V. The Act of Knowing the World

For the one holding the view that the whole world we perceive is only a world that we represent to ourselves and, indeed, only the effect on our soul of things unknown to us, the essential problem of knowledge is naturally concerned, not with the representations present only in the soul, but with the things which lie outside our consciousness and are independent of us. He asks: How much can we indirectly learn about them, since they are not directly accessible to our observation? From this point of view he is concerned, not with the inner connection of his conscious perceptions, but with their causes, which lie beyond his consciousness and exist independently of him while the perceptions disappear as soon as he turns his senses away from things. From this point of view, our consciousness acts like a mirror from which the pictures of things also disappear the moment its reflecting surface is not turned toward them. He who does not see things themselves, but only their reflections, must obtain information about their nature indirectly by drawing conclusions from the behavior of the reflections. This is the standpoint of modern natural science, which uses perceptions only as a means of obtaining information about the processes of matter which lie behind them, and alone really “are.” If the philosopher, as critical idealist, acknowledges a real existence at all, then his sole aim is to gain knowledge of this real existence indirectly by means of his representations. His interest skips over the subjective world of representations and instead pursues what produces these representations.