God or Self? The Re-Emergence of God in the Unconscious

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

A reference to Nietzsche, in particular to his notion of the Dionysian, could well further enrich this article. This religious category seems to also refer to the unconscious (the intoxication) as it rails against the all too conscious and rational God of the platonic tradition. 

Author Response

Many thanks for your kind comments and suggestions for my article! References to Nietzsche and Dionysos are indeed interesting. Yet, I fear that including them would confuse the reader, even more so since in Du Prel (other than in Nietzsche), the unconscious is personal. Both Du Prel and Nietzsche share a Schopenhauerian foothold, but whereas Nietzsche gives up the notion of the individual in favour of infinite singularity, Du Prel maintains and restores it.

Reviewer 2 Report

Thank you very much. Please see my comments in the attached file.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Many thanks for your constructive and kind comments! To the best of my capacity, I have dealt with every single point. Your remarks concerning God's beingness or reality, or the ambiguity of the notion 'unconscious', are very adequate, and I have tried to specify my point and to reduce unclarities. Your comment about the neglect of the Jewish tradition ("retort" etc): you are surely right on this, and as a matter of fact, I believe I had already mitigated this issue in the footnote reference to Levinas' Talmud Lectures (God "seduces" me).

Thanks again, toda rabba!

The author

Reviewer 3 Report

General Comments

This is a very interesting, thoughtful article on the little-known scholar Carl du Prel and his idea of a morally-binding personal unconscious, set in the context of earlier work by Schopenhauer and von Hartmann. The paper considers whether the idea of a personal unconscious may be equated with the idea of a transcendent God.  

Specific comments:

Lines 70-71, ‘without … necessarily impinging upon transcendence’: I thought you were arguing for transcendence, but perhaps I have misunderstood this.

Line 78, ‘he was a leading spiritualist’: was du Prel, himself, a spiritualist, or did he only research spiritualism? The text seems to suggest the latter.

Line 169, ‘duplicity’: this word usually has negative connotations which are presumably not intended here.

Lines 208-209: this list of names is not given in chronological order. Is this the order in which they appear in du Prel? If so, is there a reason for this particular ordering?  

Lines 352-358: it is not entirely clear to me how this quotation illustrates the thought of the previous sentence. A bit more ‘unpacking’ here might be helpful to the reader.

Lines 366-381: this is a very long quotation and comes almost at the end, with little further explanation. Perhaps it could be broken up a bit, with some of it paraphrased.

Line 387, ‘the unconscious is equally liable to abuse’: the word ‘abuse’ has a range of connotations, some of which are probably not intended here. Perhaps an alternative word could be found.  

The final paragraph: it’s not entirely clear to me what the argument is here. This is a good paper, but its final paragraph doesn’t seem to do it justice so I suggest re-working this. The main contribution of the paper appears to be that it draws our attention to a little-known, and possibly significant, alternative way of understanding the nature and existence of the divine, and considers arguments for and against this interpretation. It would be good to highlight this at the end.

Your English is clear throughout. There are a few minor grammatical errors, but these can, no doubt, be addressed during the editing process. 

Author Response

Many thanks for your constructive and kind comments! To the best of my capacity, I have dealt with every single point.

You kindly reminded me of some ill-chosen words which mislead the reader. I have replaced them. I have rephrased the long quotation and clarified the conclusion. Only the chronological order of the historical authors, I left intact in light of the added quotes.