  (3) Upon closer scrutiny, the kind of content that we encounter in the world of experience and conceptualize in the empirical sciences shows itself to be a compound of form and content. In fact, the entities that we encounter and theorize about in the world of experience are always objects, in a broad sense comprising physical, psychic and non-sensible entities (meaning-configurations). In keeping with the Kantian tradition, however, objects are the result of synthetic processes of objectification guided by some categories (forms). It is therefore possible to raise a question about a third domain of being: how are we to think the pure content or hyle that is immediately experienced prior to all objectification and categorization? At first this universe of absolutely raw and unsynthesized content has to be conceived of as prior to the distinction between sensible and non-sensible being, and, within the sphere of sensible being, prior to the distinction between physical and psychic reality. This is why Rickert suggests to call this third domain of being the “pro-physical world” (Rickert 1934b, 111; Rickert 1921b, 296), using improperly the term ‘physical’ in the phrase to indicate the whole domain of the experiential world. In this sense, “the problem of prophysics [is] at the same time the problem of the immediate” (Rickert 1934b, 112), that is of the pure, immediately lived content preceding all synthesis and categorization. The regression to the prophysical world, however, does not leave us with a completely undifferentiated and inchoate mass of raw ‘content’. If we think of objects as the products of a subject’s activity of categorial formation, then suspending all categorial syntheses leads us back to a pre-objective subject (Rickert 1934b, 115), whose synthetic activity brings about objects out of the pure pro-physical material in the first place. One might be inclined to think that the pro-physical subject coincides with Kant’s transcendental apperception, that is, a mere empty ‘form’ of subjectivity or consciousness in general. However, and in keeping with the analyses of subjectivity in The Object of Knowledge (see above), in order to be responsible for the processes of objectification and thus form primordial materials into proper objects, the pro-physical subject must be conceived of as active and capable of stance-takings toward values (Rickert 1934b, 118). In other words, the pro-physical subject that we necessarily have to think as prior to all psychic, physical and meaning-related objectifications must be conceived of as free (Rickert 1934b, 120). While empirical psychology operating in the sphere of already objectified sensible being presents us with empirical subjects who are causally determined in various ways, pro-physics unearths a transcendental dimension of freedom that is presupposed by all objectifications. Rickert suggests that this insight solves the “mystery” (Rickert 1934b, 123) of freedom by way of dissolving, as it were, the traditional antinomy between freedom and determinism. These two notions, in Rickert’s view, belong in two distinct ontological spheres. While the objectified psychic subject is indeed causally determined as much as any other bit of sensible being, the pro-physical subject responsible for each objectification is inherently free. In this sense, freedom and determinism are not opposed. To the extent that determinism presupposed the process of objectification, (psychophysical) determinism presupposes (prophysical) freedom. After establishing the ontological features of the prophysical subject, we can turn to the primordial materials or contents that the prophysical subject forms. Rickert suggests to calls the branch of prophysics dealing with pure materials Zustandslehre, an expression hardly translatable into English without losing its intended assonance with Gegenstandslehre (Rickert 1934b, 127). Gegen-stand is the German term for object, that is, literally, that which stands over and against a subject. However, if Gegend-stand is the product of an objectifying process, then Rickert suggests that we call that which is thereby objectified and placed ‘over and against’ Zu-stand, which can be roughly translated as ‘state’. A doctrine of pure states (reine Zustände) is meant to investigate the pre-objectified, pure content independently of the categorial forms that pervade such content in our sensible experiences of fully formed objects (Rickert 1934b, 129). The gist of Rickert’s Zustandslehre is that even in the pro-physical world we have no reason to think of content in a monistic fashion. “In the Zustandslehre we can exhibit the ultimate ground for the encompassing dualism of the world of objects. Already the dimension of pure states (das Zuständliche) pertaining to understandable objects, that is, its bare material, is as non-sensible as the form which creates non-sensible objects out of it. The understandable meaning-configuration has both a non-sensible form and a non-sensible content” (Rickert 1934b, 131). In other words, Rickert wants to say that the understandable meaning-configurations considered in the second domain of ontology are non-sensible through and through. One might be tempted to think that a word-meaning is composed of a non-sensible form (the ideal Bedeutung) and a sensible content, say, the acoustic data forming the distinctive sound of the word ‘red’ in English or those forming the distinctive sound of the word ‘rosso’ in Italian. On Rickert’s account, however, this would be wrong. We have to distinguish the acoustic carrier of the word-meaning from the word-meaning as a whole, in both its form and its content. The acoustic carrier is entirely sensible and the word-meaning itself is entirely non-sensible. The conclusion of Rickert’s prophysics is that if we consider its domain as that of the “universal minimum” of thinkability (Rickert 1934b, 133), then we have to concede that such universal minimum already entails a plurality of factors, namely, the minimal distinction between I (the prophysical subject) and non-I (the domain of pure states) and the further distinction within the sphere of non-I between the pro-physical sensible and the pro-physical non-sensible, whose objectifications carried out by the free pro-physical subject give rise to the objects in the world of experience.