The table of judgments: Critique of pure reason, A67-76; B 92-101 0924922249, 0924922745

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North American Kant Society Studies in Philosophy

General Editors Manfred Kuehn Purdue University

Richard Aquila University of Tennessie

Editorial Board Richard Aquila Manfred Kuehn Lome Falkenstein Hoke Robinson Guenter Zoeller

North American Kant Society Studies in Philosophy

KANT'S AESTHETICS (Vol. 1 1991) MINDS, IDEAS, AND OBJECTS (y_ol. 2, 1992) KANT'S EARLY METAPHYSICS (Vol. 3, 1993)

THE TABLE OF JUDGMENTS: CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON A 67-76; B 92-101

REINHARD BRANDT Translator and Editor Eric Watkins

Volume 4 North American Kant Society Studies in Philosophy

Ridgeview Publishing Company

Atascadero, California

Copyright© 1995 by North American Kant Society All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electrical or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any informational storage or retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher and the copyright owner.

Paper text: ISBN 0-924922-24-9 Cloth (Library edition): ISBN 0-924922-74-5

Published in the United States of America by Ridgeview Publishing Company Box 686 Atascadero, Califomia 93423 Printed in the United States of America by Thomson-Shore, Inc.

TABLE OF CONTENS Translator's Note

vu

I. Introduction

1

II. The Completeness of the Table of Judgments in Recent Literature

9

III. The Systematic Idea of the Table Method and Status of the Interpretation 1. "Of the Logical Use of the Understanding in General" (A 67-69) 2. The "Logical Use of the Understandi�g in General" 3. "Ail" Acts of the Understanding 4. The Table of Judgments 5. The Table 6. The Four Headings and the Twelve Moments of Judgment 7. Concept, Judgment, Inference, and Method 8. Judgment and General Logic: Summary 9. A Detailed Interpretation of the Explanations 10. The Completeness of the Table of Judgments 11. Supplementary Considerations Concerning the Table 12. Toward Evaluating the Table 13. On the Structure and System of the Critique ofPure Reason

46

IV. On the Genesis of the Table Introduction 1. The Logical Principles 2. The Early Logic Transcripts 3. The Doctrine of Apperception around 1775 4. The Operationes Mentis in the Logic Transcripts of the Late Seventies

96

V. On the History of the Interpretation of the Critique ofPure Reason

111

Appendix Excursus I Excursus II Excursus III Postscript to the English Translation

116

Bibliography List of Reflexionen Cited Index

139 145 147

TRANSLATOR'S NOTE In this translation I have attempted to render as accurately as possible Professor Brandt's important work on Kant's table of judgments. As with all translations, however, certain terms translate less easily than others. In the present case, I should like to point out to the reader one such term. Professor Brandt often uses the term "SchlujJ'' (e.g., in "Schluj3/ehre" and "Vernunftschlu/J''). In most cases I have translated this term as "inference." However, I have departed from this general usage when it appeared that Professor Brandt more specifically meant "syllogism." I should like to express my heartfelt thanks to Professor Brandt for his generous assistance in the preparation of this translation. I should also like to thank Heiner Klemme, Richard Aquila, and Manfred Kuehn for their careful and helpful suggestions on matters of style and content. Professors Aquila and Kuehn have been especially instrumental in making the final product a transla­ tion rather than a transliteration. Of course, all errors in translation are ulti­ mately my own. Eric Watkins Blacksburg, Virginia

I. INTRODUCTION The "transcendental table of all moments of thought in judgments"(A73) 1 , generally called simply the "table of judgments," is located at the beginning of the Transcendental Logic and provides a systematic outline of the rest of the Critique of Pure Reason's philosophical development. According to Kant, the concepts of the understanding or categories can be derived from the table of judgments. In tum, the categories provide the plan for the Principles of Pure Understanding. The ideas of reason in the second part of the Transcendental Logic, that is, in the Dialectic, are both situated in the systematic plan justified by the table of judgments and grounded in the table of judgments. Our investi­ gation will show that the Doctrine of Method, which follows upon the doctrines of the concepts of the understanding, principles, and inferences, will find its place in the table of judgments as well; it corresponds to the fourth heading, that of modality. Kant's entire theoretical and practical philosophy, up to the final conceptual ramifications of the so-called Opus postumum, follows the procedure of the Critique of 1781. Whatever metamorphoses these other doctrines undergo, Kant never doubts the categories and thus the table of judgments as the foun­ dation of his system as a whole. The form of all acts of the understanding is comprehended in the table of judgments as the object of general logic. All critique, transcendental philosophy, and metaphysics (of morals and of nature) has its foundation in the table of judgments. If there is a single foundation on which the doctrines of Kant's philosophy are built, it must be the table of judgments. What justifies this table and the systematicity and completeness Kant claims for it? Is it 'evident and incapable of proof?2 While a certain degree of plausi­ bility is supposed to result from the arrangement of the logical functions in an intuitive table whose four headings the reader can grasp in a single intuition (uno intuitu), its discursive support can be realized only by a reader who is aware of information and interpretations of the text that Kant presupposes. Kant did not, a la Moliere, show the table to his servant Lampe and determine whether it was evident to him as well. What information and interpretations must one be aware of in order to see in a discursive way what is plausible about the table? The functions of judgment are supposed to cohere according to a concept or an idea (according to A 67). At the same time, this coherence is to correspond completely to "the typical practice of the logicians" (A 70�xcept for minor differences that are to be clarified in a set of explanations (A 70-71). What path should one pursue in search of the idea that grounds the systematic coherence of the table of judgments? The a priori path of the unity of understanding, from which the headings and moments of the table are then to be inferred, or the empirical path of collecting the doctrines of traditional logic?

2

THE TABLE OF JUDGMENTS

In Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics Heidegger writes with resignation: "The pure understanding provides within itself a manifold, pure unities of possible unification. And even if the possible modes of unification (judgments) constitute a closed system, i.e., the closed nature of the understanding itself, a systematic whole of the manifold of pure concepts still lies hidden in the pure understanding ... This origin of the categories has been doubted many times and still continues to be doubted. The main doubt arises from the questionable character of the source itself, the table of judgments as such and the sufficiency of its justification. In fact, Kant does not develop the manifold of functions in judgment from the nature of the understanding. Rather, he supplies a ready­ made table that is organized according to the four 'principal moments' of quantity, quality, relation, and modality. Furthermore, Kant does not illustrate whether and to what extent precisely these four moments are grounded in the essence of the understanding. Whether they can be grounded purely formally at all can be called into question. "3 Is this the last word of the commentators? Kant asserts the systematic completeness of the table of judgments; must the reader regard this assertion, which forms the foundation of his entire system, as an insoluble puzzle? H. J. Paton, too, is puzzled: "It is a curious fact that Kant should help us so little about the principle of his division, especially in view of his interest in such topics, and in view of the oddity of the division itself, with its four main forms and its three subordinate moments. It is also curious that he should assume without question our a priori knowledge of the forms of thought, when he has made so much difficulty in regard to a priori knowledge of the forms of intuition ... the question is clearly in need of discussion, and so far as I am aware, it is never even discussed."4 If we pay heed to Kant's explanations of the key words provided in the Clue to the Discovery of all Pure Concepts of the Understanding (hereafter simply "Clue Chapter") and consult the publications on this topic that have appeared after Heidegger's book on Kant, especially the investigations by Walter Brocker, Hans Lenk, Lorenz Kruger, Klaus Reich, Peter Schulthess, and Hans Wagner, 5 then we may reach the following preliminary conclusion: Kant neither intended nor provided a derivation of the table of judgments from transcendental apperception in the way Reich suggests. Kruger's objections to this view are convincing and can be extended and deepened by showing that any derivation from the objective unity of apperception would destroy the very idea of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. At the same time, it is striking·how poorly Kruger's (and others') expositions can actually explain the systematic idea of the table of judgments. If we reject the kind of argument provided by Reich, then what can justify this idea? Ultimately, for Kruger it comes down to the claim that the table of judg­ ments shows us which "forms of thought are characteristic for thought as such and, in addition, are irreducible" (342-4). But what does "characteristic for

Introduction

3

thought as such" mean? Kruger's considerations begin to stagnate at the point where the positive task of interpretation begins. As soon as we attempt to extricate Kant from this difficulty, we make a startling observation: None of the authors mentioned focuses on the passage that introduces (A 67-69) and ex­ plains (A 70-76) the table of judgments. This is even true of Brocker, who does not start with the unity of understanding but rather with judgment as a given and attempts to derive the table by an analysis of judgment. Yet he provides his own view first, and even later he fails to establish any precise correlation between his own formal logical considerations and Kant's results. Schulthess, who provides the most finnly grounded analysis of Kant's logic, interprets the various passages merely as an extension of developments from the seventies. He does not develop an interpretation of the �derstanding's functions from the point of view of the reader of 1781. In this manner the passage we are supposed to read is set aside, and either a commentator's own considerations or­ particularly in Reich's case-Kant's apocryphal notes that were not meant for publication, and especially passages from the Transcendental Deduction of the second edition of the Critique, replace the exposition that Kant himself authorized in its first edition. It is simply assumed as self-evident that we can use these systematically and temporally later considerations of 1787 as well as Rejlexionen stemming from 1770 to circa 1800 for our interpretation of the Critique of 1781. Allow me to note just one objection to this assumption. The idea of completeness that is gleaned from a juxtaposition of various Kantian passages must then compete with Kant's own statements in the Critique of 1781. If Kant ever answers the justified question how the claim to completeness is legitimized and grounded, then he must offer the reader an answer in the passage in which he advances the claim, introduces the table, and explains it. We must at least start with this passage, even if, in the end, no satisfactory solution is possible. Kant does not say that the table of judgments should be derived from the unity of understanding, so that the reader who does not find this derivation must now produce such a deduction on his own. The passage that could invite us to derive the table of judgments from the unity of understanding actually excludes precisely such a derivation. It reads: "Transcendental philosophy has the advantage, but also the obligation, to obtain its concepts according to a principle because they arise pure and unabased from the understanding as an absolute unity, and consequently must cohere together according to a concept or idea" (A 67). In this passage Kant discusses the pure concepts of the under­ standing or the categories, and he distinguishes the ratio jiendi-the absolute unity of the understanding from which the categories arise-from the ratio cognoscendi, the principle according to which the categories must be discov­ ered. Kant does not indicate here what principle, concept, or idea makes the search possible and guarantees the systematic connection that can then serve as the rule (or topos) for discovering the set of categories. Precisely this is the

4

THE TABLE OF JUDGMENTS

object of the following sections in which the table of judgments is introduced, presented, and explained. The attempt to derive this table from the unity of understanding on the basis of scattered passages in Kant's texts, or in accor­ dance with one's own considerations, finds no support here (nor in other passages). Rather, it is rejected. If we pay any heed to the explanatory passage (A 71-76), we cannot dispute that, in the relevant passages of the table of judgments (A 67-76), Kant himself mentions arguments for the completeness of the moments and that these arguments lay claim to uniqueness in the work (and thus are not superseded or canceled by the notion of transcendental appercep­ tion which is introduced later). Thus, any interpretation that purports to refer to the Critique and to its claims to systematicity must begin here. Further, it should be noted that the first and second sections of the Clue Chapter (A 67-76) do not speak of "I think," consciousness, or the unity of consciousness. This represents a clear decision on the part of the author, for in parallel passages before and after 1781 the concepjon of the table of judgments is formulated through recourse to consciousness and its unity. If the relevant passages from 1781 (and 1787) speak only of the understanding, its acts, and their functions, this is therefore to be seen as an instruction to the reader to understand this in its context and, at most, to refer to the faculty of the under­ standing that is mentioned in the traditional logics (such as Christian Wolff's) which are oriented toward Aristotle. Thus, we should not take recourse to the transcendental theory of consciousness that is developed only later in the Critique and that is based on the Aesthetic and Logic as they have been ex­ plained up to that point. There must be an answer to the question repeatedly raised since Maimon6 and HegeI7 concerning the systematic unity of the table of judgments; otherwise Kant would not have claimed this unity. We must be able to find the answer where the Critique treats the table of judgments, a relatively short and easily surveyed passage that Kant retains unchanged in the second edition. The solution to the puzzle must be such that the author could expect that­ obviously-the attentive reader will find it. If we undertake an interpretation starting from these premises, we must pursue the following path: The alleged completeness of the table of judgments refers to both the four headings and the three moments under each heading. The explanatory passage (A 71-76) pro­ vides the support for the completeness of the moments. This passage is to be analyzed and investigated especially concerning the triadic structure, which, though common to each of the headings, Kant does not explicitly justify as such. Thus, all questions about the completeness of the moments must agree with the relevant passage; later, we shall turn our attention to a detailed inter­ pretation of it. Then the question about the completeness of the four headings remains. The first passage relevant to this question is located at the beginning of the explanation of the fourth heading, modality: "The modality of judgments is a very special function of judgments that has the distinctive feature that it

Introduction

5

contributes nothing to the content of a judgment (for besides magnitude, qual­ ity, and relation, there is nothing else that constitutes the content of a judg­ ment), but rather concerns only the value of the copula with respect to thought in general" (A 74). None of the commentators mentioned above (besides-with certain qualifications-Walter Brocker and Peter Schulthess) provides a princi­ ple according to which the completeness of the table of judgments as far as their content is concerned is given with the first three headings-but Kant claims precisely that! Anyone who fails to show how quantity, quality, and relation constitute the content of a judgment, to which, for certain reasons, modality is then added, has also failed to identify the central thought. Now in the explanatory passage there is no answer to the question why there is nothing besides these first three functions that could _determine judgment in the requi­ site sense. Thus, we must proceed from the explanatory passage back to the table of judgments and the introductory section Of the Logical Use of the Understanding in General (A 67-69). If we abstract from the complicated arguments and specific reasons given and ask what the three headings can refer to in Kant's claim about the plausibility and comprehensibility of their com­ pleteness, the following becomes relevant: Judgment is knowledge through concepts; in contrast to intuitions, concepts always refer to a plurality that is contained under them. An epistemic judgment must determine conceptually the plurality to which the concepts refer, i.e., it must determine whether the predi­ cate holds for all, some, or one member of an indeterminate field of the plural­ ity to which the subject concept refers as a mere concept. Consequently, the necessity of quantity as the first heading arises. It comes first because what is given first is the concept. Second, the judgment is trivially a judgment; it stands prior to the decision whether it expresses an affirmation or a negation. As a judgment it is essentially either kataphasis or apophasis (we will be concerned with the third moment, infinite judgment, later). Thus, quality belongs to judgment. Relation is still missing. The separate introduction of relation can be made plausible in a provisional way as follows: the distinct combination of the predicate with the subject (in its simplest form) is presupposed by (quantity and) quality, for the negation of the connection of the predicate and subject ("All human beings are not mortal") does not destroy the judgment; thus, there must be a combination in the judgment that is indifferent with respect to the decision whether the judgment expresses an affirmation or a negation. This relationship will be specified more closely according to its moments under the heading of relation. In addition to categorical judgment there are hypothetical and disjunctive judgments, since formal combination in a judgment can have either two concepts or two or more judgments as its matter. If we consider a typical universal, affirmative, categorical judgment, "All bodies are divisible," we can locate these three headings, one in the quantified subject, another in the affirmative or negative copula, and finally a third in the predicate (and its relation to the subject). These parts constitute the content of

6

THE TABLE OF JUDGrvIBNTS

judgment� as one can see, there is nothing else. And the three headings must also form a systematic connection because, according to the results of the First Section (A 67-69), judgment forms a functional unity. We cannot inquire into more ultimate reasons here, just as we cannot do so with the final results of the Aesthetic: "But we can give as little reason for the peculiarity of our understanding, that we can bring about the writy of apper­ ception a priori through the categories alone and only through this precise kind and number of categories, as we can for why we have precisely these and no other functions of judgment, or why time and space are the only forms of our possible intuition" (B 145-146). It is assumed as obvious that the understanding is a faculty of knowledge through concepts, that concepts can be used to obtain knowledge only through judgments, and that in judgment one is required to determine conceptually the indeterminate many, to affirm or to negate, and to determine the relation that requires and makes possible the quantity and quality of judgment in the first place. With this we have considered judgment as an isolated proposition. None the less, we can and must still search for the place where an actual judgment is located in the epistemic process. We must investigate whether what is ex­ pressed can be claimed to be only possible, already actual, or even necessary. We determine in this way the 'value' (A 74) of the copula. The heading of modality does not add anything new to the judgment, but it does localize it in the methodus of knowledge. Without such modal determination a judgment would not be an epistemic judgment. "Since this division seems to depart from the typical practice of logicians in several, albeit non-essential respects..." (A70-71)-the non-essential departures that are mentioned in the explanatory passage are the inclusion of singular and infinite judgments under the headings of quantity and quality; Kant points out (A 71 and A 73) that transcendental considerations already play a role here. Singular and infinite judgments do not violate the framework of general logic, but their explicit consideration proceeds according to a perspective that is foreign to general logic. "If we abstract from all content of a judgment in general, and pay attention only to the mere form of understanding in it, we find . .. " (A 70). This sentence prior to the table of judgments instructs the reader to abstract from the content (whether it concerns, e.g., human beings, mortality, etc.), thus to achieve an attentio negativa as well as an attentio positiva to the so-called form of the understanding. In this manner the form of the understanding is discovered through concrete judgment. The definition of judgment was stated and ex­ plained in the preceding section, but the headings and moments of the table of judgments are not derived from this definition, but rather found in judgment as an articulated writy. The heading of relation is decisive. Only through the relation of the predi­ cate to the subject concept is the latter forced to determine a mere plurality with

Introduction

7

regards to one of the three options. Only through this relation is it possible to express a judgment as affirmative or negative. Later we shall see that this relation also enables a third and final possibility for our epistemic faculty with respect to judgment, and this is true for simple judgments of the understanding as well as for extended judgments that are formulated in syllogisms. In such syllogisms, too, nothing is expressed other than 'relation' in one of its three possible variants (A 304); i.e., the relation that is formulated in categorical, hypothetical, or disjunctive judgment is identical to the relation that is present in the three corresponding syllogisms and that determines the location of the additional acts of judgment and reason. If this interpretation is correct, we can understand how in the context of the table of judgments Kant can repeatedly speak of "thought in general" and of all acts of the understanding that entirely exhaust logic. For the table of judgments, ' with its four headings, actually formulates the essential elements of the doctrines of concepts, judgments, inferences, and method, and it thus instantiates in a completely novel way the structure of more recent Aristotelian logic ( especially since the Port Royal Logic) with its text-books divided into four parts. And the Critique itself, with its categories (concepts), Principles (judgments), Dialectic (syllogisms), and finally the Doctrine of Method, takes on the four-fold structure of the table of judgments. This suggestion stands in need of detailed explanation. If this interpretation can be developed successfully, we will have located in the table of judgments, as a prism of Kant's own making, all "acts of the understanding," all "operationes mentis" that are treated in the logicians' textbooks and that Kant accepts as binding for the sections of the Critique that follow upon the table of judgments. Structuring the Critique according to the framework of (recent) Aristotelian logic textbooks can also document that this historically or empirically given form is systematically binding for Kant. In logic the understanding has to do "with nothing other than itself and its form"; in logic "the formal rules of all thought" (B ix) are exhaustively comprehended. The table of judgments, too, asserts precisely the same thing. And we can say the converse. When Kant, in line with the quotations just cited, contends that logic in its Aristotelian form is complete, then his own doctrine of judgment cannot abandon it. Thus, the task is set for the commentator to disclose this logic (albeit in its fundamentally new systematic form) as present in the table of judgments. Systematically, we might want to quarrel with this solution and argue that better solutions to the problem of the completeness of Kant's or someone else's table of judgments can be developed. But such objections do not concern the interpretation of Kant's theory of 1781 and 1787. They concern rather its evaluation and possible replacement with another table or the justification of one's own. We shall return to this issue in a later context. 8

8

THE TABLE OF JUDGMENTS

I would like to proceed by considering, in Section II of this investigation, the trials and errors of those interpretations that helped to prepare this solution to a problem that is over two centuries old. I shall start with the works of Brocker and Wagner who both take the table of judgments itself as the object of their investigations and do not immediately consider transcendental appercep­ tion as the reference point for its unity and completeness. Then I present Kruger's work as a prelude to the most complex, most ambitious, and even most influential investigation, Klaus Reich's book. Peter Schulthess comple­ ments Kruger's approach. Since Lenk depends entirely on Reich, the exposition of his discussion follows Reich's. In Section III the interpretation just sketched will be developed in more detail and made more precise. Section IV supple­ ments and provides historical support for the preceding discussion. I would like to uncover elements of the genesis of the table of judgments and thus discuss the theoretical context in which Kant develops his idea. This organization leads to a certain amount of overlap with Section III. However, it is methodologically important to keep exegetical and systematic interpretation distinct from histori­ cal-genetic issues. If we do not maintain this distinction, the danger arises that historical sources become the arbitrary hunting ground for our own so-called reconstructions. The historical-genetic investigation (in Section IV) will pick out only a few stages in the development of the table of judgments; it does not purport to develop the consequences of or breaks in the basic thought that led to the idea of 178 1 . In particular, I shall not consider the question concerning the parallel origin of the table of categories. 9 In Section V I shall place the pro­ posed solution in the context of one of the main lines of interpretation of the Critique of Pure Reason (Cohen, Reich, and Henrich) and explain the result with respect to the basic outline and argumentative approach (insofar as it stands under the direction of the table of judgments) of the Critique that is now emerging.

IL THE COMPLETENESS OF THE TABLE OF JUDGMENTS IN RECENT LITERATURE Walter Brocker treats the completeness of the table of judgments in chapter 7 ("Die metaphysische Deduktion der Kategorien") of his book Kant aber Meta­ physik und Erfahrung. While he implicitly follows Kant's instruction to find the functions of the understanding by analyzing judgment, at the same time he abandons Kant's text: "We shall attempt to discover those forms of unity that result from the concept of judgment as such independently of Kant's approach" (42). For this reason his interpretation is defenseless against competing ap­ proaches that develop the table of judgments from transcendental apperception, and it places one possible suggestion on the same plane as many other possible suggestions that henneneutics produces with the help of current texts and theories. It is obvious that this approach is not methodologically satisfying. Further, Brocker is not able to explain that all acts of the understanding are unified in the table of judgments and thus that it covers all of formal logic. Apparently, he also does not recognize this as one of the Critique of Pure Reason's intentions. Brocker states: "The synthesis of subject and predicate belong indispensa­ bly...to the essence of judgment" (42). And, in agreement with the Aristotelian tradition, Brocker thinks that both basic forms of synthesis, that is, affirmation and negation, can be detennined. In this way quality is obtained. It comes first (as it often does for Kant, too, up to the late seventies; we shall have to explain why ultimately quantity moves into this position). "And now the rest is easy. For now it is obvious that there must also be 2. the synthesis of subjects, 3. the synthesis of predicates, 4. the synthesis of judgments, and 5. the synthesis with the judging I" (43). According to this line of thought, in addition to affirmation and negation we find quantifiers, 'junctors' (in Brocker's sense), and finally the connection with the judging I. 3 and 4 are joined together as 'junctors' under the heading of relation, which Brocker attempts to transfonn into the three moments of categorical, hypotheti­ cal, and disjunctive judgments. Brocker develops his own kind of theory of judgment and thereby abandons the realm of text-related interpretation. Here I shall emphasize only one basic difficulty with this approach: the judgment that Brocker believes to have identified in its "essence" is judgment considered as the immediate relation of predicate and subject. However, according to the Critique of Pure Reason, judgment is "the mediate knowledge of an object, thus the representation of a representation of the object"-this according to the passage preceding the table, which Kant presents as essential for understanding it and which detennines judgment (A 68). Judgment is so conceived that by means of the subject concept the predicate refers to something represented in that concept (whereby, e.g., aesthetic and many other judgments are excluded from the epistemic judgments

10

THE TABLE OF JUDGMENTS

being explained). 1 Brocker proceeds by basing alleged knowledge of the 'essence' of judgment upon his own interpretive horizon. Since Kant, it is inferred further, is an important Western philosopher, he must have grappled with this essence in his table of judgments-and in fact the result of the com­ mentator's conception of this essence corresponds to Kant's result. However, this procedure does not guarantee that these two lines of thought have anything more in common than their external results. Hans Wagner claims: "The absolutely essential and fundamental aspect of judgment is the relation between the judgment's subject and predicate concepts. In every judgment this fundamental relation takes on one of the three possibili­ ties for quantity, quality, relation, and modality" (93). This is how a summary of his discussion reads insofar as it is relevant for us. In the case of quantity, this means that the moment of quantity does not refer primarily to the subject concept in which this moment appears grammatically, but rather: "It is the relation ofjudgment to which quantity is attributed: it is the relation of judg­ ment that is either universal, particular, or singular" (88). Similarly, it is the relation of judgment that "is necessarily either affirmation, negation, or limita­ tion between the respective subject concept and the respective predicate concept regarding the formal quality of the relation of judgment." This characterization obtains a fortiori for the specific relation that appears under this heading in Kant's table of judgments. This can also be shown, according to Wagner, to hold for composite judgments, namely for hypothetical and disjunctive judg­ ments. And the modes of judgment "are gradated steps with respect to the degree of validity that such a relation possesses in this or that judgment" (93). Wagner does not explicitly pose the question of how Kant thinks that the completeness of the table of judgments is justified. However, he does answer the question implicitly when he notes that Kant does not make any claim to originality with respect to the individual moments (87). Correspondingly, Wagner repeatedly refers to the tradition, a tradition which may in fact be "honorable" (89-90). But the tradition was not a monolithic slab, so Kant was presented with the question of which of the many different approaches he should follow-Darjes or Wolff, Lambert or Locke? Accordingly, referring to the tradition does not answer the question as to which criterion Kant used in his choice between the various possible tables of judgments. According to Wagner, as we have shown above, we must presuppose two concepts of relation, one that Kant refers to under the heading of ' relation' and then a more general one that is defined by the other headings as well. In the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason we discover a similar considera­ tion concerning the concepts of unity and combination: "This unity that pre­ cedes all concepts of combination a priori is not the category of unity (§ 10). For all categories are grounded on the logical functions of judgment, whereas combination, and thus the unity of given concepts, is already conceived of in these logical functions" (B 13 I ). Can we and must we introduce, in analogous

The Completeness of the Table ofJudgments

11

fashion, a two-fold concept of relation? If we adhere to the table of judgments in the Critique of Pure Reason, we must answer this question negatively due to the principle praeter necessitatem non multiplicare. It is true that within Kant's table of judgments relation is located in the final position when com­ pared to the other headings of judgment that contribute to the (formal-)content of judgment, but the table of judgments also states that the judgment "All human beings are mortal" is determined equally by quantity, quality, and relation; the one cannot occur without the other, for otherwise we would not find these headings and their moments in a single judgment. Thus, a judg­ ment's relation is already determined by the data given in the quantified subject concept and the affirmative or negative copula. And also, conversely, these determinations refer to the heading of relation-for precisely this is the func­ tion of the unity of the act of judgment in its various forms. Consequently, in the context of the table of judgments we cannot employ a derivative concept of relation. What is important is that in addition to the heading of relation itself, the other three headings can also be comprehended only on the basis of the unity in judgment and are themselves the respective moments of this unity. Like Brocker, Wagner speaks of relation (in categorical judgment) as the combination of subject and predicate concepts. This way of speaking is legiti­ mate as long as it refers to the grammatical surface structure of the judgment. It is false if it is supposed to describe the characteristic features of Kant's logic. Categorical judgment is comprehended fundamentally in such a way that by means of the subject concept the predicate concept refers to what the subject concept signifies. "In every judgment there is a concept that obtains for many and comprehends a given representation from among that many that is then immediately referred to the object" (A 68). In this manner the grammatical structure is further developed semantically: An x is always present that does not appear in the sequence of words but that none the less determines the charac­ teristic relational feature of the judgment. The predicate 'mortal' refers, af­ firmatively or negatively, by means of the concept 'human being' (which stands in need of quantification) to all or several x's (or just one x), that fall(s) under this concept. In addition to relation the quantity and the quality of the judgment are also involved. The unity of judgment that reveals three or four different moments is illustrated in precisely this interrelation. Isolating a separate relation in addition to the third heading of 'relation' would violate this unified form of the presupposed judgment. In whatever way one conceives of the concept of relation, it cannot function as Wagner alleges, namely, as a basis for deriving or deducing twelve of what he calls "types of judgment. " If the tradition had decided otherwise, we must infer that there could have been in principle arbitrarily many different types of judgments. Thus, for Wagner too the question remains: How does the internal logic of precisely this table of judgments come about?

12

THE TABLE OF JUDGMENTS

Lorenz Kruger begins his investigation with a section entitled "Posing the Problem: A Paradox." The paradox that Kruger exposes is that, on the one hand, in various passages in the Critique of Pure Reason Kant assumes the provability of the completeness of the table of judgments, but, on the other hand, in other passages he seems to negate the very possibility of a proof, e.g., in the passage quoted above (a passage Reich does not consider): "But we can give as little reason for the peculiarity of our understanding, that we can bring about the unity of apperception a priori through the categories alone and only through this precise kind and number of categories, as we can for why we have precisely these and no other functions of judgment, or why time and space are the only forms of our possible intuition" (B 145-146). Kruger comments: 'These statements (and also comparable ones in other passages: Prolegomena §36; letter to M. Herz from May 26, 1789, XI 51. ..) are not lacking in clarity, and thus give rise to the paradox that Kant declares the proof of completeness regarding the functions of the understanding to !>e necessary but at the same time impossible for the aims of his critical project" (337). Regarding the impossibility of such a proof, the following can be added: in a footnote to the explanations of the table of judgments Kant says: "Just as if thought in the first case were a function of the understanding, in the second case a function of imagination, and in the third case a function of reason" (A 75). So these faculties are involved in the cognitive functions of the table of judgments (which is precisely what our interpretive approach attempts to explain). But since the faculties themselves can be derived just as little as the basic faculties of sensibility, imagination, and apperception can, 2 the table of judgments cannot be deduced from a highest principle either. The solution to the paradox that Kruger proposes in a later section is as follows: Kant excludes the possibility of deriving the forms of judgment, but he still has access to a principle that keeps him from falling back into a "rhapsodic search" (A 81). Kruger quotes the following passage as evidence for this solution: "Transcendental philosophy has the advantage, but also the obliga­ tion, to obtain its concepts according to a principle because they arise pure and unabased from the understanding as an absolute unity" (A 67). The "highest point," Kruger remarks, "to which even all of logic is to be attached is certainly indispensable for systematicity and completeness. Only this highest point has a different function from that of an axiom or principle on the basis of which a proof could be constructed. Rather, as the 'idea of the whole' it plays the role of a criterion for the decision about which forms of thought are characteristic for thought as such and, in addition, are irreducible" (342). The forms of judging are given a priori and could therefore be viewed as familiar; they are now to be judged according to the criterion, "whether they are forms that help the under­ standing toward its goal of producing unity among our representations-in short, whether they are 'functions "' (342). This result is disappointing, for it cannot be operationalized. Kruger shows neither what forms are given to us a

The Completeness of the Table ofJudgments

13

priori nor how Kant draws his complete table of judgments from them in a convincing manner. In short, Kruger gives no sufficient explanation of how to apply this criterion. Even if one assumes that the criterion for deciding whether the a priori forms listed are actual and irreducible functions of the understand­ ing, that is, even if this criterion can be invoked convincingly-what protects Kant from discovering sometime in the future another a priori form in a logical textbook or somewhere else, a form that satisfies this criterion? If this hap­ pened, he would have to expand his table. But he believes his table is secure from precisely such a possibility. Kruger shares the wide-spread belief in the famous highest point of tran­ scendental apperception as the focus of unity and the source of systematicity in judgments. Kruger does not want to deduce the table of judgments from this point, but he does want to use it as a criterion - ("... is certainly indispensable for systematicity and completeness"). But if Kant intends to "attach" all of logic to this highest point ("And therefore the synthetic unity of apperception is the highest point to which one must attach all use of the understanding, even the entirety of logic, and after it, transcendental philosophy... " (B 134)), then, according to the standard interpretation of this metaphor, it must already be present. 3 This agrees with our assumption that the reader of the table of judg­ ments and its explanations must glean an idea of the system from that passage and should not hope for the fortuitous accident that Kant might (or also might not) have hidden the key to the solution in a later passage. In the discussion that accompanies the table of judgments itself the reader encounters neither an "I think" nor transcendental apperception nor any indication that only these later doctrines render the table of judgments intelligible. One more point: If one refers to the "highest point," then one must take seriously that Kant is speaking of all of logic. Thus, one would have to show that all of general or formal logic is to be derived from the objective unity of apperception or at least referred back to it as a criterion. However, such a derivation of the doctrine of concepts, judgments, and inferences, including logical principles (the principle of non­ contradiction, etc.), is not what commentators who make reference to the "highest point" envision. Reich speaks of the doctrine of judgment as the "core" of general pure logic (58), but he provides no justification for this claim and does not draw from it the consequence that all of logic must be traced back to this core and thus must be derived from the "highest point." The solution to the problem of completeness that was sketched briefly in the Introduction renders Kant's words quite intelligible: the table of judgments actually contains all "acts of the understanding" (A69), and (as the unified structure of all logical acts of the understanding) it can be "attached" to the unity of apperception without difficulty (which, incidentally, is either completely uninteresting or even trivial for logic itself). Peter Schulthess discusses the problem of the "table of judgments" in only a few pages (276-283) in his comprehensive work Relation und Funktion. Eine

14

THE TABLE OF JUDGMENTS

systematische und entwicklungsgeschichtliche Untersuchung zur theoretischen Philosophie Kanis. He correctly points out that the decisive point for Kant concerns logical functions and not the twelve types of judgment that one might discover in language (277). He then notes that for Kant logic has been closed and complete since Aristotle, that logic "presents in detail and strictly proves. . . the formal rules of all thought" (278). However, Schulthess does not address and follow the issue of the systematicity of the formal rules of all thought. All thought! According to the canon accepted in the Critique of Pure Reason as well, thought encompasses logic in the doctrine of concepts, judg­ ments, and inferences. And thus arises the task of searching for the moments of all thought in the restricted realm of the logical functions in judgment. At this point (following a suggestion made by Kruger) Schulthess returns to Lambert: "Accordingly, it is Kant's conviction that logic is closed and complete. With regard to completeness Kant probably relies on the logical work of Lambert, in whose Organon and Architektonik the completeness and the enumerability of logic results from combinatorial analysis ... " (278). Kant discovered in Lambert "an enumerated arsenal of possible forms of judgment" (279) that ultimately depend on logical conventions. From these Kant sorted out those that suited his operational criterion of unity. "It would be a task in itself to name these latter functions. Naturally, it is not sufficient to search in the understanding as an absolute unity for the criterion that would allow us to derive the logical func­ tions as a unity from the possible forms of judgmen� as Kruger does . . . One would probably be more successful if one began with the possible functional­ izability of a form of judgment as the criterion of unity" (279-280). An attempt in this direction follows, but it cannot adequately address the problem of the systematicity of the table of judgments in such a short space and given the limitations already noted. Basically, this criterion of unity that the commentator aims to construct would simply replace the highest point that even Kruger could not help envisioning. Schulthess emphasizes two of Lambert's ideas: that he provides a combina­ torial analysis, thereby already identifying all the kinds of judgment that come into question at all, but, conversely, that he remains caught up in details con- . cerning these kinds of judgment and does not provide any real functional derivation of them. It is worth mentioning two other points that are important, in my opinion, to Kant: Lambert investigates, as Schulthess says, "the com­ pleteness and the enumerability of logic" (278)-logic in general, not the doctrine of judgments. For Lambert, the thought of completeness concerns the former, not the latter. Schulthess quotes: "The doctrine of reason proceeds in a similar fashion with respect to many parts of the intellectual world. Initially, it takes only one concept and considers the determinations that it can have. Then it compares two concepts and their relations. From here it proceeds to three [concepts], and then to several [concepts], and the theory becomes more gen­ eral, the more concepts (numerically) it extends to" (278-279). The system that

The Completeness of the Table of Judgments

15

Lambert employs here, or that he develops with the help of the number series, is one of concept, judgment (two concepts), inference (three concepts) and then the combination of inferences in an extended syllogism (several concepts). If Lambert influenced Kant, then he might also have done so with this idea, making the structure of traditional logic profitable through combinatorial analysis. We shall return to this issue in the context of explaining the moments of relation. Now it is important to consider Klaus Reich's position. Vittorio Mathieu correctly writes in his new book on the so-called Opus postumum: 4 " • • • and, in fact, besides Klaus Reich, only very few Kant scholars have believed in Die Vollstandigkeit der Kantischen Urteilstafel (Berlin 1932, 21948)." Since he himself does not share this belief, he forgets to add that, besides Reich, Kant was of this opinion too, and most other conunentators departed from the con­ viction, easily documented in Kant, only because they did not know in what the systematicity of the table of judgments consists. "All admirers of the Critique to whom I have talked and I myself are concerned with the answer to the question: how does one deduce the completeness of the table of judgments upon which the completeness of the table of categories depends," asks G. S. A. Mellin (XI 498) in 1794-it appears that the first answer to this question is not given by Kant, but rather by Reich. The importance of the question itself is certainly not overestimated by Mellin and other contemporary admirers of the Critique: not only the table of categories but the entire Critique of Pure Reason crumbles into arbitrary pieces without the idea of the systematicity and completeness of the table of judgments because everything that follows the table of judgments is supposed to be organized by it. Consequently, the goal of Reich's proof is essential for understanding the entire treatise and Kant's philosophy in general. Only it would be preferable to find the answer to Mellin's question in Kant's treatise from 1781 rather than in a book written in 1932. Reich's investigation attempts "to find out how Kant wanted to understand the systematic connection of the 'general and pure' or 'formal' logical condi­ tions of judgments (given by him in § 9 of the Critique)" (5-6, cf. 48). 5 Reich first provides assurance (against Hegel) that, in terms of Kant's own self­ understanding, taking recourse to traditional logic does not represent an em­ pirical gleaning from a contingent historical tradition; rather Kant believes he possesses a principle according to which the completeness of the table of judgments-in widespread agreement with the tradition-is guaranteed. ln the second part of § 1 Reich argues that general logic does not include the distinc­ tion between analytic and synthetic judgments, although the logical form of judgment arises through the analytic unity of concepts. Now, this analytic unity in tum presupposes the objective unity of self-consciousness. Reich reconstructs this latter unity of apperception (which Kant designates the "highest point") in the following way: the unity of apperception is given by the "I think," and thus through an act of spontaneity. As such this act can be, if not known, then at

16

THE TABLE OF JUDGMENTS

least determined by the categories, predicables, and predicaments. An analysis of the contentless "I think" discovers four elementary characteristics that can be grasped as the headings of relation, quantity, quality, and modality (24-29). Now one can return to the analytic unity of consciousness (§ 3). It is the con­ sciousness of the "I think" that accompanies every thought. The thought of an object in general corresponds to it in its unrestricted form, whereas the deter­ minate concept of an object (conceptus communis) corresponds to it when it is restricted to a determinate content. The "definition of judgment" (§ 4) states that a judgment is the manner in which given knowledge (i.e., here: the con­ cepts that signify any arbitrary objects) is brought to the objective unity of apperception and thus claimed to be true of an object. Thus, a judgment states that concepts are combined in the object. In this manner the prerequisites are supplied for solving the real problem. In order to know "how Kant actually understood the systematic nature of the moments of judgment" (48), a two-step process must be undertaken: first, one must pro;,ose a rough system "on one's own" (§ 5). Then, this system must be refined and justified using passages from the early seventies up through the late nineties (§ 6). According to Reich, these two steps show that and how Kant derived the headings and moments of the table from the objective unity of apperception. Let me begin with a few preliminary methodological misgivings about Reich's procedure. The relation between author and reader is disrupted in three ways. Whereas Kant presents a table of the logical functions of the under­ standing in judgments and explains them in an introduction and further ex­ planatory remarks, Reich tells the reader that the table's explanation is to be sought in a later passage, namely in the Transcendental Deduction of the categories. Kant did not give him the authority to do this. Second, as for pro­ viding an explanation "on one's own," the commentator puts himself in the place of the author and instructs the reader how the systematic idea is really to be understood. Third, Kant's text from 1781 is not used, rather the commenta­ tor uses Kant's later publications and private notes in order to confirm his own reconstruction. On Reich's interpretation the second edition of the Critique and the Reflexionen become essential for understanding the table of judgments. . Reich does not suggest that they have an illustrative and accessory value, but rather that they form the main body of evidence in establishing the systematic idea. Thus, the commentator tells the reader whom Kant was addressing in 1781 that any attempt to comprehend the text made no sense because prior to the second edition and the publication of the Reflexionen in the Academy edition-and thus, for practical purposes, prior to 1932-understanding this fundamental idea of the Critique was impossible. In this way the reader of 1781 is declared to be just as incompenent as the author who addresses him. Any adequate interpretation must consider what the author can reasonably expect his reader to bring to an interpretive endeavor. It can use any and all

The Completeness of the Table ofJudgments

17

historical sources in this regard, but they cannot replace what the author can expect his reader to understand. Kant may be a difficult author, but he is not, insofar as our sources infonn us about this, intentionally incomprehensible. He may be obscure, but he is no obscurantist. But according to Reich the most important doctrine of the entire critical philosophy is comprehensible only through Kant's later publications and private notes published without his express consent. One further general misgiving: According to Reich the table of judgments can be derived completely from transcendental apperception. Kant himself did not carry out this derivation, or to be more critical, he did not even carry out its most basic steps. And he never explicitly declared that he deliberately omits this derivation in the Critique and in other \Yorks as well, although he may possess such a derivation (cf. A 82). If I am right, this phenomenon is unique and requires explanation. Why doesn't Kant supply the derivation himself, and why doesn't he say anything about this approach, which is surely unique in his entire theoiy? The derivation of the functions of the understanding from tran­ scendental apperception cannot belong to the system of transcendental philoso­ phy that Kant did not himself complete, a system that, in contrast to the Cri­ tique ofPure Reason, must contain a complete analysis of the pure concepts of the understanding (cf. A 13-14). Reich appeals to this point at the end of his treatise, but he does not note that Kant is speaking not of the functions of judgment in general logic, but rather of the categories. 6 The solution must be, in my opinion, to show how Kant has an idea of a system that he could expect his reader to understand. Kant intends to have removed any difficulties in the way of understanding the table in his introductory and explanatory passages. Consequently, these passages must be the crux of any adequate interpretation. One more preliminary point: Reich derives the table of judgments from the objective unity of apperception. Kant does not refer to the objective unity of apperception in the context of the table of judgments but rather in the Tran­ scendental Deduction, which is supposed to guarantee the possibility of objec­ tively valid judgments. If one follows Reich's suggestion, then one must accept that judgments that are only subjectively valid (judgments of Hume's kind) are not authorized to function in general logic as judgments. Thus, their exclusion from the class of judgments appropriate to general logic is justified not by a merely logical, but rather by an epistemological gap that the reader can see only after the categories have been introduced. But according to Kant the categories are supposed to depend on the table of judgments. Thus, we have a vicious circle. In order to understand the table of judgments, one must understand the categories, but the categories depend on the table of judgments. Eveiy attempt that chooses the objective unity of apperception as the starting point for the systematic plan of the table of judgments is saddled with such a circle. I con­ tend that Kant's own theory reveals that such an attempt must fail.

18

THE TABLE OF JUDGMENTS

Hegel charges Kant with "irrational knowledge of the rational," with mak­ ing the discovery of the categories easy for himself by simply basing the table on standard treatments of logic. 7 Reich confirms the trust Kant had in logic. However, it is not possible to speak of "a prejudice on Kant's part in favor of ordinary logic" (3), since his position depends on his own concept of "the peculiar nature of logical science (B viii)" (4). It is difficult to understand this reply to Hegel. The question is: How can it be made plausible that a completely original derivation of all headings and moments of the table of judgments corresponds to traditional logic in such a way that just after presenting the table Kant can still say: "Since this division seems to depart from the typical practice of logicians in several, albeit non-essential respects, the following observations may serve to guard against possible misunderstandings" (A70-71) or in the Prolegomena: "Work done by logicians, although not yet completely free of errors, stood ready-made, which put me in a position to present a complete table of functions of the understanding, functio11s that were, however, indeter­ minate with respect to any object" (IV 323-324). Can this correspondence with tradition that Kant emphasizes be a coincidence? In 1783 Kant writes that it is through the previous work of logicians that he is in a position to present the complete table! 8 Reich cannot suggest a principle that explains the correspon­ dence between a systematic derivation and the empirical tradition, between reason and history-but this is precisely what Hegel's objection calls for. Reich argues for the idea that general logic does not include the distinction between analytic and synthetic judgments. This idea is well-documented. The decisive point is that the distinction between analytic and synthetic judgments depends on the content of the judgment and not its mere form. Schulthess reaches the same result independently: "The distinction between analytic and synthetic judgments thus does not belong to logic any more" (76; cf. 119-120). Reich combines this idea with the claim that concepts express the analytic unity of consciousness, whereas judgments generally stem from the objective unity of self-consciousness or the transcendental unity of apperception. For only in this manner can the latter be designated the highest point to which not only tran­ scendental philosophy but also logic is to be attached. In the second half of § 1 Reich attempts to prove his thesis against compet­ ing interpretations by referring only to A 79 (cf. the quotation p. 13) and to A 67-69. Has this proof succeeded? I do not believe so. It is methodologically prudent to begin with the passage that Reich refers to second, namely A 67-69 (Reich 12-13). The goal of Reich's proof is to show that according to Kant's text the function of unity among our representations is not identical to the function of unity in judgments. The former is analytic and is attributed to concepts, whereas Reich understands the latter in such a way that it uses the former as its matter (concepts provide the matter of judgments) and thus must be of a differ-

The Completeness of the Table ofJudgments

19

ent kind from the function of unity among our representations. The latter arises through the former but is not identical to it. Without anticipating our detailed analysis, one can object to this reading of A 67-69 as follows: The separation of the function of unity in judgments from the function of unity among our representations, and the ordering of the two in such a way that the former concerns '"the functions of unity' in those 'functions of unity among our representations "' (Reich 13) is not supported by Kant's text, which, as will be shown later in more detail, concludes with the following (incomplete) syllogism: "All judgments are (accordingly) functions of unity among our representations"; "But we can trace all acts of the under­ standing back to judgments"� "Thus, the functions of the understanding can all be found, if one can present the complete functions of unity in judgments" (A 69). This conclusion presupposes that the functions of unity among our repre­ sentations and the functions of unity in judgments cannot be distinguished in the manner that Reich suggests. Here I shall present only the following mis­ giving. Reich says of the functions of unity in judgments: "However, these 'functions of unity in judgments' are not those functions that were described earlier as the functions of unity among our representations because all judg­ ments, taken individually, are functions of the latter kind. But now our concern is with the logical form of a judgment in general, not however with what any conceivable judgment is, that is, "With the nature of any logical matter together with this form as a whole in regard to our representations in general" (13). Reich introduces a distinction between "all judgments" and ')udgment in general" and turns the former into "any logical matter" (with the somewhat obscure addition "with this form . . . as a whole .. . "), i.e., he attributes to "all judgments" the status of concepts that serve as the matter of judgment. It is not particularly plausible to claim that what all judgments are, namely functions of unity among our representations, is supposed to serve as matter for the logical form of judgment in general. Kant does not use the term 'judgment in general' here (he speaks of the "functions of unity in judgments," A 69). And there are good reasons (to be developed later) that, despite appearances to the contrary, this term does not actually occur in the first edition of the Critique. Yet for Reich's interpretation it is essential. Reich is surely correct to argue that Kant abstracts from the distinction between analytic and synthetic judgments when discussing judgments under the heading Of the Logical Use of the Understanding in General (A 67). But the idea that in this passage Kant is working with the difference between concepts as an analytic unity and judgments as an objective unity is not tenable. Con­ cepts are nothing other than predicates of possible judgments, and these are presented as "functions of unity among our representations" (A 69). Since, the argument continues, all acts of the understanding can be traced back to judg­ ments (and thus all functions of the understanding can be traced back to func­ tions of unity in judgments), all functions of the understanding can be found,

20

THE TABLE OF JUDGMENTS

"if one can present the complete functions of unity in judgments" (A 69). And precisely this, an optimistic look at the table that then follows might suggest, "can be done quite easily." Reich wants to show, contrary to the conceptual framework of the First Section (A 67), what his previous analysis of A 79 had resulted in, namely, that the subordination of representations under concepts is analytic in nature, whereas judgment is the product of a synthetic act. Reich interprets the sen­ tence: "Thus, the same understanding, and through precisely the same acts through which it produces the logical form of a judgment in concepts, by means of the analytic unity, also produces a transcendental content in its representa­ tions, by means of the synthetic unity of the manifold in intuition in general . .. " (A 79, emphasis supplied) in such a way that the expression "by mearu, of the analytic unity" should actually have read: "by means of their analytic unity," namely, that of concepts. After looking at the occurrence of 'analytic' in the surrounding context, Reich claims: "We can inf�r from this that analytic unity belongs essentially (or 'according to its form') to the concept, but there is no trace that could lead us to suppose that the unity ofJudgment is analytic in any sense" (10). In Kant's text, however, there is no mention of either an analytic or any other kind of unity of judgment. Rather, the function that displays the unity of the act of the understanding is grasped as an analytic unity. From the final remark of the paragraph we can infer that general logic as a whole, that is, the doctrine of concepts and the doctrine of judgments, is analytic in nature. The unity upon which the logical form of a judgment depends is an analytic unity. Recall the claim: "All judgments are accordingly functions of unity among our representations... " (A 69): the unity referred to here is designated an analytic unity in the Third Section of the Clue Chapter (in contrast to a syn­ thetic unity which the understanding alone cannot produce� in contrast to general logic, which is a matter of the understanding alone, a synthetic act "of the manifold in intuition in general" is required). The analytic unity of which Kant speaks here in abrupt contrast to synthetic unity, and the analytic unity of apperception and of consciousness, of which Kant speaks in § 16 of the Tran­ scendental Deduction in the edition of 1787 and of which it is said that it attaches to all concepts as such (B 133-134), need not be identical. We are not forced to interpret the explanations of 1781 from the perspective of 1787. Rather we can instead try to determine the relation between the two explana­ tions only after the edition of 1781 is explained in its own terms. § 2 of Reich's work concerns the objective unity of self-consciousness, a special function of pure apperception with respect to the possibility of having something as an object of my knowledge. This unity is designated as spontane­ ity-"The ' I think' expresses an 'act of spontaneity "' (24). Now the next step is difficult to comprehend in terms of the economy of Reich's thought: Reich defines this act with the help of the table of categories and its categorial exten­ sions. "There is no question that Kant uses the categories, the predicaments,

The Completeness of the Table of Judgments

21

and the predicables (§ 10, A 81-82/B 107-108) in this manner of speaking9exactly as he uses the terminology 1 0 of receptivity and affection at the begin­ ning of the Transcendental Aesthetic" (24). It is surely right that Kant also makes use of the unschematized categories. Without this possibility one could not speak, e.g., of causality through freedom in moral philosophy. Reich's presentation also offers an apt analysis of Kant's thought with respect to the "I think." But the decisive point is not the use of the unschematized categories, which is in fact what occurs, but rather recourse to the "I think" that is grasped by means of these categories. The method of proof requires a derivation of the moments of judgment from the "I think.�, But the moments of judgment form the basis of the categories (and thus of the predicaments and predicables). How can one analyze the I according to the categories when one is engaged in such a proof? The considerations in this section are either doomed to circularity (if an "I think" is determined by the categories, which depend on the moments of judgment, and is at the same time the source of these moments of judgment) or superfluous. 1 1 The objective unity of self-consciousness is presupposed by the analytic unity which, in turn, functions as the basis for the doctrine of concepts: § 3 explains the theory of concepts, § 4 provides the theory or definition of judg­ ment. Whereas a concept expresses the analytic unity of consciousness, a judgment expresses the objective unity of consciousness. In the context of what we need to prove we need not go into the details of these considerations, which refer exclusively to the second edition. The presentation of the Transcendental Deduction in 1787 follows the table of judgments both in a logical sense (the Transcendental Deduction presupposes the table of judgments as already acquired) and in a temporal sense (the Transcendental Deduction is developed and presented later) and thus cannot be constitutive for the interpretation of the Clue Chapter of 1781. We can now tum to the paragraphs that constitute the core of Reich's proof. The "definition of judgment" (the title of § 4) provides its systematic founda­ tion. This definition is taken from the Transcendental Deduction in the second edition, where it reads "that a judgment is nothing other than the manner of bringing given knowledge to the objective unity of apperception" (§ 19, cf. Reich 41). Reich first shows that this defines the merely logical form of judg­ ment (cf. also the title of § 19: "The Logical Form of all Judgments Consists in the Objective Unity of Apperception of the Concepts Contained in it"). Reich traces the development of this definition of judgment in Reflexionen from the eighties and points out once again in a footnote {p. 44) that the definition here is purely logical (and not specifically transcendental-philosophical) and that the form of judgments is indifferent to the distinction between analytic and syn­ thetic judgments. Kant's philosophical development in the eighties does not break with the first edition, for in the first edition, too, one can already find the idea that the logical form of judgment depends on its relation to transcendental

22

THE TABLE OF JUDGMENTS

consciousness (A 1 1 7 footnote, Reich 45). Consider Reich's commentary on this: If we begin our inquiry in order to be able to understand the systematic plan of the moments of thought in judgment, by investigating its derivation from transcendental apperception and the definition of judgment given through it then we can "now add that in textual asides Kant himself maintains that this ' route is necessary for the systematic presentation of the logical form of a judgment" (45). But Kant does not say exactly that either here or elsewhere. In the footnote in question in the first edition Kant says "that the mere representa­ tion I in relation to all others (whose collective unity it makes possible) is transcendental consciousness. Whether this representation is clear (empirical consciousness) or obscure, or even whether it is actual is not important here; rather the possibility of the logical form of all knowledge necessarily depends on its relation to such apperception as a faculty" (A 1 17). Kant does not say what Reich needs for his reconstruction, namely, that the logical form is to be derived from transcendental consciousness or fr'1m its "relation to this apper­ ception," but rather only that the collective unity of arbitrary representations and the logical form of knowledge (and thus of judgment) depend on their relation to transcendental consciousness. If he thought that Reich's project were capable of being executed, whether it be in the first or second edition, he would have had to fulfill Reich's desideratwn, namely, that this "representation of judgment must be placed at the very top of its formal logical discussion proper (if it is to be systematic)" (Reich 46). A consistent Kant would have placed the doctrine of the objective unity of apperception, if not at the beginning of the entire Critique, at least at the beginning of the Transcendental Logic. Further, one must object to Reich's approach with respect to the definition of judgment: If a definition of judgment is sought in order to unravel the table of judgments and its claim to completeness, then one needs to look in the passages of the first and second edition that Kant foresees for this purpose; There judgment is defined as follows: "Judgment is therefore the mediate knowledge of an object, thus the representation of a representation of the object" (A 68). 1 2 Kant does not speak of apperception or objective unity here; their philosophical characterization in later theoretical parts of the Critique . depends rather on the previously developed table of judgments. It presupposes that the logical form or the form of the understanding in judgment is already present with its headings and moments. The formulation at A 68 leaves open whether judgment is subjectively or objectively valid. The latter depends on the objective unity of apperception. This difference cannot play an explicit role in clarifying the use of the understanding in general, neither in the sense that merely subjectively valid judgments are not judgments proper, but rather have, as it were, the status of concepts as the matter of objectively valid judgments, nor in the sense that the very possibility of subjective judgments depends on the paradigm form of objectively valid judgments. Just as general logic does not include the distinction between analytic and synthetic judgments, it does not

The Completeness of the Table ofJudgments

23

presuppose a theory about the difference between subjective and objective judgments. To be sure, there is the difficulty that Kant in fact excludes only subjectively valid judgments. In the passage from the Prolegomena considered above1 3 Kant writes that he looked for a principle according to which one could have discovered the pure concepts of the understanding. "But in order to discover such a principle, I looked around for an act of the understanding that contains all others [i.e., "all acts of the understanding"] and is distinguished only through various modifications or moments of bringing the manifold of our representation to the unity of thought in general, and I found that these acts of the understanding consist in judging. Work done by logicians, although not yet completely free of errors, stood ready-made, which put me in a position to present a complete table of pure functions of �e understanding, functions that were, however, indeterminate with respect to any object. Finally, I referred these functions of judging to objects in general, or rather to the condition of determining judgments as objectively valid, and pure concepts of the under­ standing arose... " (IV 323-324)-a clear division between the discovery of the complete table of judgments and the acquisition of the categories by referring the functions of the understanding to objects in general.-It should be added that at times Reich too appeals to the early definition of judgment for support (e.g., 48; reference T. Pinder), but this occurs without reflecting systematically on the similarities and differences between the two definitions. 1 4 The "outline of the system" starts only from the " 'definition' of judgment developed from the highest point of philosophy" (§ 5, 47). The procedure for this system, which is initially developed independently ("on my own" [48]) and which is then to be refined by referring to passages from Kant, is analytic. Underlying the procedure is a "judgment in general" that is already objectively valid, i.e., that is supposed to contain the possibility of truth in its very possi­ bility (48). Modality obtained in this way yields "logical actuality" and it is thereby transformed into the "simplest matter given in general pure logic," namely concepts. But in a judgment concepts are placed in relation. In an amazing way we have gone from modality to relation. "The concept that serves as this condition, we will say, has the function of the subject and the other the function of the predicate. S (A) is P (B): the relation of one concept that has the function of a predicate to another that has the function of a subject is the relation of two concepts in their unity in judgment" (50).-This knowledge regarding the subject and predicate is supposed to follow from the definition of judgment and be nothing other than the demanded placing-in-relation of the matter of the judgment, the concepts. But how does one arrive at these enrich­ ments? How does one concept become a subject and the other a predicate? "We have extracted analytically the function of the categorical judgment, namely, the function of the subject in relation to the predicate (or vice versa), from our assumption of the objective unity of apperception of given concepts (from the definition of the judgment's form)" (51). But how is this acquisition

