 The core of the Marburg Neo-Kantian theory of knowledge is a conception of “objective validity” (Natorp 1887; Cohen 1902: §11). By the “objective validity” of knowledge, they mean its objectivity (that is, its independence from individual subjects), its truth, and its relation to objects. A theory of objective validity is then also a theory of the “transcendence” of the object—in what sense the object is an independent standard of correctness for knowledge. A good way to approach the Marburg theory is by considering an alternative they reject. Consider the view that “objects in themselves are there, outside and independent of all subjectivity, without any original relation to it”. That is, begin your theory of objective validity with the notion of an independent object, taken as a theoretical given. This notion of an object is then used to explain aboutness, truth, and objectivity. A representation is about an object, say, if it is caused by an object or, perhaps, it resembles it. A representation is true if it then mirrors or copies the object as it is independently of us. And then knowledge is objective if it is about an independent object, not about the subject and its states. For Marburg Neo-Kantians, this theory of objective validity (which they call “naive realism”) simply presupposes the very thing it is supposed to explain: