  Rickert considers the concept of transcendent value (as pure validity independent of subjective acts of valuing) the culmination of his theory of knowledge. It is ultimately the theoretical value of truth, the unreal transcendent object, that is ‘known’ or grasped in every act of true judgment. However, this does not imply a complete rejection or neglect of the valuing subjectivity. Rickert maintains that once the theory of knowledge has established the absolute transcendence of values and their independence from empirical acts of valuing, it is then possible to relate values back to subjectivity. As we know, the immanent sense of acts (Aktsinn) is the unreal component of acts that mediates between the empirical sphere of psyche and the unreal sphere of values. Subjectivity is then interpreted as the ‘middle’ factor capable of mediating between reality and value, and thereby it receives its philosophical ‘dignification’. It is fair to say that Rickert’s work in all other fields of philosophy and in particular in the theory of the empirical sciences is an attempt to reconstruct the meaning of various spheres of reality and knowledge from his fundamental insight into the transcendence of values. See also the