24

THE TABLE OF JUDGMENTS

of new determinations protected against the possibility that the present table of judgments serves as a secret clue and that the procedure thereby becomes circular? We already know what the result should be, and the 'outline' does not disappoint our expectations. One possible procedure would have been to de­ velop the possible alternatives at each individual stage and then to move on to the only really possible solution. But since this does not happen, the procedure of reproducing what is already known is not particularly convincing. The reader must have serious doubts that the analysis would have led to precisely Kant's table (and thus in this case to the heading of relation) without prior knowledge of the actual result. And now the next step: Instead of two concepts, two judgments are taken as the matter of judgment. If this combination of judgments were not possible, there might be "many 'truths' (objectively valid categorical judgments), but wherein would lie their relation (Beziehung) to the thoroughgoing objective unity of apperception in the consciousness of my representations?" (52). In this manner hypothetical judgment is acquired as a combination of "judgments" (53), and problematic judgment is acquired at the same time, since the combi­ nation of the two judgments is possible only under the condition that it is left open whether they are objectively valid. And the further path to disjunctive judgment reveals at the same time the other moments of modality-"that is how relation and modality are intertwined" (56). One might object as follows to deriving the plurality of hypothetical and disjunctive judgments from the necessity of producing a thoroughgoing con­ nection in consciousness, thus from not just having unconnected categorical judgments as islands of truth in the mind: if a combination of judgments is required for the thoroughgoing objective unity of apperception, then why not a combination of categorical judgments in a syllogism? A syllogism can give rise to a continuum of categorical judgments and thereby guarantee a "thoroughgoing" unity of many representations in consciousness.-Reich's suggestion of acquiring composite judgments in the way described above is merely the path of a commentator. It cannot be supported in Kant's texts. Rather, in a footnote in § 1 9 Kant refers back to § 9, where the table of judg-. ments is developed. It is in the table of judgments that the necessity lies of accepting hypothetical and disjunctive in addition to categorical judgments (B 14 1). The remaining parts in the "outline of the system" (57-59) are dedicated to the rash and rather implausible acquisition of the quality and quantity of judgment. Here too there is no argument to counter the suspicion that Reich's path is guided by a previously known goal. If this is true, that is, if the already completed table of judgments directs the process of its deduction, the pretense of the whole derivation is null and void. As we saw, Reich begins with the definition of judgment derived from the objective unity of apperception, assumes its matter, namely the concepts, as

The Completeness of the Table ofJudgments

25

given, and places them in a relation from which the function of categorical judgment arises. In the transition from the first moment of relation to the second, arises categorical judgment, which is supposed to serve in turn as the matter for hypothetical judgment. But there is no judgment that is not deter­ mined with respect to each one of the four headings! A categorical judgment that detennines only one moment of one heading, and thus that is not deter­ mined with respect to its quantity, quality, or modality, arises surreptitiously from the "S is P." But precisely such a categorical judgment is a nihil negati­ vum according to Kant's doctrine of judgments. Reich's reconstruction depends on this primordial categorical judgment ( Ur-Urtei/) "S is P" because the defi­ nitions of the other moments (of relation) and of the other headings can be derived from it only subsequently. Even if one accepts such an isolated function of categorical judgment, it is not possible to operate with a categorical judg­ ment in which the other headings are not already equally represented by one moment from each heading. Judgment as such is present only if it is deter­ mined with respect to its quantity, quality, relation, and modality. Correspond­ ingly, categorical judgment is a possible judgment only if it is fixed with respect to the other three headings by one of each heading's three possible moments-therefore with respect to modality a judgment must already be either problematic, assertoric, or apodictic; it cannot wait for hypothetical judgment in order to achieve its modal status. The rest of Reich's entire project presupposes the possibility of operating with a primordial judgment "S is P." It is to be supposed that this construction necessarily provides the remaining characteristics, so that ultimately the com­ plete table of judgments is produced from it. However, we still find no idea in Kant how a unified connection of judgment can intelligibly be produced from the highest (or rather, through the highest) unity of transcendental appercep­ tion. Reich often replaces the formulation "S is P" with that of "judgment in general." As far as I can see, Kant does not speak of ')udgment in general" in the first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason. In the introduction to the table it reads: "If we abstract from all content of a judgment in general and pay attention only to the mere form of understanding in it. .. " (A 70), but here the "in general" refers to "content" and "abstract"; otherwise this passage would tell the reader to abstract from the content of the "judgment in general," pre­ cisely the content that has already been negated in the "in general." Kant is instructing us to abstract from all content of a judgment and to pay attention only to the form of understanding in it (A 70t just as every triangle has a certain length to its sides, yet one can still abstract from this detenninate length and from all detenninate measures in general and pay attention only to the relation of the sides or the angles, so too every judgment has a content from which one can abstract in order to note only the form of understanding present in it. The function of thought "in judgment" (A 70) can be brought under four

26

THE TABLE OF JUDGMENTS

headings-therefore, judgment must be such that the function of thought that lies and can be discovered in it can be brought under four headings. Kant does use the concept of "judgment in general" in the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science: "The latter task, although even without it the building stands solidly, is still of great importance and, as I understand it now, is easily accomplished, since it can be achieved almost by means of a single inference from the precisely characterized definition of judgment in general (an act through which given representations become knowledge of an object for the first time)" (IV 475). Kant does not explain what this "judgment in general" looks like. At any rate, it cannot be identified as the primordial judgment of the form "S is P" and then have the missing headings and moments added� rather it must be completely detennined with respect to the headings. We thus come to the core of Reich's treatise, proving that the table of judgments can be deduced by Kantian means. In a first step "the entire path and the direc�on of its course" (I� 6 1-67) is presented, while the second step explains "the individual parts of the path" (II� 67- 100). Regarding I: According to Reich, the direction of Kant's table of judgments as presented to the reader is synthetic, which is evident from the fact that, when using his analytic procedure, Kant begins his presentation of the "I think" at the end, namely with modality (B 4 18-4 1 9). The structure of the table of judgments is synthetic because it is to serve the synthetic development of the categories and Principles. In contrast, for general pure logic, thus for the doctrine of the table of judgments as well, an analytic procedure obtains. Accordingly, the order as it would actually be appropriate for the table would have to be the reverse of Kant's order, beginning with modality and then proceeding through relation and quality to quantity. According to Reich Kant presents the analytic procedure as one to be followed within formal logic even when acts of the understanding are to be analyzed. The corresponding passages from the The Analytic of Principles (A 130-132) are to serve as textual support. But in these passages Kant does not speak of an analytic procedure, but rather of the Analytic in contrast to the Dialectic, and of the fact that in the Analytic general logic considers concepts,. judgments, and inferences. One receives little support here for trying to stand the table of judgments on its head. Further, it would be surprising if Kant did not inform his reader about such a fundamental alteration in the order the reader would properly expect. Instead of Reich's reading, Kant suggests that the categories and Principles are guided by the forms of the understanding in judgment and that these forms are acquired independently of what depends on them, both in terms of their content and structure. According to Reich the reader would have to wait for the publication of the Prolegomena and its reference to the synthetic procedure of the Critique, in order even to have a chance at comprehending the table of judgments and standing it on its head for the purpose of decipherment.

The Completeness of the Table ofJudgments

21

The question of which procedure is actually analytic and which synthetic is almost always a crucial point. Here we can establish at least the following: in the introduction to the Analytic of Principles, to which Reich refers, Kant writes that in the "Analytic" general logic concerns concepts, judgments, and inferences (A 1 30), and in the following "Introduction," Of Transcendental Imagination in General (A 132-1 36), Kant continues the thought as follows: "Since it [general logic] abstracts from all content of knowledge, nothing remains for it other than the task of analytically distinguishing the mere form of knowledge in concepts, judgments, and syllogisms, and thereby bringing into existence formal rules for all use of the understanding" (A 1 32-1 33). If our idea is correct that the first three headings of the table of judgments follow the structure of general logic, including the doctrines of concepts, judgments, and inferences, then the table of judgments that Kant presents in the Analytic is analytic in the sense of an analysis of the acts of the understanding in general: "so we find that the functions of thinking in the same [in judgment] can be brought under four headings . . . " the introductory text reads (A 70). Discovery is possible only through an analysis of judgment (with respect to the form of the understanding that lies "in it"). Thus, one need not revolutionize the table of judgments and begin with modality in order to find an analytic procedure. (Later we shall see that-in another respect-the table of judgments begins with the heading of quantity even in a synthetic procedure.) The presentation of the individual parts of the path (59-86) is methodologi­ cally problematic. First, a "system" is presupposed of which it was not shown that it was not developed with an eye toward the previously determined result, i.e., that its proof is not circular. Now this failure also affects the reconstruction and refinement accomplished by quoting passages that Kant wrote from the seventies through the late nineties-the table of judgments that is supposed to be derived is always already present in a way that defies control. A further basic objection concerns how Kant's considerations from the various periods before and after 178 1 are treated. Reich begins with Rejlex­ ionen in which relation and modality are joined together under the heading of quaeitas (60-6 1). But quaeitas is not retained in the Critique of Pure Reason. How can we deny the possibility that Kant changed his opinion on certain detailed questions prior to the publication of the Critique, thereby rendering the preceding Reflexionen and notes obsolete? This is precisely the case with quaeitas. Reich writes: "Thus, 'Quaeitas' in Reflection 3035 characterizes the relation of predicate to subject (P to S}, 1 5 and later it is used to designate at once both the relational and modal distinctions" (67). Without going into the tortuous features of Kant's development here, a passage in the Logik-Blomberg is relevant, in which the three questions "Quae? Qua/is? Quanta?" are men­ tioned in the standard way and then quaeitas is explained: "3. quae est propo­ sitio? is the question whether the judicium is purum or modale. A judgment, however, is modal if it carries the conditions of the judgment in the predicate"

28

THE TABLE OF JUDGMENTS

(XXIV 277). Like Meier (§ 309) 1 6 Kant continues to separate pure judgment from judicium modale� in contrast to the conviction he has in the following years that every judgment is modally determined (combined with a completely new conception of what is to be understood by "modal"), here Kant is still of the opinion that a pure judgment is not modally determined. As soon as the change occurs, the particular question as to the "quae" of the propositio natu­ rally disappears. Under the title "The Form of Judgment and Relation in General" (69-71), Reich attempts to show that Kant views relation and modality as the proper source of judgment. But the material that Reich elicits does not provide con­ vincing support for this view. In Reflexion 3040 (Reich 62) Kant organizes what will later be called the "headings" in the order relatio, qualitas, quantitas, modalitas. Reich's commentary: "Here it is very clear that Kant is granting the role of relation priority over quality and quantity" (70). But it must be added: and over the role of modality as long as one ,�.,ants to refer to this Reflexion, since "modalitas" follows quantity and quality. Further, it is simply unclear what the order is supposed to show. Originally the passage read as follows: "qualitas, quantitas, relatio, modalitas, " which is the order in the Encyclopedia lecture (cf. p. 4 7). The order established by the numbers written over the concepts may be an experiment from the late seventies. The lines that follow upon these headings concern only relation, not modality.-ln Reflexion 5854 the category (!) of relation (Verhaltnis) is called "the most distinguished of all." Reich turns this into a "priority of Relation over Quality and Quantity" (71). But (as in Reflexion 3058, also Reich 70) it must be added: over the role of modality. But this renders Reich's "quvd erat demonstrandum" invalid. In the following passages Reich uses the priority of relation and modality as some­ thing proved. § 19 of the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason is rendered as follows: '"A judgment is nothing but the manner [Modus] in which given cognitions are brought to the objective unity of apperception "' (71), and modality is supposed to be indicated by the term 'Modus, ' which Reich adds. But the identification of manner �md modality is dictated by the goal of the proof. Why doesn't affirmation or negation also pertain to the manner of bringing given knowledge to the objective unity of apperception? Their exclu­ sion would at least require a detailed justification. In § 309 of his A uszug aus der Vernunftlehre Meier states: "The representation of the mode (Art) and manner in which the predicate does or does not hold of the subject is the definition of the concept of combination and its negation (modus Jonna/is)" (XVI 662). But Kant discovers the possibility of turning the functions of mo­ dality into moments of every epistemic judgment and thereby relinquishes Meier's modus formalis by adopting a new theory of judgment in which the formal aspect of judgment is determined by the functions of the understand­ ing-according to all the headings and moments, not only modality. In this way the word or concept ''manner" (Art) in § 19 acquires the universality that

The Completeness of the Table ofJudgments

29

one naturally assumes it to have. When Kant speaks of the object in itself "without regard to the manner of intuiting it" (A 38) in the Aesthetic, when he speaks of the various modes of syllogism according to judgments in the Tran­ scendental Dialectic, "insofar as they are distinguished in the manner in which they express the relation of knowledge in the understanding" (A 304), he uses the concept "manner" in a terminologically neutral way, just as he does in § 19. According to Reich the three moments of relation can be derived by means of the function played by the concept of an exponent for Kant (75-83). Thus, through this concept it is supposed to be shown that there are only three rela­ tions of judgment and that they are necessarily categorical, hypothetical, and disjunctive. Initially, the reader must be surprised that the burden of proof is here again placed on a concept that does not _appear in the introduction, pres­ entation, and explanation of the table of judgments. In fact, Kant's use of the concept of an exponent in the Critique is rather marginal. Two of the four passages in which it occurs are not relevant according to Reich (82), and the other two concern laws of nature and the Analogies of Experience (A 159 and 216). While these passages could contain fundamental information about what the concept of an exponent means in principle, they certainly cannot explain the specific function played in general logic by the moments of relation in judgment with respect to the issue of completeness. Thus, Kant's own work cannot inform us about the role of the concept of an exponent; rather it is once again to notes from other periods that Kant is to have entrusted the solution of the puzzle and, consequently, intentionally hidden it from the reader. Further, Reich's procedure excludes the possibility that Kant has good reason for elimi­ nating the concept of an e>..l)Onent from the presentation of the table of contents. Thus, this path bypasses what Kant tells every reader in the passage explaining the completeness of the moments of relation. Reich quotes three Rejl.exionen, one from the nineties, and two from the seventies (Ref/. 3202, 3039, and 3063), in which the word 'exponent' occurs in the context of the concept of relation, and then plausibly suggests that Kant's use of the concept stemmed from mathematics. 1 7 According to the quoted passages we discover that an exponent determines the relation between two homogeneous magnitudes with respect to their magnitude: "Thus, the exponent of the ratio of 3:12 would be either 4 or 1/4" (76). Using the concept of an exponent, can we succeed in finding a precise explanation for the three rela­ tions, that is, in identifying the combination of predicate and subject found in predicate logic with the combination of implication and disjunction found in propositional logic? If I am right, although this idea is necessary in the context of Reich's considerations, Kant does not introduce it. Rather, Reich infers that the three moments are derived from further Rejl.exionen in which the concept of an exponent is used to designate rather than to explain the various relations. "It is the concept of exponent, or of the condition of assertion, that. first made it possible for Kant to bring categorical, hypothetical, and disjunctive judgments

30

THE TABLE OF JUDGMENTS

under one aspect" (80). Reich's idea is that the relation ( Verhiiltnis) expressed in the concept of an exponent (relation [Relation] in its three moments) is identical to the unity of consciousness that is thought in its modusformalis, that is, in modality. "Thus, we have shown the connection of the concepts of Rela­ tion with the primary concept of Modality, namely, the concept of logical actuality, which Kant reveals in his use of the concept of the condition of objective unity or of the exponent" (81). But just as there is no primordial, merely categorical judgment of the form "S is P," no "original concept of modality," a concept essential to Reich's reconstruction, can be found in Kant. It is the commentator's creation, albeit one indispensable to his interpretation. In the historical section of the present investigation we shall return to the question of the juxtaposition of the three relational judgments. It will turn out that Kant's considerations remain at the level of judgment and among the functions of unity in the understanding; he does not have recourse to the unity of consciousness and self-consciousness. Corre:;pondingly, the concept of an exponent does not have the essential function that Reich foresees for it in the transformation of composite hypothetical and disjunctive judgments into relational judgments (which as such can be coordinated with categorical judg­ ments). Neither the concept of an exponent nor that of the objective unity of apperception is capable, e.g., of answering the question why hypothetical judgment is composed of only two component judgments, whereas disjunctive judgment must be composed of at least two, but possibly more judgments as well. Or: why are there no copulative judgments under the heading of relation? If one has a procedure for deriving the three moments, one should be able to show without difficulty how copulative judgment is excluded. This would at the same time be a point at which the derivation could prove itself to be a deriva­ tion proper and not a sign leading the way to a result that already lies in front of us. Under the title "The Moments of Relation and of Modality" (83) Reich attempts to reveal the close connection, or even the extensional equivalence between each of the three moments. Kant's remarks that are supposed to serve this purpose can be found in several Reflexionen and then in statements in. connection with the controversy with Eberhard, thus at the end of the eighties. From the Rejl.exionen that Reich cites "around 1780" (85; Reflexion 2154, 5562, 6209) it is supposed to follow: "In the representation of the so-called logical principles we clearly see the connection of the moments of Relation and those of Modality in the fact that the same principle deals with the formal conditions of judgments according to both a moment of Relation and a moment of Modality" (85). And also: "In the Reflections on logic the perspective of modality governs the enumerations of the logical principles" (85). However, the final two Rejlexionen simply do not concern modality. And the context of the first one is not at all clear, especially since the term ' quality' concerns clarity and not the moments of the table of judgments. In the Academy edition the

