A third possibility exists: both representations and objects are determined by a third factor — namely, ontological-categorial principles valid for both subjects and objects.

Kant’s work inspired this stance on the relation between thinking and being, as we see in Hartmann’s sophisticated interpretation of Kant’s “supreme principle.” Readers will recall Kant’s principle: “the conditions of the possibility of experience in general must at the same time be the conditions of the possibility of the objects of experience” (Kant 1998 [1787], A158/B197). This was Kant’s attempt to formulate a universal basic principle for the relation between thinking and the world. For Kan