Abstract

Bergman's approach to epistemology has deep roots in the Prague School of philosophy, particularly in the philosophical system of Bolzano and an interest in the problem of inner perception. In his criticism of Kant's system, however, we also find an emphasis on faith as an attitude of trust and confidence between man and God. This move is not meant to present faith as superior to knowledge or replacing it. The trend is rather in the direction of a complex co-existence of the two attitudes. This co-existence comes to the fore in the relation between construction and evidence and a certain delineation of the spheres to which these concepts can be applied. The suggestion is that in spite of the presence of evidence in the inner realm of human perception, that realm is open to the immanent sphere. Paradoxically self-certainty exhibited in faith goes beyond the self, while construction as a liberate activisation of the self remains within the empirical.