The Completeness of the Table of Judgments

31

passage reads as follows: " 1 . Quantity. logical universality. 2. Quality; Clarity. relation: truth.· only formal, not material criterion of truth • (truth can be referred to relation, but also to modality; according to the latter, relation is possible, actual, or necessary.)" (XVI 253). As the location of clarity next to the heading of quality shows, Kant is experimenting here with the possible corre­ spondence of the four later headings in the table of judgments and the proper­ ties of learned (gelehrten) knowledge, as it is listed in Meier's Vernunftlehre and as it dominates Kant's logic up through the seventies. The connection between clarity and quality occurs in the context of his doctrine of marks (Merkmale), according to which the marks that are or are not attributed to the subject are made clear in an affirmative or negative judgment. However, in the first edition ( 1 78 1 ) judgment surely does not serve to clarify the-previously confused-marks of a concept. But then any recourse to the doctrine of marks loses its value. Similarly in Reflexion 2 1 50: "We have spoken: 1) of the quality of knowl­ edge, whether clear or obscure. 2) of its quantity: whether extensive or inten­ sive. 3 . of relation: whether true or false-referred to the object" (XVI 253). "Clear or obscure" refers to the marks of a concept. Whatever the meaning of the formulation in the addendum to Rejl. 21 54-". . . according to the latter [modality] relation is possible, actual, or necessary"-the simplest interpreta­ tion is that the same is also trivially true of, e.g., quality: all categorical judg­ ments must be either affirmative or negative (or infinite) with respect to qual­ ity. And whatever this addendum says about truth, it does not inform us that modality dominates in any way. Truth is also considered under points 3 and 4 in the explanation of the table of judgments in the Critique. One could discuss this as a problematic point, but the mere fact that the question of truth occurs under the heading of relation and modality does not yet say anything.­ Reflexionen 5562 and 6209, which Reich draws from the metaphysics Nachlass (75), do not concern modality, and thus cannot either demonstrate its domi­ nance or "render transparent the connection between Relation and Modality" (85). Thus, only Kant's considerations in connection with the controversy with Eberhard and his work on the Progress of Metaphysics remain. In a letter to Reinhold dated May 1 9, 1 789, Kant refers the principle of non-contradiction to categorical judgment, the principle of sufficient reason to hypothetical judg­ ment, and the principle of excluded middle to disjunctive judgment. The letter states: "According to the first principle [the principle of non-contradiction] all judgments must be consistent, first, with the principle of non-contradiction, as problematic (as mere judgments) according to their possibility, second, with the principle of sufficient reason, as assertoric (as propositions) according to their logical actuality of truth, third, with the princ. exc/usi medii inter duo contrad., as apodictic (as certain knowledge); . . . " (XI 45; cf. Reich 85). In whatever way Kant's idea is to be understood, the table of judgments demands of every

32

THE TABLE OF JUDGMENTS

judgment that it is determined by one of the three moments under each of the four headings. Thus, categorical judgment must be either problematic, actual, or necessary. This is true for every single judgment, and if I understand Reich's argument correctly, at the end of the relevant passage he ends up speaking about precisely this conflict, namely that the connection of problematic and categorical judgment by means of the principle of non-contradiction is more complicated-"! do not want to pursue this" (87). A detailed explanation of precisely this complication might have led him, e.g., to restore independence to relation and modality for every single judgment, instead of bringing it into accord with the Eberhard Streitschrift and the Progress of Metaphysics. In the explanatory passage of the table of judgments in the Critique of Pure Reason the moments of modality and relation are similarly placed in close connection, but (against Reich) in reverse fashion such that logical possibility, logical actuality, and logical necessity are acquired by their location in hypothetical or disjunctive syllogisms. More on this later. "The Division Between Modality-Relation and Quality-Quantity as a Prob­ lem" (87). Reich's previous discussion attempted to display how modality and relation are internally intertwined. The next step is a summary of these head­ ings with respect to the act of connection (Verkniipfung) rather than compari­ son (Vergleichung), which is guaranteed by the other two functions of judg­ ment, namely quantity and quality. The reader is familiar with the opposition between the two corresponding groups of categories under the headings of mathematical and dynamical categories. Reich too starts with this division within the table of categories and then infers a corresponding structure-"as in logic"-for the table of judgments. In further considerations, Reich then attempts to uncover this division within the realm of logic itself under the rubrics "comparison" and "connection." The first relevant passage is the footnote in § 3 9 from the Prolegomena (IV 325-326). From this footnote Reich quotes item 2): "that the categories 'of quantity and quality are without correlata or opposita, whereas those of Rela­ tion and of Modality have them "' (&7). Reich continues: "Still more properties of the table of categories are named, always with the remark: 'as in logic"' . (87). However, the remark "as it is in the logical realm" appears only in item 3) in Kant. Thus, Kant thinks that the qualification is necessary in this item. One can infer from this that items 1) and 2) are intended only for the categories and the "as it is in the logical realm" does not pertain to them. Under item 4) Kant writes: 'just as modality is not a separate predicate in judgment, so too modal concepts do not add anything to the determinations of things"-in this passage modality is characterized just as it was in 178 1 : modality adds nothing more to the content of the form of judgment. Consequently, this item says something about the inner coherence of quantity, quality, and relation in contrast to modality, and thus goes directly against Reich's intention. However, Reich does not explain this difficulty, but rather silently eliminates it from his analysis.-

The Completeness of the Table ofJudgments

33

Rejlexionen 5697 and 5859, which Reich introduces next, refer explicitly to the categories alone and thus do not address the relevant question. Reich then quotes from the second edition of the Critique ofPure Reason: "As one can see, the members of the first group have no correlates� these are to be met with only in the second group. This distinction must have some ground in the nature of the understanding" (87; B 1 10). This remark refers to the table of categories, which, in contrast to the table of judgments, does in fact have correlates and opposita under the headings of relation and modality (A 80). How should the corresponding correlates and opposites read for the table of judgments? For example, what correlate does categorical judgment have? Kant does not have an answer nor does Reich provide one. When the second edition states that the division must "have a basis in the nature of the understanding" (B l l0), it remains open what exactly this remark refers to-at least on this point no connection with the table of judgments is or could even be drawn. When Kant introduces the two divisions of concepts of the understanding, he notes that the first division-called mathematical-is directed toward "objects of intuition (pure as well as empirical intuition)," while the second-the dynamical-is directed toward "the existence of these objects (either in relation to each other or to the understanding" (B l l 0). This justification of the dichotomy cannot hold for the table of judgments, at least not if one understands it merely as the table of the "logical function of the understanding in judgments" (A 70) and not also as the table of the pure functions of the understanding and thus already of the categories.-Reich assumes that he has now proved that the table of judgments must also be divided analogously to the table of categories, and attempts to prove in the ensuing text that such a table is in fact given in Kant through the concepts of "comparison" and "connection." Quantity and quality are supposed to constitute the element of mere comparison within the total complex of "judgment in general," whereas relation and modality belong to the actual core of judgment, namely, connection. Only the latter forms a judgment with respect to the connection of concepts in the objective unity of appercep­ tion. This observation is logically independent of the division that was intro­ duced (but not proved) with the dichotomy of the table of categories. The argument is plausible with respect to the heading of quantity, under which a determination can be achieved through the mere comparison of the extensions of the relevant concepts. And Kant also claims of affirmation and negation that they depend on mere comparison (more on this shortly). However, in Kant's explanations of the table of judgment within the Critique of Pure Reason no passage can be found that refers to the difference between comparison and connection as the characteristic difference between the two groups of headings (presumably because analyzed judgment displays precisely the unity of both). Reich draws from his preliminary investigations (§ 3) the idea "of a logical relationship of concepts that is not a relationship of these concepts in judg­ ment. ..namely the relation of subordination" (which is to be identified here

34

THE TABLE OF JUDGMENTS

with that of comparison; 90). "Let us look again at Kant's Reflection 3051 [around 1780] : 'The representation of the way in which different concepts as such belong universally and necessarily (empirically or a priori) to one con­ sciousness in general (and not simply to my consciousness) is the judg­ ment. . . . Concepts belong to one consciousness only by being thought as subor­ dinate to each other (untereinander) and not associated with each other (nebeneinander) (as are sensations) "' (90). Adickes dates this Reflexion in the period from epsilon to psi, i.e., 1776-1789. This misquoted Reflexion contains later additions, the last of which Adickes explicitly dates in the period of omega, thus sometime between 1790 and 1801. The "in general" after "consciousness" is not p1ior to the parenthesis, as it is in Reich's version, but rather within it "(in general (and not simply to my consciousness))," so that the late addition is not to be referred, as Reich would like, to the concept of con­ sciousness in sharp contrast to consciousness in general, but rather to the faculty that is responsible for judgment-one siri.1ply cannot draw a distinction between judgment, on the one hand, and conceptual subordination, on the other hand. Reich's reading and dating imply that Kant uses the phrase "consciousness in general" around 1780. 1 8 But in his published works this term appears for the first time, if I am right, in 1783. If no other unambiguous proofs are offered, one would prefer not to date it as earlier. The original text of the Reflexion reads: "The representation of the manner in which different concepts belong to a consciousness is judgment. They belong to a consciousness in part according to laws of imagination, thus subjectively, and in part according to laws of the understanding, i.e., objectively valid for every being that has under­ standing. Subjective connection depends on the special situation of the subject in experience" (XVI 633). Belonging to a consciousness is explained in retro­ spect by the remark: "Concepts belong to one consciousness only by being thought as subordinate to each other ('untereinander') and not associated with each other ('nebeneinander') (as are sensations)." The concept of consciousness is explained in retrospect by the addition: "in general (and not simply to my consciousness)." We can extract ont important piece of information from this Reflexion: judgment is originally defined indifferently with respect to the . question whether it is subjective or objective; thus, even Hume's judgments of association lay claim to the status of judgment, that is, of epistemic judgment in the sense of the table of judgments. The table of judgments must belong only to general logic and be as indifferent to the distinction between subjective and objective as it is to the distinction between analytic and synthetic judgment. But precisely this point renders impossible the derivation of the table from tran­ scendental apperception because transcendental apperception refers to the possibility of objectively valid judgments. Kant's later addition, according to which the concern is "consciousness in general" and not merely my subjective consciousness, contradicts the dichotomy between subjective and objective, which follows upon the definition of judgment, by eliminating the first of the

The Completeness of the Table ofJudgments

35

two possible kinds of judgment. The addition points the definition of judgment in the direction of a judgment that has already been categorically detennined. Reflexion 3053 (psi to omega; thus we can only say after 1776) is supposed to provide the rest of the explanation: "Judgment is the consciousness that a concept is contained under another one. Either as its predicate or its ground or as a member of its division. This is the matter of judgments in general. The form is that of quantity, quality, relation, modality" (XVI 633). Reich corrects the passage: instead of "its predicate or its ground" (sein Praedicat oder sein Grund), both in the nominative case, he quotes seinem Praedicat oder seinem Grund (both in the dative case). This correction is plausible because it is required conceptually. Perhaps the reason for the mistake is that Kant was thinking primarily of the, relation itself. In a categorical judgment the relation is the relation of the predicate to the subject (and not vice versa, cf. A 73 and also Re.fl. 3035: " . . . relatio praedicati ad subjectum"), and in a hypothetical judgment it is the relation of the ground to the consequent (and not vice versa, again A 73). Reich does not clarify what the form and the matter of judgments are supposed to consist in for Kant. Rather he concludes: "Thus, it may be said, with Kant, that the fact that concepts belong to a con­ sciousness only in virtue of their being thought as subordinated is by no means to say that they belong to a consciousness in general (not just to my own con­ sciousness) or belong to it 'objectively. ' With respect to judgment in general, subordination is a merely subjective condition of the possibility of cognition" (90). The argument is valid, but it presupposes that subjectively conditioned judgments are not judgments in the sense of general logic and are thus ex­ cluded from it due to the theory of epistemic judgments in the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason. Although Reich does not say so, his implication presupposes that the "matter" of judgments in general designates the substrate (which for him is contained merely analytically in the three subordination relations), whereas judgment proper lies in the form. But Kant begins with the claim that judgment is the consciousness of the subordination of concepts (cf. also Rejl. 3045), and then he mentions its two components, matter and form, the latter divided according to its four headings. Accordingly, we cannot operate here with Reich's distinction between (merely analytical, merely subordinate) conceptual material and (synthetic) form-detennined judgment. We have already seen above how problematic the introduction of this distinc­ tion is within the Critique itself. If Kant places the table of judgments in the realm of the general use of the understanding, i.e., the "usus /ogicus intellec­ tus, " then what Reich says in conclusion cannot be correct: "The law of subor­ dination and comparison of concepts is, as such, precisely not the sort in which concepts are combined (verbunden) with respect to the objective unity of apperception, and hence 'connected "' (91)-once again this argument is valid, but only if one starts with the false premise that general logic can be derived from the objective unity of apperception.

36

THE TABLE OF JUDGMENTS

Under the title "Quality, Quantity, and Comparison" (92) Reich turns to the Critique of Pure Reason's chapter on the concepts of reflection. At this point we can make an important observation. When Kant writes: "Before construct­ ing any objective judgment we compare the concepts in order to find their identity (of many representations under one concept) for the sake of universal judgments, their difference for the production of particular judgments, their agreement for affirmative judgments, their opposition for negative judgments, etc." (A 262), Reich notes, completely correctly, "the etc. cannot be meaning­ fully completed" (94)-the "production" of the moments of judgment from the mere comparison of concepts is in fact successful only in the cases of quantity and quality; Kant's "etc." cannot be cashed out. Reich interprets this as confir­ mation of the division between headings 1/2 and 3/4. But the following qualifi­ cation must be added: the connection between 1 and 2 under the perspective of comparison implies nothing about the internal connection between 3 and 4. Reich assumes the latter as proved on the basis '1f his earlier, highly problem­ atic discussion. Kant then uses the "etc." a second time in the same chapter: "... for this reason the real in things in general cannot resist each other, etc." (A 280)-once again Kant suggests that one can continue the comparison of concepts in the same manner according to identity, difference, agreement, and opposition. Shortly before Kant had said: "When we reflect merely logically, we understand only our concepts in relation to each other in the understanding, whether they contain the same thing, whether they contradict each other or not, whether something is contained within a concept, or is added to it, and which of the two should be taken as given, and which are only a way of thinking the given" (A 279).-Reich correctly points out the problematic nature of the latter two cases (94), but we must remember that in all three cases cited Kant pro­ ceeds from the fact that a comparison of concepts is both possible and mean­ ingful for all four headings.-Thus, he precisely avoids drawing the distinction that Reich attributes to him. Accordingly, Reich's suggestion hardly fits Kant's point; otherwise he would have attempted to mark the division between 1/2 and 3/4 as his interpreter does. The reason: in contrast with transcendental knowl­ edge, the formation of judgment in general logic is to be located on the level of . mere comparison because general logic cannot show how concepts are con­ nected in an objective unity. However, if we make the latter into the source of judgment, then we give rise to the distortions directed against Kant (especially the Kant of 178 1). The issue of the division between 1/2 and 3/4 is surprisingly unimportant for the decisive argumentation in Reich's investigation. For Reich attempts to prove the claim that quality and quantity can be derived from relation (according to chapter 8, 96-100) without recourse to the difference between comparison and connection. If this proof should succeed, then at least the derivability of the first two headings will have been shown; then relation is the source of quantity and quality. But does this derivation succeed?

The Completeness of the Table ofJudgments

31

The different moments of quality are "subordinated to the functions of modality and relation", and quality is supposed to be due "in particular... to disjunctive judgment" (96). Nota bene : the judgment and not the function! (Our old misgi\-ing: Reich would have to conceive of such a judgment as indetermi­ nate with respect to the other headings.) That Reich speaks of judgment rather than function follows from his approach to both the table of judgments and its genesis from the objective unity of apperception. First, Reflexion 3063 is quoted in excerpts. (Reich gives no reason for dating it as being written at the "end of the seventies"; according to Adickes it is to be dated between 1773 and 1789. I would suggest as early a date as possible.) '"The negative proposition signifies that something is not contained in the extension of a given concept...(this) happens in accordance with the principle of lh:e excluded middle (between 'A' and 'non-A' there is no third) etc. etc. [It] is the principle of determination: between two opposed judgments one is true. (It says only that the proposition 'The soul is not mortal' is in opposition to the proposition 'The soul is mor­ tal') "' (96-97). Surprisingly, Kant holds the principle of tertium non datur responsible for negation and reserves infinite judgment for the principle of thoroughgoing determination. But however it is interpreted, the concern is clearly with logical principles, not disjunctive judgment, which is due to these principles as well. Reich's interpretation of this and other Reflexionen presup­ poses as a whole that "the" disjunctive judgment has some reality without being determined with respect to quality (a new variant of the primordial judgment [ UrUrteil]); further, for precisely this reason Reich's argument seems to de­ mand that disjunctive judgment is identical to the principle of excluded middle. "The" disjunctive judgment does not exist; rather only examples of actual disjunctive judgments that are always determined with respect to quantity and quality-thus, the possibility of acquiring something for the first two headings from "the" disjunctive judgment is ruled out because they are already there. Reich's entire proof attempts to show that the principium exclusi medii and thus disjunctive judgment is decisive for the moments of quality (and not, e.g., the principle of non-contradiction)-he does not show more than this. The table of judgments as a whole, including all its headings and moments, presup­ poses basic logical principles. Accordingly, hidden dependencies of the head­ ings or moments among each other cannot be construed with their help. The remaining discussion operates with material that has already been revealed as untenable. Thus, we shall not go into detailed analysis. 1 9 Reich concludes in the final paragraph under the heading of "Completeness": "However, with that the definition of judgment is exhausted. A judgment is an objectively valid (Modality) relation of representations (Relation) which are representations of parts (consequence: Quality) as analytic grounds of cognition (consequence: Quantity)" (102). The result refers to Reich's own definition of judgment. If the derivation were successful, the definition would also have to be Kant's. (Lenk has already criticized Reich on this point: "Reich develops Kant's definition of

38

THE TABLE OF JUDGMENTS

judgment using four characteristic predicates. J n the process he has added the expressions 'partial representations' and 'analytic grounds of cognition' to Kant's definition of the logical form of judgment (B 140).")20 Reich's work has forced a thought onto Kant's Critique that appears to stem from Kant himself, but which actually destroys the Critique by turning it, contrary to its intent, into a project for deriving the table of judgments: "The logical form of all judgments consists in the objective unity of apperception of the concepts contained in it" (B 140) and: " . . . thus I find that a judgment is nothing other than the way of bringing given knowledge to the objective unity of apperception" (B l41). These propositions from the Transcendental Deduc­ tion are not freely convertible. The elliptical formulation must be supplemented by information provided by the context. Kant is talking here about the logical form of actual epistemic judgments in the field of transcendental philosophy. As such, this kind of judgment is sharply distinct from a merely subjective judgment; it is derived "from the principle cf the transcendental unity of apperception" (B 142), which alone is capable of justifying objective validity­ in contrast to mere subjective validity. In the Clue Chapter the means for drawing this distinction are not yet present� epistemic judgment as it is consid­ ered there must therefore ignore this characterization of objectivity. Corre­ spondingly, in such a judgment the "form of the understanding" (A 70) means something other than the concept of form in the context of the Transcendental Deduction. The latter presupposes general logic, even if the exposition of that logic is accomplished with an eye toward the transcendental possibility of objective knowledge; but general logic does not presuppose the Transcendental Deduction. Correspondingly, the claim to the completeness of the table of judgments must be intelligible without recourse to the objective unity of apper­ ception. The second, really decisive thought which Reich directs against Kant lies in the idea of the derivation of the table of judgments from the transcen­ dental characterizations in question. This derivation does not actually succeed, and it could not succeed in principle (more on the latter point shortly). Thus, any interpretation of the Critique must undertake the task of searching for and justifying an alternative. If such a justification does not succeed, then the_ systematic idea of the Critique is already built on empirical sand. Conse­ quently, one would then have to restructure it entirely, like Fichte and Reich. The principle of the synthetic unity of apperception cannot then be hidden in any later passages, but rather must be placed at the beginning of the entire Analytic (preferably including the Aesthetic). That means that if the Critique of Pure Reason were measured by its own systematic claims, it ought to be de­ stroyed and replaced with a different work. Reich's unique hermetic stringency gives his book an unusual aura and has assured it an influential place in the reception of Kant; it is in its third German printing and has recently appeared in English. In the concluding chapter of this

