demands than purely formal - logical (subjective) - as conditions for the determination of objective, that is true and certain knowledge. Hägerström thus asked: Is it logically possible for the object independent subjective consciousness to determine the sensible external object with any degree of certainty? How can this cognitive act of object determination be performed if the subjective cognitive activity of the consciousness is supposed to function independently of any external influences originating from the sensible objects themselves, and still produce cognitive determinations of these specific sensible objects? How is it possible for subject and object to correspond to one another in a manner that satisfies the apodictic demands necessary for the synthetic a priori judgment? How can the opposites, form and matter, subject and object, correspond to one another in a manner that guarantees objective knowledge?44 Kant’s epistemology must therefore, due to a) the inherent inability to unite subject and object with one another in one coherent judgment, and b) their inability to simultaneously guarantee both the subjective (formal) and the objective (material) aspects of knowledge, necessarily imply that objective knowledge per se either is, or becomes, impossible.45 The reason is that even the most fundamental aspects of knowledge, such as the principle of identity, will if Kant is correct, and if it actually is objectively impossible to guarantee a valid correspondence between subject and object (form and matter), then become the subject of an epistemological non liquet, in other words epistemological nihilism.46 For, if no link between subject and object could be proved to exist in a judgment, then how is it possible to posit that the basic truths of logic themselves are apodictically valid? Furthermore, can one then contend that an obp a r t i 1 , c h a p t e r 1 48 44 Hägerström, P. d.W., pp. 3-12; Selbstdarstellungen, pp. 1-9. 45 Hägerström, Selbstdarstellungen, pp. 2-3. 46 Ibid.
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