cording to Hägerström, are two diametrically opposite epistemological positions, whose consequences paradoxically lead to the same practical result - the impossibility of valid synthetic knowledge. However, Hägerström is of the opposite opinion and wishes to prove the possibility of knowledge, to which his scientific program bears witness.366 Hägerström’s critique thus concludes that both epistemological idealism and realism can only purport to establish and produce what is ostensible objective knowledge.The valid synthetic a priori judgments that these two forms of metaphysics claim to establish must thus, especially with regard to the objective content and truth value of the judgments, constitute highly arbitrary object definitions rather than truthful accounts and compilations of facts. An additional interpretation of Hägerström’s theory is that both epistemological idealism and realism constitute philosophical doctrines that give the subject total freedom of choice when it comes to determining the objective elements in the quest for truth.367 Here, objectivity becomes a sham. Idealism (solipsism) is actually free to say that “whatever is thought is true, and thus objectively real”, or that “esse est percipi.”Realism is free to say that: since we cannot reach the object as it really is, which is the basis of objective knowledge, then we must use our own mental faculties in order to uncover and reconstruct reality as it is, and thus what ever is thought is true and consequently objectively real. According to subjectivism, as Hägerström defines the term, the determinations and (non-stipulative) definitions of the essence of reality and things is tainted by an identical tendency of arbitrariness, as idealism and realism described above. It is therefore p a r t i 1 , c h a p t e r 6 158 366 Hägerström, “Hägerström.”; “The Philosophy of Axel Hägerström.”; Selbstdarstellungen, pp. 1-9; “‘Ein Stein ...’”. 367 If this interpretation of Hägerström is correct, then it is hardly surprising that Hägerström uses the term “subjectivism” as a concept that is systematically superior to both idealism and realism.
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