The Completeness of the Table of Judgments

39

study we shall return to Reich's work and attempt to situate it in a certain line of interpretation that stems from the neo-Kantian philosopher Cohen. Reich's procedure presupposes that Kant does not provide any arguments for completeness when he presents the table of judgments. Second, it presup­ poses that completeness is to be accomplished only through recourse to the principle of the objective unity of apperception. Third, it presupposes that almost all of Kant's private notes from 1770 to 1800 can be used to fill in the argumentative gap. The first two presuppositions are false. The third implies a methodological unleashing of the interpreter, who is then allowed to "support" his own considerations with arbitrary quotations from Kant. The procedure Reich has chosen has as an almost inevitable consequence that textual support will be abridged according to one's own liking and in many cases even modi­ fied to agree with the intent of the interpretation. Arbitrariness lies in its very point of departure. The value of the textual support is in fact detennined by this basic procedure. It cannot be the case that the "support" stems authentically either entirely or in part from the author. It is obvious that, with the method practiced by Reich, the object loses its identity and its possible objectivity. If objectivity is to be saved and at the same time the possibility of a universally valid interpretation secured, then such hermeneutic licenses must be sharply restricted, with the investigation focused in the first instance on passages authorized by Kant. Hans Lenk presents the "logical constants (forms of judgment) in Kant's system" (5) in a book on the so-called logical constants in general beginning with Kant. According to Lenk's method, the "reconstructed derivation" (5) of the table of judgments can be taken out of its context and viewed and evaluated in isolation. His discussion is structured in such a way that, first, an argumen­ tative gap is discovered in Kant's own work: Kant claims the completeness of the table of judgments, but he does not prove it. Second, Reich's reconstruction is placed in this gap as a derivation adequate to Kant's system. Third, the Reich-Kant theory is critically evaluated. Finally, there is a critique of "Albrecht's attempt at deducing Kant's forms of judgment" (37-45). We shall forego a discussion of this last critique (and Albrecht's attempt) in the follow­ ing. The premise of Lenk's reconstruction is: "Kant demands that one must 'attach all use of the understanding, even all of logic... to the synthetic unity of...apperception' (B/134), and defines judgment by means of this unity... but he does not systematically derive the various logical functions of judgment from this unity. Also, despite the announcement of his intention (B/94), he derives only the table of logical functions of the understanding in judgment (B/95), without proving that no further functions of judgment are possible" (7; cf. 1415). One of Lenk's methodological premises, not explicitly mentioned but assumed in practice, is that one can speak of "the" Kantian system and is free

40

THE TABLE OF JUDGMENTS

to use as textual support any suitable statements by Kant, published and unpub­ lished, from any period. In his statement of the task, the method, and the reconstruction itself, Lenk follows Reich's approach and even extends Reich's licenses. His statement of the task, oriented toward the second edition, and his methodological premises lead Lenk to a lack of concern with the text of the introduction, presentation, and explanation of the table of judgments. Thus, he does not notice that judgment is defined there without recourse to the synthetic unity of apperception. (We have already seen that if we take seriously Kant's own presentation of the table of judgments, we might also be able to construe the relationship between apperception and logic differently from Lenk, namely, in that we must already be in possession of a logic if we want to attach it somewhere.) We need not follow Len.k's initial uncritical report of Reich's work (8-14). His critical discussion of "Reich's Kantian justification" (14ff.) proceeds according to premises that were developed in the first two parts and are thus not relevant to our present purposes. Lenk arrives at a completely negative result both for Kant's and for Reich's claims (on Reich, cf. 27: "The whole proof collapses with this one main pillar'\ 34: "From all these critical consid­ erations it follows: Reich's proof that Kant's table of judgments is complete is untenable"). I have already referred to particular arguments in my critique of Klaus Reich's work. I would like to add only the following: On the basis of a correct insight, Lenk remarks in contrast to Reich that the forms of judgment of mo­ dality cannot be erected on a formal foundation within the framework of the doctrine of judgments (21-23). "For this reason it cannot distinguish between assertoric and problematic judgments. The perspective of validity is not purely logical (formal), but also metalogical-semantic-and perhaps even methodo­ logical with respect to the philosophy of science (the problem of verification)" (21). Regarding this it should be noted: Lenk adopts Reich's and others' idea of a pure formal logic as a logic that abstracts from all synkatathesis and method and investigates only the internal structure of judgment. However, for Kant epistemic judgments can always be assigned purely logically defined locatio� that determine their modal status. Despite this mistake, Lenk rightly notices that this modal status is embedded in a process of knowledge-acquisition. Lenk has guessed correctly here: it is part of the Doctrine of Method. When Lenk shows that Kant's table of judgments is in fact incomplete (3437), he presupposes as Kant's a table of judgments that does not have veiy much to do with the text. Any confrontation with another logical calculus would first have to mediate between these two different systems before criticism by means of a logic committed to a later "paradigm" could be fruitful. Here too Lenk follows Reich's approach: Kant's idea of completeness for the table of judgments leads to the demand for a complete table of judgments for logic in general: "This means that the table of universally pure logical functions of

The Completeness of the Table ofJudgments

41

unity in judgments, given in § 9 of the Critique of Pure Reason, is recognized as complete," Reich writes on the penultimate page of his study, thereby mak­ ing it a question of a systematic judgment in "the" realm of pure logic. Lenk thus evaluates Kant in accordance with this standard. However, this pretention would be appropriate only if it were proved that Kant's idea of general logic is identical to that of "the" logic-an impossible task that Reich does not resolve, but simply assumes by way of an ipse dixit. On methodological grounds, our interpretation, which is oriented toward the relevant passages of the Critique of Pure Reason, conceives of the table of judgments as a logic internal only to the Critique, or at most to transcendental pluiosophy. Heidegger wrote, as we quoted above: "In fact, Kant does not develop the manifold of functions in judgment from the nature of the understanding. Rather, he supplies a ready-made table that is organized according to the four 'principal moments' of quantity, quality, relation, and modality. Furthermore, Kant does not illustrate whether and to what extent precisely these four mo­ ments are grounded in the essence of the understanding. Whether they can be grounded purely formally at all can be called into question.), Regarding the first point: if one replaces the question about essence or essentia with the question about the faculty of the understanding, an investiga­ tion of Kant's statements will show that the table of judgments is very much grounded in the understanding. The question as to the systematic coherence of the table of judgments, necessary for acquiring the concepts of the understand­ ing, is answered by the passage that introduces, presents, and explains the table of judgments. Everything is there and requires no hermeneutic question about essences. Heidegger's second point: "Whether they can be grounded purely formally at all can be called into question." The question about formal-logical justifica­ tion contains an equivocation that is not unimportant for Heidegger's herme­ neutic. For it remains undecided in which formal logic this justification is undertaken. Kant himself is of the opinion that what he calls general logic is "formal logic" (A 13 1); however, his concept of form is not identical to that of formal logic in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The justification of the table of judgments by Kant's formal logic is thus not identical to "formal­ logical justification" in any other logic that is also called formal. Walter Brocker's interpretation shows how to develop a hermeneutical exegesis that proceeds from Heidegger's concept of essence; Hans Lenk's investigation shows how a hypostatization of formal-logical justification can be immediately accessible to the interpreter. Walter Brocker's systematic reconstruction begins with a claim about the essence of judgment: "The first thing that necessarily belongs to the essence of judgment is the synthesis of subject and predicate, or, in other words, the subsumption of an object under a concept" (42)-with a few strokes of the pen Kant's definition of judgment is replaced by an "insight into the essence" of

42

THE TABLE OF JUDGMENTS

judgment. According to this insight the object is not what the subject concept (and through it the predicate) refers to (as it is for Kant), but rather the subject and the object are identical. Brocker considers a completely different logic from that of the Critique of Pure Reason. Without noting it, he returns to the pre­ Critical Kant: "Comparing something as a mark (Merkmal) with a thing is judgment. The thing itself is the subject, while the mark is the predicate"-this is how the 1762 False Subtlety of the Four Syllogistic Figures begins (II 47). Quantity does not arise from the relation of the predicate to what is grasped under the subject concept, as it does for Kant in 1781, but is rather a "synthesis of subjects" (43). "The synthesis of subjects divides into two possibilities, namely, that the predicate obtains either for all or for several subjects" (43). The heading of relation dissolves into the synthesis of predicates and judg­ ments. "That the same forms of combination obtain for judgments and predi­ cates here is justified by the simple fact that predicates are nothing other than judgments with an indetenninate subject (or in the language of current logic: propositional functions)" (43). Again, this position lacks any tie to Kant's, according to which the determination of relation ( Verhaltnis) under the heading of relation (Relation) conceives of judgment as a general rule. Brocker's de­ tailed explanation of junctors, which is supposed to lead back to Kant (45), need not concern us because it treats of a different topic. Hans Lenk practically identifies Reich's interpretation with what Kant himself wanted; he begins by making judgment dependent on the synthetic apperception of the second edition, but then, as an instrument of criticism in opposition to the Reich-Kant idea he confronts it with an idea of formal logic in which all reference to objects is lacking. Lenk fails to see that Kant is con­ cerned only with a certain kind of judgment, namely, epistemic judgment of a particular sort. The formal logic with which he criticizes Kant is not subject to this restriction. Brocker turns to the alleged essence of the understanding and judgment, while Lenk operates with a concept of formal logic that has only an ambiguous title in common with Kant's. Both can refer to Heidegger but, due to their hermeneutic, are separated from Kant's theory by a noticeable gap. Insuperable difficulties stand in the way of any attempt at deriving the table of judgments from the "highest point," the objective unity of apperception. Most of these difficulties also obtain for any attempt at resolving the problem of the completeness of the table of judgments that, while not deriving it from, still has recourse, to the "highest point." In conclusion, let us recall the most im­ portant obstacles. The decisive passage reads: "And therefore the synthetic unity of appercep­ tion is the highest point to which one must attach all use of the understanding, even the entirety of logic, and after it, transcendental philosophy. Indeed, this faculty is the understanding itself' (B134). The metaphor of "attaching-to" refers to a logic that is already complete and need not first be derived. This

The Completeness of the Table ofJudgments

43

picture corresponds to Kant's belief that logic is in fact complete. Its secure path consists (strangely) in the fact that it could not and need not take any step either backward or forward since Aristotle (B viii).21 None the less, if one continues to maintain that the table of judgments is to be derived from the synthetic unity of apperception, then this can occur only as part of the larger task of deriving the "entirety of logic" � the doctrines of concepts, judgments, inferences, and also of method, even the ''laws of the understanding and rea­ son" along with the principles of non-contradiction, of (sufficient) reason, and of the excluded middle must be derived. Whoever attempts such an impossible task, necessarily presupposes what is to be derived. The title of § 1 9 of the Transcendental Deduction of the categories in the second edition reads: "The logical form of all judgments consists in the objec­ tive unity of apperception of the concepts contained in it" (B 140), while the definition of judgment that follows reads: it is "the way in which given cogni­ tions are brought to the objective unity of apperception" (B 1 4 1 ). If one empha­ sizes this definition, then one must first justify why it should be given primacy over the other definition or characterization that Kant provides immediately prior to the table of judgments (and that also avoids the mistakes of the logi­ cians whom Kant rebukes in § 1 9): "Judgment is therefore the mediate knowl­ edge of an object, thus the representation of a representation of the object" (A 68). Further, it must be shown how subjectively valid judgments can be system­ atically excluded from general logic in the second edition (not merely de facto as in the first edition). For the definition in § 1 9 clearly refers only to objec­ tively valid judgments in the sense of the transcendental philosophy developed by Kant. In both cases one would have to show systematically what exactly is to be understood by derivation. Is the table of judgments to be produced from the I? Does the commentator idealiter carry out this act of production? The derivation must occur according to rules. These rules must be determined either by Kant or by the commentator. Since Kant never explains the derivation of the table of judgment in any passage of his works or notes and does not provide any deri­ vation rules for such an undertaking in other contexts, the first alternative must be rejected. The commentator can undertake the derivation only "on his own" (as Reich does) but should then also be consistent and drop any pretense to an interpretation of the Critique. The method Reich chooses consists in guiding the derivation not according to rules, but rather according to the result provided in advance by Kant. Every individual step should be immunized against pre­ cisely such a procedure by a strict method controlling the results. Further, one would have to guarantee in a systematic way that, whether it is in Kant's sense (which does not exist) or according to the ideas of a second author, a derivation can ever attain and guarantee completeness with respect to the doctrine of judgment or "logic as a whole," as Kant's texts demand.

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THE TABLE OF JUDGMENTS

Any attempt that is undertaken to combat the difficulties in question must also compete with the explanations that the Critique itself offers for certain parts of its claim to completeness. For each and every step one would have to consider whether it is the same as or different from Kant's own explanations and explain away differences either as illusory or in some other way. This problem confronts any attempt whatsoever that purports to demonstrate the completeness of the table of judgments in an independent way and to put forth these original considerations as an interpretation of the Critique. In conclusion one further, indirect objection: The idea that the table of judgments can be derived from the objective unity of apperception is compara­ ble to the idea in Kant's theory of right that private right could be derived from the sovereign general will, the moi commun of the state. In the Metaphysical Foundations of the Doctrine of Right the systematic unity of private right is developed from the start according to the lead of certain categories, but it is realized only through a volitional act of the state, which leads private right, standing in need of determination and security, out of a state (of nature) of merely provisional (non-)validity into a state of permanently valid positive right. In contrast to the early Fichte (and Rousseau in a certain sense), Kant does not accept a general will from which right can be derived, but is rather, like Locke and Humboldt, of the opinion that the function of the state is deter­ mined and limited by the mere task of its concrete realization. However, the possible formal structure of the right that is to be determined and secured is already pre-figured in a rationally legitimate way. The general will cannot find, e.g., that there should be no private property, no marriages, etc. Just as the moi commun of the state is empty of content and can become functional only through the realization of what is previously given by private right, the tran­ scendental I is without all content and without all determinable form� it can form only those unities that are, as provisional ideas, explained and previously given to it by the Aesthetic and Logic. The transcendental I "is" these unities, which were previously acquired and presented systematically. Every attempt at derivation is, in the one realm, contrary to right, in the other realm paralogistic. A supporter of the derivation of the table of judgments from the objective unity of transcendental apperception might suggest that the givens of private · right in the one realm and of general pure logic in the other are somehow to be acquired empirically as nor.-deductively necessary. In this case Kant's table of judgments would be nothing other than the ideology of a logic that the age happens to offer its author. Derivation or ideology-tertium non datur. It .seems to me that Kant undertakes precisely this tertium. On the basis of the unques­ tioned premise that all thought is linguistic, 22 linguistically representable judgment, rather than super-linguistic thought, is investigated in its formal structure and its systematic unity developed. To this extent general logic is a part of a philosophy of reality but not compromised as merely the ideology of an anthropological given because Kant attributes an a priori status to it.

The Completeness of the Table ofJudgments

45

A further argwnent that is worth considering seems to me to lie in the fact that, from the later perspective of the second edition of the Transcendental Deduction of Pure Concepts of the Understanding, Kant writes: "In the Meta­ physical Deduction the origin of the categories was shown a priori through their complete agreement with the logical functions of thought. .. " (B 159). Why is the derivation of the categories from the table of judgments called "metaphysical"? In comparable usage, it is striking that the metaphysical is always referred to something given. In the Metaphysical Exposition of the concept of space, Kant writes: ''but an exposition is metaphysical when it contains what presents a concept as given a priori" (B 38); or, in the Critique of Judgment: "In contrast, a principle is called metaphysical if it represents a priori the condition under which alone objects whose concept must be given empirically can be further determined a priori"' (V 181). 23 If one interprets the Metaphysical Exposition of space and time and the Metaphysical Deduction of the categories in terms of a reference to something given, this can be easily combined with the claim from the Transcendental Deduction of 1787, quoted above: "We can give as little reason for the peculiarity of our understanding, that we can bring about a priori unity of apperception through the categories alone and through only this precise kind and number of categories,24 as we can for why we have precisely these and no other functions of judgment, or why time and space are the only forms of our possible intuition" (B 145-146). As we can now formulate his point, they are metaphysically given. But this runs precisely counter to the idea of deriving the table of judgments from transcen­ dental apperception. For the reasons stated above, deriving the table of judgments qua systematic structure from the objective unity of apperception, or from any other unity or definition, is a fundamentally mistaken project. However, Kant puts forth this systematic structure, and this establishes in a pragmatic way that it exists. It seems reasonable to look for it where it ought to be, namely, in the relevant passages of the Clue Chapter.

III. THE SYSTEMATIC IDEA OF THE TABLE Method and Status of the Interpretation Previous attempts at explaining the completeness of the table of judgments have failed. Approaching the table via the objective unity of transcendental apper­ ception is not possible for a number of reasons already explained in the preced­ ing chapter. Only an interpretation of the introduction, presentation, and explanation of the table of judgments itself remains. It has to bear in mind the first announcement of the enterprise in the Preface of the work: The traditional metaphysician pretends: "to extend human knowledge beyond all limits of possible experience, I humbly confess that this is entirely beyond my power. I have to deal with nothing save reason itself and its pure thinking; and to obtain complete knowledge of these, there is no need to go far afield, since I come upon them in my own self. Common logic itself supplies an example how all the simple acts of reason can be enumerated completely and systematically" (A xiv). This announcement in a prominent place in the book refers to the table of judgments� it speaks of logic in general and of "all" the simple acts. General logic is not an "example," but the foundation of knowledge and of the question, "how much can I hope to achieve by reason if all the material and assistance of experience is taken away" (A xiv). The object of interpretation is the 1781 edition of the Critique and, to the extent that it is identical (as it is in the case of the cited passages concerning the table of judgments), the 1 787 edition. Those interpretive achievements that Kant could reasonably expect from the scholars for whom he wrote are to be reconstructed. When Kant speaks of the "typical style of logicians" in the text (A 70), what is expected of the reader is not precise knowledge of the original Aristotelian and Hellenistic logic, and certainly not acquaintance with later mathematical knowledge, but rather knowledge of the logic textbooks of Christian Wolff and his followers, as well as the logic of Port Royal and the communis opinio, as it is deposited in the textbooks in common use prior to 178 1 . When Kant speaks of ''the logical use of the understanding," he expects that the educated reader also has in mind its counterpart concept, namely, the real use of reason, and perhaps also Kant's remarks on the usus rationis logicus and rea/is in the Inaugural Dissertation of 1770. From a general overview and first acquaintance with the idea of the whole, such a reader knows that the Critique of Pure Reason concerns the logical and real use not only of the understanding, but also of reason and thus that, compared with the Dissertation, a new conceptual contrast needs to be taken into account. Common sense (gesunder Menschenverstand) legitimizes using this information.

