4. The Starting Point of Epistemology

At the beginning of epistemological investigations, as we have seen, everything is to be excluded which itself belongs already in the region of knowing activity. Knowledge is something that man brings about, something that arises through his activity. If epistemology is to extend itself, in a really enlightening way, over the entire region of knowing activity, then it must take something as its starting point which has remained entirely untouched by this activity of knowing, and from which, what is more, this activity itself first receives its impetus. That with which we must begin lies outside of knowing activity; it cannot itself yet be knowledge. But we must seek it immediately prior to our knowing activity so that the very next step we take from it will be an activity of knowing. Now the way in which this absolute first is to be characterized must be such that nothing flows along into it which already steins from an act of knowing.