealism. First it highlights the current relevance
of one of the central topics in Hegel’s thinking. In our globalized world
with its many cultural and philosophical traditions, once again scepticism
seems to be the outcome of a world-wide debate, such that it seems
to make sense to rethink Hegel’s most fundamental arguments against
scepticism. Secondly, the book represents an important position within
contemporary Hegel-research by stating that not Hegel’s Phenomenology
of Spirit, but rather his Science of Logic justifies the cognitive standpoint
of reason against scepticism. Thirdly, the work is the first complete book
in the English language which addresses these problems.