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The factors in question are not identical to a recourse to the source of the table of judgments. The genesis of the table, selected parts of which will be investigated in section IV, is an independent task that should not be confused with systematic interpretation in an unreflective manner. The following obser­ vation, for example, requires the separation of systematic and genetic interpre­ tations: In his lectures on Philosophical Encyclopedia (according to the tran­ script preserved) 1 Kant sets up an overview of the logical functions of the understanding, about which he claims in the passage that they are complete: "If we go through all logical functions, we will find so many headings of the understanding. I. according to quality 1. judgments are a) affirmative b) nega­ tive 2. the headings of thought a) reality b) negation. II. according to quantity, 1. judgments are a) universal b) particular c) singular 2. the headings of thought that result from them a) omnitudo b) multitudo c) unitas. III. according to relation I. judgments are a) categorical b) hypothetical c) disjunctive. To these correspond 2. the headings of thought a) the concept of substance and accident b) ground and consequent c) the whole and the part. IV. according to modality 1. judgments are a) problematic, which express possibility, it may be etc. b) assertoric, which express the logical veritaet, e.g., he is a benevolent judge. c) apodictic, express necessity, e.g. a body must be divisible. To these correspond 2. the headings of thought a) possibility b) actuality c) necessity" (XXIX 36-37). Shortly hereafter it once again reads: "All headings that occur in transcendental philosophy are contained in the table, only space and time have been left out." In this table the concept of "heading" (Titel) is used differ­ ently from how it is used in 1781, namely, in the sense of the usus rea/is of the understanding, not of the usus logicus; furthermore, quality is placed before quantity, and only affirmative and negative judgments, not infinite judgments, appear under quality. We must assume that around 1778 Kant makes use of a table of all functions of the understanding, but this table is not identical to the table of 1781. Accordingly, the reasons that he had for asserting the complete­ ness of the table in 1778 might be different from those in 1781. The material preserved in the Rejlexionen also suggests that there were fluctuations in the justification of the completeness of the gradually developing table of judgments. This dynamic situation thus requires adopting a methodologically strict com­ mand to stick with the one identical text, in our case: the text of the Critique. Excursions into other phases of Kant's development can illustrate a certain thought, but they cannot carry any argumentative force. In the introduction I presented a solution to the problem of the systematic structure of the table of judgments. The solution is that the structure is grounded in the uniform epistemic judgment of the type "All human beings are mortal." The understanding has three options for the quantifiable subject concept, for the copula, and for the combination ( Verbindung) that in the present case connects the subject with the predicate and otherwise two or more judgments. Finally, there is the modal determination of the judgment as an

48

THE TABLE OF JUDGMENTS

asserted epistemic judgment. The triad of quantity, quality, and relation refers to the tres operationes of the understanding, the doctrines of concepts, judg­ ments, and inferences, to which the doctrine of method is added as a fourth member. In the following I intend to show that this is in fact the systematic idea of the table, one that does justice to the announcement made in the preface that all simple actions can be enumerated completely and systematically in general logic. The evidence in favor of this idea is neither a new manuscript nor the discovery of a passage in the Critique of Pure Reason that unmistakably formu­ lates what is suggested as a solution. The support is-only-an indirect proof (Jndizienbeweis); I shall attempt to show that the above hypothesis is the only possible solution. The assertion that this is so refers to the explanatory power of this hypothesis for the interpretation of particular issues. Paradoxically, whether the solution, which by all indications is the only possible one, is actually correct cannot be directly shown. 1. "Of the Logical Use of the Understanding in General" (A 67-69) The table of judgments has the task of establishing a structure that provides a rule "according to which the place of every pure concept of the understanding and the completeness of all of them can be determined a priori" (A 67). The categories arise "from the understanding, as an absolute unity, 2 pure and unmixed" (A 67), but their ratio essendi is apparently not their ratio cogno­ scendi for human beings. Accordingly, Kant does not say that they could be derived from this absolute unity. The derivation of the pure concepts of the understanding from the absolute unity of the understanding would render the table of judgments superfluous. The table of judgments is a necessary detour in the derivation of the categories. Only after this detour has been taken can transcendental philosophy arrive at its first pure concepts (retrospectively, space and time are also designated as previously deduced concepts, A 87). The table of all functions of the understanding makes it possible to determine "the place" of every pure concept of the understanding. Thus, the table of judgments is the topology for the pure functions of the understanding. The question is: . How can these topoi be exhaustively acquired? The First Section of the Clue Chapter, which follows the untitled introduc­ tion, has as its heading, "Of the Logical Use of the Understanding in General" (A 67). We can distinguish three sections: the first section ("The understanding was explained merely negatively above . . . to the receptivity of impressions") concerns the contrast between the faculty of intuition and that of the under­ standing as the faculty of concepts that produce unity; the second section ("Of these concepts . . . be represented mediately by the concept of divisibility") pres­ ents the (only possible) use of concepts in judgments and then justifies and explains the claim "Judgment is therefore the mediate knowledge of an object, thus the representation of a representation of the object" (A 68); in the third

The Systematic Idea of the Table

49

and final section (beginning with "Accordingly, all judgments are . . . ") two premises of an argument are explained and justified and then the conclusion is formulated. The three sentences of the (in fact more complicated) chain of inference read: ''Accordingly, all judgments are functions of unity under our representations" ; "But we can trace all acts of the understanding to judgments'\ "Thus, the functions of the understanding can all be found, if one can present the complete functions of unity in judgments" (A 69, emphasis supplied). The syllogistic structure is signaled first by the three ''all" propositions, except for one illustrative sentence at A 68-prior to these sentences forming the syllo­ gism there is no passage containing "all'� propositions-then by the customary particles "but" in the minor premise and "thus" in the conclusion. The major premise of the inference is at the same time the conclusion ("Accordingly all judgments are... ") of the middle part, which shows that, on the one hand, judgment qua employment of concepts represents mediate knowledge and, on the other hand, brings about unity among a plurality of representations, thus qua "unity of the activity of ordering various representations under a common one" (A 68) is a function (of unity). The two similar-sounding examples ("Thus, in the judgment 'all bodies are divisible' . .. are represented mediately by the concept of divisibility" and "Thus, the concept of body means something, e.g., metal. .. 'Every metal is a body "' ) are none the less different in that the first shows that judgment as conceptual knowledge is mediate, whereas the second shows that concepts are general predicates of possible judgments, thus that all thought viewed as knowledge through concepts can be traced back to judgments. Thus, the general outline of the argument is as follows. Distinction between intuitive and conceptual faculties of knowledge; concepts depend on functions with which the understanding brings about unity among representations; the understanding can make use of concepts only through judging; consequently, judgment-in contrast to intuition-is the mediate knowledg� of an object; for in judgment concepts are related to objects through other concepts and order various representations under a common one. The concept (which is always general) in a judgment refers to a plurality (Vie/es); thus it holds that all judgments are functions of unity among our representations. Now all acts of the understanding as conceptual acts can be traced back to judgments. Thus-after incorporating an intermediate thought not explicitly mentioned-it follows that all functions of the understanding can be found, if all "functions of unity in judgments" can in fact be presented. Precisely this is the task of the following section, which is then introduced as the clue to discovering all functions of the understanding. One cannot easily dispute that the argument leads into the above syllogism. Only one intermediate thought is missing, and it could be omitted because one can easily recall it from the definition of function given at A 68: the unity of the acts of the understanding ("of ordering various representations under a com-

50

THE TABLE OF JUDGMENTS

mon one") is its function. Thus, if all acts of the understanding can be traced back to judgments, then all functions of the understanding can also be traced back to functions of unity in judgments. But then what is formulated as a conclusion follows: "Thus, the functions of the understanding can all be found, if one can present the complete functions of unity in judgments" (A 69). Peter Schulthess proposes the following more exact and, it seems to me, flawless reconstruction of the inference: 1. All judgments are functions of unity under our representations. 2 . All acts can be traced back to judgments. 3. (Def.) All functions (of the understanding) are unities of acts. 4. All unities of acts are acts of the understanding. 5 . All functions of unity are functions of the understanding. 6. (from I . and 5.) All judgments are functions of the understanding. 7. (from 2. and 4.) All unities of acts can be traced back to judgments. 8. All functions of the understanding can be traced back to judgments. 3 But are the "functions of unity in judgments" identical to what judgments "are", namely: "functions of unity under our representations" (A 69)? Precisely this is presumed (against Reich) by the syllogistic interpretation just presented. Let us first clarify the relation "under" (unter). 4 The same word is used for two different relations, namely, "inter" and "infra," both signified by the one preposition. One function is the unity of the act of ordering various representa­ tions "under" (=infra) a common one; a concept (whose genesis in terms of content is not relevant here) is grounded or depends on a representation under which (=infra) others are ordered. If this concept is used as a predicate, then it is used in such a way that it is referred to one "under" (=inter) the many repre­ sentations that are comprehended under (=infra) it. In this case only what is already thought in it as a mere concept is actualized, namely, its possible relation to one representation among those that the concept comprehends under itself. The use of concepts occurs in judgment. In a judgment P is referred, by means of an S, to certain objects or appearances that are designated by S, to be represented in the x-a-b notation as Kant uses it, e.g. , in Reflexion 3096 (XVI 657-658) and as it corresponds to the content expressed by the introductory sentence: "Therefore, judgment is the mediate knowledge of an object, thus the representation of a representation of the object" (A 68). For example, the judgment "S is P" is characterized as a function of unity "under (=inter) our representations, since instead of an immediate representa­ tion a higher representation that comprehends this one and several others under (=infra) itself is used, and much possible knowledge is thereby drawn together into one" (A 69). Just as language contaminates two meanings in the one word 'under' (while still leaving them distinguishable in context), so too Kant's doctrines of concepts and judgments contaminate both meanings such that the one is not possible without the other: Without subordination under a concept, it

The Systematic Idea of the Table

51

is impossible to designate something common under the representations to which the concept refers. The two dimensions of "inter" and "infra" are inter­ dependent. Judgment is the "unity of the act of ordering various representations under (=infra) a common representation," that is, "under (=inter) our represen­ tations" (A 68). If one distinguishes this function from the function of unity in judgments that is intended in the conclusion, it leads to an objection to Kant's doctrine of concepts and judgments. For precisely their identity constitutes the core of Kant' s conception. What is to be understood by "'all acts of the understanding" that are reduci­ ble to judgments, and thus that cannot be (entirely? at first sight? according to tradition?) identical to judgments? (Later he says: " . . . the faculty to judge (which is just as much the faculty to think)_. . . " A 80-8 1 ). The acts of the under­ standing at issue here can and must concern only the logical use of the under­ standing. The unique acquisition of the acts of the understanding in their usus realis, namely, the categories, from logical operations, is certainly not the issue here, i.e. , logical and real operations are not intended by "all acts of the under­ standing. " 5 -In order to clarify what the reader should understand by "all acts of the understanding," we must return to the title and investigate what the "logical use of the understanding in general" implies. In the course of this clarification we will discover an ambiguity that forms the heart of the text's real difficulty. 2. The "Logical Use of the Understanding in General" On the one hand, the understanding is the faculty of thinking; it includes the entire discursive activity of human beings, and (in the Critique, not in the Inaugural Dissertation) is opposed to intuition, which is always merely recep­ tive. On the other hand, the understanding is not identical to reason, the faculty of inferences. Broadly understood, the concept of understanding functions as a generic concept for both the understanding and reason, but there is also a narrower definition according to which it serves as a contrast to reason. 6 This two-fold localization of the understanding introduces a tension into the entire Critique of Pure Reason after the Aesthetic: On the one hand, the entirety of general logic is comprehended in the table of judgments. On the other hand, the doctrine of syllogisms (one part of general logic) is left to the Dialectic. The competency of the table of judgments is then limited to the Analytic. The reader of the sections that precede the transcendental Clue Chapter in the Analytic will associate talk of the "logical use of the understanding in general" with the concept of understanding in the broad sense. "For this reason we distinguish the science of rules of sensibility in general, i.e., the Aesthetic, from the science of rules of the understanding in general, i.e., Logic" (A 52). Logic concerns the rules of thought and thus includes syllogisms. "Thus, in general logic the part that is supposed to constitute the pure doctrine of reason

52

THE TABLE OF JUDGI\IBNTS

must be completely separated from the part that constitutes applied. . .logic. Only the former is actually science, although it is short and dry, and as a scholastic presentation of the doctrine of elements of the understanding demands" (A 5354 ). Reason and the understanding are not distinguished here. General logic concerns the rules of thought in general. "General logic abstracts, as we showed, from all content of knowledge, i.e. , from all relation of knowledge to the object, and observes only the logical form in the relation of parts of knowl­ edge to one another, i.e., the form of thought in general" (A 55). How would a distinction between the understanding and reason be possible here? The same is true in the section titled "On the Division of General Logic into Analytic and Dialectic." Unity is emphatically stressed: "General logic resolves the purely formal task of the understanding and reason into its elements, and presents them as principles of all logical evaluation of our knowledge. Consequently, this part of logic can be called analytic . . . " (A 60). General logic is only a principium dijudicationis. If it is misused as a principium executionis, it becomes dialectical, the logic of illusion, which cannot lay claim to its own section as a doctrine. Consequently, general logic can be treated entirely within an analytic framework. The logic of illusion is not reserved for the part that falls in the realm of reason in the narrow sense, as the faculty of inferences. Thus, in principle there is a dialectical use of concepts, judgments, and infer­ ences (cf. also IX 16-17). It is in this that general is distinguished from tran­ scendental logic, which places dialectic solely in the realm of empty "sophistry" (A 63), thus in the realm of inferences. Only for this reason is the doctrine of inferences in the Critique of Pure Reason set forth not only in transcendental logic, but also in general logic in the Dialectic, although according to the principles of general logic it belongs, as we saw, in the Analytic. This is emphasized in other passages as well: "Consequently, this part of logic can be called analytic... " (A 60).-Kant repeats precisely this statement later: general logic ''consequently concerns in its Analytic concepts, judgments, and inferences, according precisely to the functions and the order of those mental powers, comprehended under the broad sense of understanding" (A 130-131). The Clue Chapter needs to be concerned with the understanding in the broad sense. There Kant also refers to the contrast between the three mental powers within the understanding (in the broad sense) : the understanding (in the narrow sense), the faculty of judgment, and reason (A 75 fn.)-From a purely logical point of view, reason is nothing other than the understanding: a faculty of judging mediately (A 330). As a merely logical faculty, reason has the subaltern task "to subordinate the parts of the knowledge of the understanding only to others and lower rules to other higher ones (whose condition includes in its sphere the condition of the former), so far as can be accomplished through comparison" (A 305). Thus, in principle reason accomplishes nothing new. The "relation'' of the three kinds of syllogism is, as we have seen, identical to the three "moments" of relation in judgment. But before we proceed to the Analytic

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53

of Concepts (A 65), the text draws a distinct division between the understand­ ing and reason in the following note: "But this entire part of transcendental logic consists of two books, of which the one contains the concepts, the other the principles of the pure understanding" (A 65). Accordingly, in the following (thus in the Analytic) only concepts and judgments, not inferences, should be treated. However, this restriction obtaining for the concepts and principles of the pure understanding must obviously be dropped where general logic is supposed to provide initial access to the pure concepts of the understanding and their systematic unity. The Clue Chapter itself is thus still an extraterritorial region with respect to an Analytic restricted to concepts and principles. "Of the Logical Use of the Understanding in General": the proper conclu­ sion to draw from the previous discussion is that the understanding in this section must be the faculty of thought and thus not the understanding in the narrow sense. A contrary interpretation could find support in the following arguments: The section introduces the "transcendental clue for the discovery of all pure concepts of the understanding" (A 67), and the pure understanding is sharply distinct from pure reason. The pure concepts of the understanding are catego­ ries; the first book of the Transcendental Dialectic, "Of the Concepts of Pure Reason" (A 310-3 38), treats the pure concepts of reason, the Ideas. Thus, transcendental concepts of the understanding and of reason are to be distin­ guished in such a way that the transcendental Ideas, both in their possibility and systematicity, presuppose the categories. One could not reverse the order.­ And: in the table of judgments, judgments and not inferences are treated; the latter follow as an independent part of the Dialectic. However, such an interpretation is not tenable: "Of the Logical Use of the Understanding in General"-this logical use of t�e understanding in general refers to general logic in its entire field. Kant himself makes use of this point, as was already mentioned, in a footnote to the explanation of the fourth heading of the table of judgments, referring the three moments of modality to the faculties responsible for all acts of the understanding in general-"Just as if thought in the first case were a function of the understanding, in the second case one of the faculty of judgment, and in the third case one of reason" (A 75). Thus, in the acts that are explained in more detail in the text, all faculties and consequently all realms of logic in general are present. Only if the understand­ ing in the broad sense is intended in the one case, can it appear in the narrow sense next to the faculties of judgment and reason in the other.-After our introduction the reader is already familiar with the explanation of the fact that judgments and not inferences are treated in the table of judgments, and this will be explained again later. The concepts of relation in the doctrines of judgments and inferences are identical. The doctrine of inferences does not only use judgments of the understanding in a realm peculiar to itself; rather, it is inte­ grated into the domain of judgments of the understanding by virtue of the fact

54

THE TABLE OF ruDGMENTS

that the relation involved in the three forms of inferences is already character­ ized under the heading of relation in judgment. Thus, with respect to the relation of concepts expressed in it, an inference is nothing other than a judg­ ment. It is just this which makes possible the drawing of the "consequence of one judgment from another" (IX 122). Kant's intent is thus unambiguous: When Kant treats "Of the Logical Use of the Understanding in General" in the first section of the Clue Chapter, he intends the understanding not in the narrow but in the broad sense, even if in what follows only concepts and judgments are considered and the doctrine of syllogisms is (naturally) absent. 3. "All" Acts of the Understanding

All simple acts of general logic can be enumerated completely and systemati­ cally, Kant wrote in the preface (A xiv). All acts of the understanding can be traced back to judgments (A 69)� they are not explained further with respect to what seems precisely to go beyond judgments, yet can be traced back to judg­ ments. The concept of an act of the understanding is a technical term in logic, and when Kant speaks of "all acts of the understanding" (A 69), one might think of three or four elements as occupying the realm of the "all" : concept, judgment, inference, and eventually the method of the understanding's knowledge. If one looks even superficially through the logic textbooks (e.g., at the divisions and headings) with which a knowledgeable reader of the Critique of Pure Reason would be familiar, one hardly needs textual support for this claim. Still, let us consider a few texts. The Port Royal Logic of 1662, which was to dominate European logic for two centuries, 7 assumes four acts of the understanding. The preamble to the first part concludes with the sentence: "De tout ce que nous venons de dire, il s 'ensuit que la Logique peut estre divisee en quatre parties selon les diverses reflexions que l 'on fait sur ces quatre operations de l' esprit. " 8 The four acts of the understanding concern concepts, judgments, inferences, and method. Or the Jnstitutiones Logicae by Joachim Jung of 1681. It is divided into four parts. The first part treats of concepts, judgments, and inferences, and then follows the complex that will appear under the heading of modality in Kant: "Generalis Logica porro in tres partes pro triplici operatione mentis dispescitur, quarum Prima Notiones, Altera Enuntiationes, Tertia Dianoeas consid­ erat. . . Specialis Logica Verum in specie spectat, estque duplex Apodictica et Dialectica. " 9 Or Pierre Bayle: The main part of logic concerns the three acts of the understanding with respect to concepts, judgments, and inferences: "Hine capies quod vulgo dicitur, logicam dirigere tres mentis operationes ad verum, quae sunt apprehensio, iudicium et discursus" � then a fourth element is added,

The Systematic Idea of the Table

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namely, method: "Methodus est actio animae, qua apte riteque ordinantur ea omnia, quae ad universam aliquam disciplinam pertinent." 1 0 The heading of the first chapter of Section I . of Part I of Christian Wolff's Logic reads: "De tribus mentis operationibus in genere'\ and §52 begins with the sentence: "Tres sunt mentis operationes, quibus ea circa cognoscibile versatur, notio. . . judicium & discursus." The point is repeated by Johann Peter Reusch, to whose logic Kant refers in his lectures (XXIV 701, 776, 796): "Vocantur ab Aristotelicis tres mentis operationes, quarum prima seu idea ab illis dicitur simplex terminorum adpre­ hensio, reliquae easdem, quas attulimus, retinent adpellationes," which were previously called ''iudicium '' and "ratiocinatio." 1 1 Or Hermann Samuel Reimarus: "All acts of the human understanding, or of all thought, consist 1) in concepts, or representations of things, with one consciousness� 2) in judgments, or an insight into the relation between two concepts� 3) in inferences, or an insight into the connection between two judgments and a third. We designate and express concepts through words, judgments through sentences, and inferences through conclusions." 1 2 The reader is thus familiar with Kant's talk of "all acts of the understand­ ing" under the heading of the logical use of the understanding, and this way of speaking can be precisely defined. The reader knows that it is a matter of the three "operationes mentis" in general with respect to concepts, judgments, and inferences, and perhaps also method. With respect to the concept of acts of the understanding and the associated concept of form of knowledge, the reader could also discover the following in Lambert: "Thus, the question is what can be counted as belonging to the form of knowledge. Its logical form must espe­ cially be counted as belonging to it, insofar as, in accordance with recent doctrines of reason, it is derived purely from the operations of the understand­ ing." 1 3 Thus, the concept of an act of the understanding is pervasive in these logics� "operatio mentis," "operation de l'ame," and "operations of the mind" belong to the standard vocabulary of logicians and epistemologists. The concept refers to the three- or four-part "organon," offering of itself a guarantee of the com­ plete enumeration of all logical acts of the understanding. 1 4 As is apparent in the transcriptions of his lectures, even Kant talks of acts of the understanding in the sense of traditional logic. Thus, in the Logik-Busolt: "Logic is concerned only with the understanding� operationes mentis were already divided correctly by the ancients, namely, apprehensio simplex, i.e., conceptus iudicium et ratiocinium" (XXIV 653), and in the Logik-Dohna­ Wund/acken : "Consequently, one should first consider the three operations of thought, before becoming concerned with inferences. That was Aristotle's way-very strictly.-It was Wolff who broke with this" (XXIV 763). Thus, surely: one must consider the three acts of the understanding prior to the special doctrine of inferences. The Critique does precisely this.

