obvious that Hägerström’s anti-subjectivism (perhaps even “objectivism”368) is directed towards the arbitrariness of both idealism and realism, since these doctrines extend to the person (subject) expressing the opinion or judgment an insurmountable epistemological advantage based solely upon the account of that person’s own indeterminate connection to the essence of reality. Taking this aspect of Hägerström’s criticism of metaphysical philosophy it therefore becomes highly debatable whether Hägerström really can be said to have an exclusive epistemological advantage over regular people, as Jes Bjarup puts it.369 One cannot but wonder if Bjarup has not confused Hägerström’s epistemology of values with Hägerström’s ontology of values. A further consequence of the arbitrary nature with which subjectivism endows knowledge is that scientific, objective knowledge necessarily is permeated by highly arbitrarily determined concepts and propositions. Furthermore, the inherent contradictions of idealism and realism reveal that these doctrines are connected to one another via a web of intrinsic contradictions emanating from two mutually contradictory postulates. On the one hand, that there exists no connection between subject and object, and on the other, that knowledge constitutes the unification of the subjective and the objective. Here, idealism and realism respectively make the determination of what is subjective or objective fundamentally arbitrary. a ca l l f o r s c i e n t i f i c p u r i t y 159 368 Logren, Huvuddragen, pp. 7-8; Fries, Verklighetsbegreppet, pp. xxv-xxvi. 369 Bjarup, Reason, pp. 221-222; “Epistemology and Law according to Axel Hägerström,” pp. 16-20 and 46. However, see Hägerström,“B. o. F.,” p. 41; Botanisten och filosofen (1910), p. 39. In “Botanisten och filosofen” Hägerström expressly states that it is not individual philosophers that decide what is true or not, but that truth is decided upon the basis of a certain method. Albeit that the Philosopher of this dialogue has based his method upon false, that is to say, subjectivistic, premisses.
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