REPLY Reply to Raphael Latester Benedikt Paul Göcke Published online: 30 August 2014 # Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014 Keywords Panentheism . Classical theism An important task of philosophy is to provide substantial arguments concerning the basic structure of reality and its relation to the ultimate source of every- thing. Sometimes, philosophers are convinced that there is an absolutely certain starting point within philosophy. More often, however, they suppose that we start with certain intuitions about empirical reality and its source. Based on these intuitions, philosophers try to develop sound arguments with an intelligi- ble logical structure. By this very fact, they place themselves in the realm of public discussion and criticism. There are, though, different kinds of criticism. Good criticism shows that at least one premise in an argument is not true— which is to say that the argument is not sound—or it shows that the premises could be true while the conclusion is false—which is to say that the argument is not valid. Then, there is criticism that is beside the point. It seems to me that the reply to my paper by Latester belongs to the kind of criticism that is beside the point. First, Latester complains that the concept of panentheism I develop in my paper ‘is vastly different to many of the panentheistic notions that are more commonly held’ and that by way of arguing against the attractiveness of panentheism, I only reject ‘a God-concept of [my] own making’. It would have been interesting to know which other theses of panentheism the author actually has had in mind. So, it is true that based on the recent discussion of the concept of panentheism, I elaborate what, from a systematic point of view, appears to me to be the most plausible version of panentheism. It is, of course, the right of this author to call such a move ‘idiosyncratic’; yet, it seems to me that if this is his understanding of idiosyncrasy then every philosopher who, in good faith, de- velops an original position will end up doing something idiosyncratic. SOPHIA (2014) 53:397–400 DOI 10.1007/s11841-014-0435-z B. P. Göcke (*) Ruhr-University Bochum, Bochum, Germany e-mail: benedikt.goecke@gmail.com