In his Pyrrhonian Scepticism and Hegel's Theory of Judgement, Ioannis Trisokkas faces an ambitious challenge. He tries to show how Hegel's philosophy provides a solution to the problems raised by Pyrrhonian scepticism and he analyses the meaning of this solution for understanding the possibility of scientific inquiry. The book divides into three parts. In the first part Trisokkas presents the problem at stake, which he calls ‘the Pyrrhonian problematic’, and proposes that Hegel's theory of the Vernunftsatz offers a solution to this problem. The second and third parts develop a detailed account of Hegel's treatment of the concept and judgement in light of this problematic.

The opening chapter begins with an account of Pyrrhonian scepticism. Trisokkas outlines the sceptical argument by introducing the notion of a universe of discourse, by which he means the abstract space where everything said in the realm of science appears. This space is inhabited by truth claims, whose first appearance is characterised by immediacy, which means that its relation to other truth claims has not yet been made explicit. At this level all truth claims are equipollent. This initial equipollence gives rise to conflicts between contradictory truth claims, which can only be solved by dismissing the truth of one of the two truth claims on the basis of the principle of non-contradiction.

In the second chapter Trisokkas explores Hegel's essay On the Relationship of Scepticism to Philosophy (1802). He takes Hegel to be arguing that scepticism ‘works successfully against dogmatism, but fails against speculative philosophy’ (45). On the one hand, the author shows that the dogmatic philosopher who privileges the truth of one of the two contradictory statements and dismisses its negation falls prey to the five tropes of Pyrrhonian scepticism. On the other hand, speculative philosophy is said to escape this scepticism because the latter attacks a strategy that speculative philosophy does not endorse. Speculative philosophy does not choose one truth claim over the other, but incorporates them in what Trisokkas calls a ‘higher truth-claim-of-reason’, i.e., the Vernunftsatz. Instead of fighting and then being caught by the sceptical move, speculative philosophy turns this very move into its strong point.

If this is Hegel's project, as Trisokkas argues, then a theory of the Vernunftsatz is indeed needed. The first step that is required consists in the justification of the epistemological standpoint within which the Vernunftsätze are formulated, which is the standpoint of reason. In the third chapter Trisokkas examines Hegel's phenomenological project, which he takes to be aimed at showing that reason is ‘the truly scientific standpoint’ (73). As Trisokkas points out, however, this standpoint still needs to be justified. This justification is exactly what the Science of Logic is meant to provide.

Chapter four of the book starts to examine Hegel's logic. At this point, what we have is just an immediate, indeterminate content — the identity of thought and being—which has to become fully developed. Highlighting the presuppositionless character of this justificatory process, Trisokkas insists that it is not blocked by the Pyrrhonian problematic. The solution to this problem is to be found in the unification of conflicting truth claims of reason in a higher truth claim: the Vernunftsatz. The author's main claim is that is it possible to outline the theory of the Vernunftsatz on the basis of Hegel's analysis of judgement.

The second part of the book is dedicated to an analysis of the premise of the theory of judgement, namely the dialectic of the concept. Chapter five begins with the analysis of the first determination of the concept, i.e., universality. According to Hegel, universality is the process of self-determination of the concept seen from the perspective of its identity through its immanent process of self-differentiation. This self-differentiating dynamic is driven by the intrinsic negativity of the concept that consists of a double negation. The first negation leads universality to specify itself in a manifold of relative universals that are negatively related to one another. These particulars represent the field of determinateness of universality itself. The second negation leads the particularised universals to be dissolved in a higher universal. This dissolution is not a disappearance, but an embodiment of the formers into the latter.

Chapter six focuses on particularity, which Hegel considers to be the self-differentiation of the concept through which it realises its full determinacy. On his account, universality manifests its intrinsic character in a totality of particulars. The universal concept divides itself into a universal (a relative universal) and a particular. When the particular is not only negatively related to the others, but excludes them, it develops itself into an individual.

