true of things that exist independently of consciousness but that we do not attain with our ideas.
Validity as abiding content is now likewise the validity of given objects; it is objective validity: objectivity.58
Validity in this sense is valid not on the basis of a being measured against things, but on the basis of—and as—the stable, unchanging, lawful subsistence of consciousness. Hence we have a second sense of validity: “to be valid of something,” i.e., as the objective validity of something.59
Now to the degree that something is valid in the first sense and therefore is valid in the second sense (as holding true of beings themselves), to that degree this [81] truth is likewise valid for all knowers. Now validity means neither the actuality of true propositions nor the validity of beings but, rather, validity for knowers. Being valid is now validity not as objectivity but as universal validity. Or more exactly, in this third sense validity is the state of being binding [upon all knowers]. Hence, in the word “validity,” three fundamentally different meanings intertwine:
1. the actuality of true propositions;
2. the relation to the being that is asserted and meant in the statement; and
3. being binding for knowers.
Or:
1. truth in its actuality;
2. this truth as related to objects; and
3. truth as related to knowing subjects.
It is all called validity, and the term is meant sometimes in one sense, sometimes in another, sometimes in two of the senses or sometimes in all three.
Insofar as it is a statement, the valid (which also holds-true-of-something) provides information about something necessary, something that subsists of itself, which we recognize and understand, not something arbitrarily posited but what demands a “Yes!” and is binding for all.
It is necessary at this point to pay attention to an essential issue that
58. Cf. Lotze, p. 556: what is valid—as “objectively valid”; “real validity”; p. 557; general concept: “validity of beings,” p. 561. And 569!!
59. [There is] a metaphysical presupposition of harmony. Here the problem of truth is turned upside-down: verum [“what is true,” is understood] on the basis of certum [“what is certain”] and thereby [is understood] “critically.”