Starting from the problem of representation, the author shows that traditional thinking presents us with an alternative between Scylla and Charybdis: either we live as solipsists - which is absurd - or we accept some kind of hidden worlds in the sense of an objective reality - which corresponds to an immature escape into belief systems of various kinds. The scientific ones are not any truer than the religious; they merely dominate because they provide us with availability and power. A consistent distinction between imaginative and conceptual thinking allows for the development of an open solution path as a tertium datur. This consists of a thinking from the origin: the latter forms the intersubjective connection (no solipsism), which enables and sustains the subjective worlds - with all their theories - (no hidden worlds).