IV. The Starting Point of Epistemology

We must find the bridge from the “given” worldview to the one we develop through our knowing. The difficulty is that so long as we just passively stare at what is given, we cannot find a fundamental starting point to build on, on which to continue to develop knowledge. We would have to find a place somewhere in the given where we can intervene, where there is something of the same nature (Homogenes) as cognition. If everything were entirely just given, then it would have to be a matter of simply staring out into the external world and a completely equivalent staring into the world of our individuality. We could then at most describe things as external, but never understand them. Our concepts only have a purely external connection to what they refer to, not an internal one. For true knowing, everything depends on us finding an area somewhere in the given where our knowing activity not only presupposes something given, but actively stands in the middle of the given. In other words, it must turn out, especially when we strictly adhere to what is merely given, that not everything is just given. Our prerequisite, through its strict adherence, must partially cancel itself out. We set it up so that we do not arbitrarily fix any beginning of the theory of knowing, but truly seek it out. Everything can be “the given” in this sense, even what is not given in its innermost nature. It then only appears to us formally as a given, but upon closer inspection it reveals itself to be what it really is.