ström’s revolution is that while Kant attempted to defend and substantiate metaphysics, Hägerström undermined the roots of the subjective rationalism (transcendentalism).According to Hägerström’s interpretation of subjective rationalism, it is even possible to abstract from, and to disregard, the object itself in the quest for knowledge, which Hägerström argued made the theory of knowledge open to subjectivism at its worst, solipsism.84 To transcendentalism, this process of total abstraction from reality is possible since the only logical necessity for the completion of an act of abstraction is the existence of a thinking subject, while the material object of knowledge is philosophically dispensable, optional.85 As a result of this observation, transcendentalism holds a ca l l f o r s c i e n t i f i c p u r i t y 61 lead to the conclusion that the Revolution is either or both made up of idealism and materialism, which by no means make up novelties in philosophy. Bjarup, Reason, Emotion and the Law: Studies in the Philosophy of Axel Hägerström, pp. 108, 126-128, and 178-186. My view, on the contrary, is that Hägerström’s claim is aimed at the subjectivistic tendencies inherent in either or both idealism and realism, and that Bjarup’s claim therefore is incorrect insofar as Bjarup fails to observe that Hägerström’s alleged idealistic-materialism in fact constitutes a synthesis of the criticism of one another’s fundamental principles forwarded by idealism and materialism respectively. It is perhaps here that Hägerström’s revolution is ground-breaking, but the possible novelty value of Hägerström’s ideas in this respect is of subordinate importance here.What, however, is important is the content of his philosophy and its effects on Hägerström’s theories in other areas.What Bjarup further fails to observe is the symbolic and figurative meaning that Kant ascribes to Copernicus’ revolution. Kant, Cr. P. R., pp. B xvi-xvii, B xxii n, and B 312-313. Bjarup contends that Kant’s revolution was anti-Copernican insofar as Copernicus would have contended that the correct point of astronomical observation was the sun and the fixed stars while for Kant the correct point of observation was the human mind,“the perceiving and thinking mind put into the centre of the universe”. Bjarup, Reason, pp. 97-99. There is a slight but decisive difference between Bjarup’s account and what Kant himself wrote. For what Kant did was to move the cause to certain knowledge from the external object, which is essentially unknowable, to the subject itself. Here, the subject is self-sufficient when producing knowledge (which also lets the observer become an active epistemological agent). What is important to Kant is Copernicus’ methodological creativity, his tentative breach with scholasticism portraying itself in his critical scrutiny of existing models by use of alternate hypotheses (see, e.g., Hanson,“Copernicus’ Role in Kant’s Revolution,”Journal of the History of Ideas XX (1959).). For it was through the use of a hypothetical-deductive method that Copernicus found support for his “hypothesis”, and Kant wished to advance along the same path when he made the objects of knowledge conform to the faculties of the subject. Kant, Cr. P. R., pp. B xvi-xviii, B xxi-xxii, and B312-313. 84 Hägerström, P. d.W., pp. 76-77; Selbstdarstellungen, p. 3. 85 Cf. Hägerström, P. d.W., pp. 9-12 and 76-77.
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