Chapter seven discusses Hegel's conception of individuality. Since the individual excludes all other particulars, it is indeterminate, but it is also the concept as fully determinate, because ‘the exclusion of the ‘other’ results in the affirmation of each determination as belonging to one element’ (193). It drives back the manifold determinations to the concept insofar as the latter are essential moments of its self-determining dynamic. The negative relations characterizing the particular are incorporated in the individual as its own internal difference. In individuality the fundamental structure of the concept is dissolved not insofar that it disappears, but because it is transferred into a new mode of existence, i.e., judgement.

Chapter eight presents an introductory account of Hegel's conception of judgement. According to Hegel, judgement no longer consists in the emergence of a series of determinations of the concept, because it is the stabilised connection of them through the copula. The whole dialectic of judgement is a development of this connection, which is at first an external and subjective connection between subject and predicate, but progressively turns out to be an immanent and objective relation between them.

In the remaining chapters Trisokkas presents a detailed and insightful analysis of Hegel's theory of judgement. The dialectic of judgement consists of four main steps. 1) In the judgement of determinate being a self-subsistent subject — an immediately existing individual — is related to a predicate — a universal abstracted from a manifold of individuals — through a relation of inherence. 2) In the judgement of reflection the self-subsistent element is predicate, that is connected to subject through a relation of subsumption, i.e., it is a static class that subsumes individuals under it. The result is the establishment of objective universality in the structure of judgement: the predicate and the subject consist of the same totality of determinations and their relation is no more external, contingent and subjective, but it is and immanent, necessary an objective relation. Nevertheless, the form of judgement is still not adequate to express its content. This leads to 3) the judgement of necessity, where the subject is the individual that results from the previous dialectic, namely the genus or objective universal. The predicate is meant to be a conceptual space where the objective universality displays its own determinacy. The relation between the two consists in the self-differentiating identity through which objective universality determines itself. However, none of the three forms of the judgement of necessity is capable of adequately expressing this relation.

The last step is 4) the judgement of the concept, which is meant to provide precisely the missing form and to articulate the content at stake. It has to express the self-determining dynamic at the core of objective universality, namely the dynamic through which the difference between the subject — ‘the concentrated genus — the reserved, implicitly present, totality of determinations’ — and the predicate — that is ‘an emerging universal sphere that comes to exhibit the determinations of the element which occupies the subject-space’ (320) — is overcome. This overcoming is the development of objective universality, which takes place through the unification of conflicting assertions and leads the process to further levels of determinacy. Hegel's treatment of judgement thus provides — in Trisokkas’ reading — a theory which is immune to the Pyrrhonian trap. The Pyrrhonian challenge is met because it asks ‘first, that the onto-logical project should affirm the presence of immediate judgements (i.e., assertions) and conflicts between them (i.e., contradictions); second, that at some point in the project's development a content should be expressed affirming the positive unification of these conflicts into higher Vernunftsätze’ (329). Both of these requirements are satisfied since ‘the onto-logical project has indeed developed through a process that contained moments of immediacy and conflicts between such moments’, and ‘the witnessed unification of the contradictories has now acquires a positive character’ (329).

Trisokkas’ work undoubtedly represents an excellent contribution to the field of current studies on Hegel's logic, especially as regards his meticulous discussion of Hegel's treatment of judgement, which never misses a rigorous and precise confrontation with the different interpretations at hand and always faces given and possible objections against the arguments presented.

Rather than focusing on technical issues, I will limit myself here to some general considerations related to the strategy endorsed by the author. Trying to find a solution to the Pyrrhonian problematic, Trisokkas’ claim is that Hegel's theory of judgement is the right place to investigate because it ‘is based upon the thematization of the appearance of judgements in the universe of discourse’. As he sees it, moreover, ‘by thematizing the notion of judgement, the logical project will offer us a presuppositionless theory of the Vernunftsatz’ (226), which is supposed to offer the solution of the problematic at stake.

