may express non-contradiction while lacking a corresponding existing object. Hence, while metaphysics endowed the ideal, the definition, with a higher level of reality and a parallel existence and the physically existing objects with a lower level of existence bordering on the unreal, Hägerström’s ontology precludes any such assertions.For him, only that which exists autonomously of the subject has objective existence, and thus objective reality, the remainder may have subjective, formal reality. Of the two objective reality is real as adirect consequence of the thing’s own existence, while for the subjectively real its ontological status is indirect, a function of an other thing’s objective existence, for instance an idea (regardless of truth value) has subjective reality as a function of the thinking object’s, the subject’s mental activities. The division of knowledge, on the one hand, into possible, and on the other, impossible knowledge, demonstrates the real difference between Hägerström’s realistic philosophy and that of classical metaphysics and transcendentalism. For while Hägerström rejects the possibility of objectively super-sensible knowledge of objects, metaphysics on the contrary, makes the supposition that such transcendent knowledge is possible to attain and establish objectively. Hägerström’s objection to the metaphysical conception of objective knowledge is that such metaphysically supported object knowledge, due to its super-sensible, intangible, and abstract object, the thing in itself, by definition, as soon as it is extended to entail sensible, physical objects will become subjective and arbitrary. For the metaphysical conception of knowledge fails as it strives towards combining absolute opposites, such as the sensible and the super-sensible, the concrete and the abstract, and the relative and the absolute into one judgment. What is troublesome to metaphysics, as Hägerström incessantly stresses, is that the intrinsic contradiction of the metaphysical conception of reality and knowledge allows any conclusion as to what is a judgment’s objective truth and validity (cf. Hägerström’s use of the term subjectivism).Accordingly, he concludes a ca l l f o r s c i e n t i f i c p u r i t y 643
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjYyNDk=