Lask agrees with his teachers in characterizing philosophy as the science of validity (Lask 1911: 401). He recognizes, however, that the SW Neo-Kantian insistence on the objectivity of what is valid, along with their distinction between the factual and the normative, threatens to devolve into a “two world” metaphysics that is potentially incompatible with Kantianism. In fact, Lotze (Lask argues) opted precisely for such a two world theory, where what is valid is set over against what is, or has