We have laid the foundations of the Theory of Knowledge as the
science of the significance of all human knowledge. It alone clears
up for us the relation of the contents of the separate sciences to
the world. It enables us, with the help of the sciences, to attain
to a philosophical world-view. Positive knowledge is acquired by us
through particular cognitions; what the value of our knowledge is,
considered as knowledge of reality, we learn through the Theory
of Knowledge. By holding fast strictly to this principle, and by
employing no particular cognitions in our argumentation, we have
transcended all one-sided world-views. One-sidedness, as a rule,
results from the fact that the inquiry, instead of concentrating on
the process of cognition itself, busies itself about some object of
that process. If our arguments are sound, Dogmatism must abandon its
"thing-in-itself" as fundamental principle, and Subjective Idealism its
"Ego," for both these owe their determinate natures in their relation
to each other first to thinking. Scepticism must give up its doubts
whether the world can be known, for there is no room for doubt with
reference to the "Given," because it is as yet untouched by any of
the predicates which cognition confers on it. On the other hand, if
Scepticism were to assert that thinking can never apprehend things as
they are, its assertion, being itself possible only through thinking,
would be self-contradictory. For, to justify doubt by thinking is to
admit by implication that thinking can produce grounds sufficient to
establish certainty. Lastly, our theory of knowledge transcends both
one-sided Empiricism and one-sided Rationalism in uniting both at a
higher level. Thus it does justice to both. It justifies Empiricism
by showing that all positive knowledge about the Given is obtainable
only through direct contact with the Given. And Rationalism, too,
receives its due in our argument, seeing that we hold thinking to be
the necessary and exclusive instrument of knowledge.
The world-view which has the closest affinity to ours, as we
have here built it up on epistemological foundations, is that of
A. E. Biedermann. [61] But Biedermann requires for the justification
of his point of view dogmatic theses which are quite out of place
in Theory of Knowledge. Thus, e.g., he works with the concepts of
Being, Substance, Space, Time, etc., without having first analysed the
cognitive process by itself. Instead of establishing the fact that the
cognitive process consists, to begin with, only of the two elements,
the Given and Thought, he talks of the Kinds of Being of the real. For
example, in Section 15, he says: "Every content of consciousness
includes within itself two fundamental facts--it presents to us, as
given, two kinds of Being which we contrast with each other as sensuous
and spiritual, thing-like and idea-like, Being." And in Section 19:
"Whatever has a spatio-temporal existence, exists materially; that
which is the ground of all existence and the subject of life has an
idea-like existence, is real as having an ideal Being." This sort of
argument belongs, not to the Theory of Knowledge, but to Metaphysics,
which latter presupposes Theory of Knowledge as its foundation. We
must admit that Biedermann's doctrine has many points of similarity
with ours; but our method has not a single point of contact with
his. Hence, we have had no occasion to compare our position directly
with his. Biedermann's aim is to gain an epistemological standpoint
with the help of a few metaphysical axioms. Our aim is to reach,
through an analysis of the process of cognition, a theory of reality.
And we believe that we have succeeded in showing, that all the disputes
between philosophical systems result from the fact that their authors
have sought to attain knowledge about some object or other (Thing,
Self, Consciousness, etc.), without having first given close study
to that which alone can throw light on whatever else we know, viz.,
the nature of knowledge itself.