The Idea of Apodictic Evidence and the Problematic of the Beginning

Abstract

We stand before the great question of the beginning. We are now nascent philosophers in the absolute situation. Behind us lies | our previous scientific life with all its cognitive products, heretofore so satisfactory to us: with, that is, the truths, theories, and sciences that we had previously deemed absolute. They no longer suffice for us. We have awoken from the naiveté of the positive grounding of truth; we have felt the sting of skepticism painfully enough. Through it we have learned to direct our gaze at that cognizing subjectivity from whose conscious achievements, from whose pretheoretical passivity and theoretical activity, all merely supposed being as well as that which is grounded as true, all merely supposed theory but also that which shows itself to be objective truth, arise subjectively.