On the other hand, realism argues that things, and only things, make up objective reality. Consequently, things are the ultimate cause of object-oriented as well as objective knowledge.131 Since things are the ultimate cause of knowledge, things necessarily also made up the ultimate determining factor in cognition:“das Sein ist das ‘Ding an sich’, das aber doch das Bewußtsein bestimmt”.132 This premiss of realism consequently led to the conclusion that valid and true concepts must therefore correspond to objectively existing concepts (realism in the conceptual sense).The objectively existing concepts thus had to be regarded as a class of objects existing independently of any cognitive processes or awareness of them.This ontological autonomy of the concepts transforms knowledge, from the result of subjectively initiated and determined processes, into processes autonomous of any epistemological initiative and determination on behalf of the subject. According to realism, cognition proper is an exclusively objective affair, independent of all subjective influences of the human mind and thought (including any logical consistency and necessity that the subject could lend to the epistemological process).133 Realism also goes under several other names in Hägerström’s works, such as sensualism and empiricism - and in either case the subject is deemed as being inactive in the cognitive process.134 Obviously neither the denial of the ontological and epistemological necessity of an external object for object-knowledge (idealism), nor the denial of the necessity of an epistemological subject for knowledge in general (realism), could satisfy Hägerström’s demands for a logically coherent philosophy, which enp a r t i 1 , c h a p t e r 2 76 131 Fries,Verklighetsbegreppet, pp. 59-60. 132 Hägerström, Selbstdarstellungen, p. 7. See also Hägerström,“Summary,” p. 39. Robert T. Sandin has mistranslated this particular translation to the effect that the “thing in itself ” is determined by consciousness, which would mean that realism was just another word for idealism, since reality would be determined by consciousness. Cf. Sandins’s translation: “… epistemological realism, according to which the existent is the ‘thing in itself ’ while yet determined by consciousness”. My Italics. 133 Fries, Verklighetsbegreppet, pp. 52-60. 134 Ibid., p. 52.
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