IV. The Starting Point of Epistemology

That is why we refrain from making any attribution, any characterization about what is immediately given, so long as we do not know how such an attribution relates to what is determined. Even with the concept of the “immediately given” we say nothing about what lies before cognition. Its only purpose is to point out the same thing, to focus attention on it. The conceptual formation is here, at the beginning of the theory of knowing, only the first connection in which knowing sits in relation to world-content. This designation itself provides for the eventuality that the entire content of the world is only a web of our own "I", and that exclusive subjectivism therefore rightly exists, because there can be no question of this first connection (dieser Tatsache) being “given”. It could only be the result of cognitive consideration. In other words, it could only turn out to be correct through epistemology, but could not serve as a prerequisite for it.