4. The Starting Point of Epistemology

Therefore we refrain from characterizing in any way the directly “given” for as long as we do not know what relation any such characterization has to what is characterized. Even with the concept of the directly “given” we are not stating anything about what is present before knowing takes place. This concept has the purpose only of pointing to what is there, of directing our gaze upon it. Here at the beginning of epistemology the conceptual form is only the first relation into which knowing places itself with respect to the content of the world. This term even allows for the eventuality that the entire content of the world is only something spun by our own “I,” that therefore the doctrine of exclusive subjectivism rightfully exists; for there can be no question of subjectivism being a “given.” It could only be the result of cognitive deliberations, i.e., could only turn out to be correct through epistemology but could not, as presupposition, serve epistemology.