However, one could wonder whether the theory of the Venunftsatz is really to be found in Hegel's theory of judgement. There are reasons to call this claim into question. First of all, one could also consider Hegel's treatment of syllogism to be relevant to the linguistic formulation of rational being. The author claims that the theory of syllogism is only ‘a more detailed version of the form and content of the judgement of the concept’ and that ‘its explication does not really add anything substantial to our problem’ (319). Yet, this claim needs to be justified. Until this justification is not given, the argument is incomplete.

Moreover, the determinations involved in the structure of judgement are characterised by a specific dialectic which is different from the ones at stake in other sections of the logical system. It is not by change that Trisokkas dedicates the second part of the book to the clarification of this dialectic. But to what extent can the theory of the linguistic expression of truth outlined on the basis of the dialectic of judgement shed light on the structure of all the Vernunftsätze throughout the whole system? Isn't the dialectical dynamic underlying the conceptual determinations within the structure of judgement and its linguistic expression too refined to do justice to what happened in the previous sections of the logical system? And isn't it too poor in order to explain further developments of rational being?

It is to be regretted that Trisokkas does not take into account the passages in the logic, especially in the remarks, where Hegel insists on the right way to understand the specific unification of contradictory statements. Take, for example, where Hegel explains how to conceive of the linguistic formulation of the truth of being and nothing in the two statements ‘being and nothing are the same’ and ‘being and nothing are not the same’ (Hegel Reference Hegel1998: 90-1), or at the passage where Hegel analyses the linguistic expression of the truth of the finite and infinity: ‘the finite and infinite are a single unity; this false assertion must be corrected by the opposite: they are absolutely different and opposed to each other’ (ibid.: 151). In order to clarify the relation between truth and its formulation in these passages, a general theory of the Venunftsatz does not seems to be necessary, even if the theory itself is surely a further development of the considerations. Instead, what is important is to analyse step by step the self-determining process of rational being and the best way in which this self-developing truth can find room in language, depending on the precise conceptual content each time at stake.

This problem becomes even more relevant if further developments of the logical structure of judgement are considered. These developments involve conflicting relations that are more radical and complex than the concept's ones. Furthermore, if the theory of the Venunftsatz is meant to provide a solution to the Pyrrhonian problematic, it has to be able to face every kind of conflict between contradictory statements. Hegel addresses this pretence of completeness only in the closing section of the logical system, on the absolute idea, which not accidentally ‘contains within itself the highest degree of opposition’ (ibid.: 824). Would the theory of judgement be capable of linguistically handling this kind of opposition and the complex relations it involves? For the expression of the method in its three moments, a theory of judgment seems not to be sufficient, especially if we consider that Hegel himself explicitly refers to a syllogistic structure in the closing section of his logic.

The author correctly underlines that the ‘solution to the problem of the expression of truth from a Hegelian perspective […] should not be identified with the so-called “problem of the speculative method’’’. Yet, he also claims that ‘it does involve crucial aspects of it’ (342). As I see it, he does not pay sufficient attention to the relation between the theory of judgement, as the theory of the Venunftsatz, and Hegel's treatment of the absolute idea as the logical space that incorporates each speculative contradiction.

Moreover, the author claims that ‘the conclusion seems to resolve the problem of contradiction in the universe of rational discourse’ (340), and he effectively explains how contradiction represents the key structure of the Vernunftsatz. However, he does not clarify Hegel's way of dealing with a language that involves syntactic contradictions and the way he seeks to escape the ex falso quodlibet explosion. Given the task of the book, that is, a defence of Hegel's logic against a scepticism that feeds itself of the contradictions between conflicting statements, this problem is not insignificant.

The paradigm of rationality that Trisokkas discusses sheds new light on the relation between scepticism and the possibility of scientific knowledge. Yet the main merit of Trisokkas’ book lies in his clarification and critical analysis of Hegel's treatment of concept and judgement. It undoubtedly represents a fundamental and indispensable contribution to Anglo-American studies on Hegel's logic.