56

THE TABLE OF JUDGtv1ENTS

Thus, if we wish to provide a more concrete meaning to "all acts of the understanding" (A 69), a phrase that had not been explained in detail before, we discover without difficulty the three "operationes mentis" in the tradition of Aristotelian logic. If Kant does not count modality as one of the "operationes mentis," that is no hinderance to referring talk of "all acts of the understand­ ing" (A 69) to the terminology of traditional logic. Modality has, as Kant expressly notes (A 74), a special status. It is unclear what Kant means when he talks of tracing all acts of the un­ derstanding back to judgments. Presumably he borrows this formulation from an earlier phase of his attempt at finding a consistent table of judgments. In the Logik- Wien, which consists for the most part in material from the late seven­ ties,1 5 we encounter the formulation: "All acts of the understanding which occur in a judgment are reduced to 4 and all judgments are viewed according to them" (XXIV 929). 1 6 Kant uses the formula of the reduction of all acts of the understanding in a completely new way in the Critique. It is not only all the acts of the understanding in judgment, but all operationes men/is whatsoever, and these acts of the understanding can in turn be reduced to judgments. This reduction formula is unclear regarding what elements of the doctrines of concepts and inferences remain as independent components and what elements are retained in the four acts of the understanding in judgment. One can say purely formally that the essence of the general doctrines of concepts and infer­ ences lies in the doctrine of judgments, namely, the generality of concepts ("the form of a concept consists in its universal validity," XXIV 908) and the rela­ tions of the three possible kinds of inference. 4. The Table of Judgments

"If we abstract from all content of a judgment in general, and pay attention only to the mere form of understanding in it, we find that the function of thought in judgment can be brought under four headings. . . " (A 70). The reader is already acquainted with the distinction between an attentio negativa (abstracting from) and an attentio positiva (paying attention to). 1 7 At A 55 we find: "General logic abstracts. .. from all content of knowledge, i.e., from all relation of knowledge to the object, and observes only the logical form in the relation of parts of knowledge among themselves, i.e., the form of thought in general." In the explanatory passage we find: "This [general logic] namely abstracts from all content of the predicate (even if it is negative) and looks only to whether the same is attributed to or opposed to the subject" (A 72). If we abstract from all content-we are reminded of the formula with which item II of the "Idea of a Transcendental Logic" begins: "General logic ab­ stracts, as we showed, from all content of knowledge, °i.e., from all relation of knowledge to the object, and observes only the logical form in the relation of

The Systematic Idea of the Table

57

parts of knowledge among themselves, i.e. , the form of thought in general" (A 55);-corresponding to this concept of generality and form, in the table of judgments one should abstract from the difference between pure and empirical content. There is no general pure logic in the sense of a logic of the pure understanding, but rather a general logic that (according to the explanations in item I) is pure (negatively) only insofar as it is not applied logic. The distinc­ tion between the two concepts of purity is of course essential for understanding the table of judgments. When Kant characterizes the table as the "transcendental table of all moments of thought" (A 73), he does so in the sense that one can find moments in it that indeed appear in general logic, and thus do not destroy the framework of general logic, but would not be taken into consid­ eration if they were not important for transcendental philosophy as it is to be developed later (within the framework of the Critique). The introduction to the table of judgments presents an instruction that the author expects the reader to be able to follow without great difficulty. The reader is supposed to perform an act of abstraction from the content of judg­ ment and an act of attention to the "mere form of understanding in judgment." Let us take a relevant judgment, "All bodies are divisible," and abstract from the specific content of the knowledge expressed in the judgment. Instead of "bodies" we can place any other arbitrary concept in the subject position. Similarly, we can replace the concept of divisibility with that of heaviness, etc. The content, the relation of the judgment to the determined object, is not of interest. What remains is called the "mere form of the understanding." This form is structured according to the positions of subject, copula, and predicate by virtue of adherence to a determinate judgment and the simultaneous act of abstraction from all content whatsoever. The form of the understanding is thus not produced, but rather disclosed and discovered "in" the judgment. Further confirmation can be found in Kant's letter to C. F. Hellwag, dated January 3 , 1 79 1 . "For metaphysics, which does not also attend to what follows i n light of the position of the concepts in a judgment, consequently from the mere form. . . " (XI 2 3 3). The position of the concepts in a judgment belongs to the mere form "S is P" (whereby we must not fall prey to the mistaken assumption that such an abstract structure exists as a judgment !). The understanding has certain options that arise purely formally at each of the three positions. These options form the moments of the first three headings. This interpretation makes use of the Kantian idea that there is no thought that is not linguistically articulated. 1 8 It is nonsense to search for a form of the understanding that cannot be represented isomorphically in a linguistic judg­ ment (but can be, e.g., in some logical calculus). " . . . we find that the function of thought in judgment can be brought under four headings . . . " (A 70). The attentio positiva allows us to "find that. . . " In his procedure Kant follows (mutatis mutandis) the order of Meier's textbook, which he used for his lectures on logic. In § 300 of that work Meier

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THE TABLE OF JUDGMENTS

writes: "The analysis of a judgment (analysis, resolutio iudicii) consists in paying attention to all parts of the judgment bit by bit. All judgments can be analyzed § 1 3 9, and through this labor one finds not only the proofs of judg­ ments § 2 97 � rather, one learns to grasp them properly and to present them to others" (emphasis supplied). This is evidently the introductory passage for the following analysis of judgment. It begins with the subject concept and investi­ gates it with respect to the possibilities of quantity: "The subject of a judgment is either a singular or an abstract concept § 293 . 260. The former is a singular judgment (iudicium singulare), the latter a universal judgment (iudicium commune)" (further differentiations of quantity follow). § 302 treats of affirma­ tion and negation, thus quality in the customary terminology of logicians : "A universal affirmative judgment is true if the predicate applies to everything contained under the subject. . . a universal negative judgment is true . . . " And then what Kant treats under the heading of relation (again mutatis mutandis) follows in § 303 : "If the sufficient condition of a universal judgment 1 ) is absolutely necessary in the subject, then it is inseparable from the subject. . . Thus, in that case the judgment is universally true, for where the condition is present, so is the predicate § 299" (XVI 646-648). One might have the suspicion that this is simply a blueprint for Kant's analysis of judgment. The reader is acquainted with the practice of abstraction and "paying attention to" from the logic textbooks. Meier gets wrapped up in details that do not concern us here. What is important is only that our sugges­ tion can be supported by Meier's logic: we must pay attention to Kant's in­ struction of abstracting from all content, and attending to as well as finding the form of the understanding, and to see in this a direction that we, as presumed readers, can follow without difficulty. 1 9 More generally, we should note: i n the Transcendental Aesthetic Kant found the forms of space and time. By means of a certain procedure, they were sepa­ rated from their content and shown to be a priori, subjective, necessary, etc. In its first part, the Transcendental Analytic has a parallel procedure. 20 The form ofjudgment is found and analyzed with respect to the acts of the understanding that it makes possible or even necessary. Attempting to derive the form of the understanding in judgment seems as far-fetched here as attempting to derive the forms of space and time from some specifically human mental energy. Kant has recourse to a contingent fact that a philosopher finds in the process of analysis. This is the ground on which the edifice of transcendental philosophy is built. And according to the parts of the theory explained so far, we are not invited to hang it on a highest point, but rather to build it on this ground. A heuristic that is oriented toward the three positions marked out in judg­ ment does not subject logic to the contingencies of specific languages. The structuring of judgment according to quantity, quality, and relation is justified by the doctrine of judgments as it was developed in the introductory section (A 67-69). This was referred to above and will concern us again later.

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In the second edition of the Critique Kant formulates a claim that resembles our formula but is distinct from it in an important way. The sentence reads: "But if I investigate more precisely the relation of given knowledge in every judgment and distinguish it, as belonging to the understanding, from the relation according to the laws of reproductive imagination (which has only subjective validity), I find that a judgment is nothing other than the way of bringing given knowledge to the objective unity of apperception" (B 1 4 1 , emphasis supplied). Earlier it reads: " I could never be satisfied with the expla­ nation that logicians provide for judgment in general" (B 1 40). In the first edition Kant expresses his agreement with the practice of the logicians, in the second edition his disagreement. In the first edition we have the "we" that corresponds to the agreement, whereas in the second edition, we have the "J" ("I find that") that expresses the author, Kant, whose definition of judgment deviates from the tradition. In the first edition, too, Kant departs from the definition of judgment that the logicians provide, but he still emphasizes the agreement that none the less exists. "we find"-nothing new is required of the reader, since the reader is already acquainted with the procedure from other logics-thus the tenor of the development of the headings and moments of judgment within the framework of general logic. "All bodies are divisible"-if we abstract from the content and attend only to the form of the understanding, i.e., the purely formal options that emerge when we go through the judgment, we find (idea/iter, with the table in mind) three possibilities of modification at each of three or four positions, none of which has to do with the content, but rather result from the construction of the judgmental structure ( Urteilsgebilde). In the Phenomenology of Spirit Hegel sketches the derivation of the catego­ ries from consciousness or the pure I and takes a critical position toward Kant's mere "finding" (without mentioning him by name). His own new method of "assurance" contends "that one need no longer be content with it as an assur­ ance. Since difference begins in the pure I, in the pure understanding itself, it is thus posited that immediacy, assurance, and finding are relinquished, and com­ prehension (Begreifen) begins. But to acquire and hence be content with the plurality of the categories as in some way a discovery, e.g., from judgments, is really to be viewed as an affront to science. Where else should the understand­ ing be able to reveal necessity, if it cannot do so within itself as pure neces­ sity?"21 Kant does not derive the categories from "judgments" but rather from judgment and the form of the understanding that is found in it. Judgment itself is defined as conceptual, and thus mediate, knowledge of an object expressed in a linguistic structure of the type "S is P," e.g., "All human beings are mortal." Independently of all content, twelve options of the understanding under a total of four headings can be found in it-so Kant tells us. According to Kant's view, the "finding" is thus not one of empirical collection, but one that is developed systematically from the conceptual characterization and portrayal of judgment.

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THE TABLE OF JUDGtvffiNTS 5. The Table

Before we follow the instructions of the text and see what we find in judgment with respect to the functions of thought, one note about the phenomenon of the "table" is in order. The "First Section" referred to the possibility of a complete presentation of the functions of unity in judgments, but it ended enigmatically with the promise: "That this can easily be done can be seen in the following section" (A 69). And in the "Second Section" the first paragraph concludes with the claim: "They [the four headings and each of the three moments] can be suitably represented in the following table" (A 70). "Presentation," "can be seen," "represented" : one might have the suspicion that Kant assumes a com­ mon anthropological root for logic and visual representation. At least logic is not so complicated in its basic structure that its elements become as unrepre­ sentable in their number as a chiliagon. The number of headings and moments is such that they can be grasped uno intuitu. We need not count� rather, we can see before our eyes the easily surveyed table as an eusynoptonon. And it fits well with this feature that the headings are to be understood as topoi: "One can call every concept, every heading, under which a plurality of knowledge be­ longs, a logical location" (A 268). 22 The table metaphor does not suggest either a temporal affiliation or a genetic principle. All elements are simultaneous and equally justified. They do not arise from either a higher principle or a source that generates and defines them. The table of judgments is not a genealogical tree, neither from above nor from below. And yet in this table there is a series designated by numbers: we begin with quantity, and then proceed left to quality, then over to relation, and finally to modality. The numbers indicate that what is in question is neither clockwise nor counter-clockwise circular motion, but rather that the upper triad is set up first in the standard reading sequence, and then one proceeds to modality. We saw above that this corresponds to the irreversible structure of traditional logic. The table may also do justice optically to the special position of modality, which Kant emphasizes in the explanatory passage: the triangle of the first three headings is closed in itself as a complete geometrical figure. By extending it to a rectangle something qualitatively new is added, but in such a manner that the fourth element need only be a reflection or mirroring of the three preceding it. At the end of the explanations (A 76) it reads: "so one can also call these three functions of modality as many moments of thought in general." Modality contains everything in it and yet entirely lacks its own content-The headings and moments of relation and modality are in Latin and thus not subject to the vicissitudes of modern languages. (In the explanatory passage Kant speaks more lightly of Verhtiltnissen rather than of Relationen, and of logical Moglichkeit, Wirklichkeit and Notwendigkeit.) The first sentence following the table, which attempts to minimize its departure from the entire

The Systematic Idea of the Table

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tradition, aims for the tone of an old statute: " Since this division seems to depart from the customary practice of logicians in several, albeit non-essential respects . . . " (A 70-7 1 ). The departure, even in non-essential details, is thus mere appearance. The classical table does not really require any explanation. Kant excuses the fact that an explanation follows: " . . . thus the following observations may serve to guard against possible misunderstandings" (A 7 1 ). The last sentence under item 3 is similar: ''And this is all that I find it necessary to note for the sake of the following" ( A 74). The heading of relation does not need any explanation. Its logic is immediately evident from the table. 6. The Four Headings and the Twelve Moments of Judgment If we follow the author's instructions in a first interpretive experiment, we will initially find items (as Kant's text claims) in three positions: the understanding is active with respect to determining whether the predicate is referred to all, some, or a single one "of that which is contained under the concept of the subject" (A 7 1 ). The variables or the heading "quantity" can thus be filled out in three different ways. Judgment as presented by Kant requires a decision between these three (and no further) options. The decision is an act of the understanding that I can find independently of the particular content of the judgment, i.e. , a priori, and develop with regard to its possibilities. The copula follows, which can be affirmative or negative (we will not consider infinite judgment here). Thus, we discover a second act of the under­ standing. I find two (according to Kant's explanations, three) options, namely, the original judgmental acts of affirmation and negation� precisely this consti­ tutes the quality of judgment itself. If I proceed to the predicate, there is, on the one hand, the content, which is not of interest here, and, on the other hand, the act of relating a representa­ tion-whether it be affirmative or negative-to a quantitatively determinate realm of objects that fall under the subject concept. Only through this relation do I determine the predicate with which I began. It becomes knowledge under the condition of the subject, and it does so independently of whether this relation is affirmative or negative. If we observe this relation from a merely formal perspective and abstract from all content, and thus also from the ques­ tion whether it is concepts that provide the matter to be placed in this relation, we find that two or more judgments can occupy the position of the two con­ cepts. In the first case the result is a hypothetical judgment, in the second case a disjunctive judgment. (We simply extract this from the table and do not ask why, e.g. , copulative judgment is excluded.) Above we saw that in his explanation of the table of judgments Kant sepa­ rates the final heading from the first three: modality is different in that it does not contribute to the content of judgment (A 7 4). The same is repeated later regarding the corresponding category: "The categories of modality are different

62

THE TABLE OF ruDGfvffiNTS

in that as determinations of the object they do not expand the concept to which they are ascribed as a predicate, but rather express only its relationship to the cognitive faculties. If the concept of a thing is already complete, I can still ask of this object, whether it is merely possible, actual, or, if actual, whether it may also be necessary?" (A 21 9). ("Already complete"-this is the reason why in the Metaphysik-Politz Kant lists the categories of quantity, quality, and relation and then says, according to the transcript of the lecture: " . . . these are the cate­ gories of the understanding, and there are no others beyond them" (XXVIII 1 86)). In a footnote (referred to above) to § 39 of the Prolegomena, Kant points out "that, just as modality is not a special predicate in judgment, so too the modal concepts do not add any determination to things" (IV 325). "Not a special predicate"-we do not discover modality by means of the heuristic procedure that we have followed so far. 23 Under the heading of modality, the understanding takes a position on the validity or truth of a judgment, already completely determined with respect to its magnitude, quality, and relation. The integration of this position-taking into the judgment itself, thus the idea that every epistemic judgment is as such modally determined and that this modal determination is not ascribed to the judgment as something external to it (in the form: "it is possible, actual, neces­ sary, that p"), will be explicated in more detail with the help of the explanatory passage. '' . . . for besides magnitude, quality, and relation there is nothing more that constitutes the content of a judgment" (A 74). The concept of content stands rather awkwardly here for the functions of the understanding through which a judgment is brought about, thus precisely for the purely formal determinations of a judgment. But since modality is an integral part of thejudicium purum, one cannot easily use the concept of form here. The first three headings, in contrast to the fourth, can be located at particular positions in judgments, thus according to their "content," whereas modality is completely invisible in judgments. We already saw how the claim regarding the first three headings and their completeness is to be understood in the context of the introduction and the table of judgments. Quantity refers to the subject concept that requires quantification in judgments, quality refers to the affirmation or negation that is ascribed to judgments qua judgment, and relation refers to the remaining (necessary) connection of concepts or judgments as matter. 7. Concept, Judgment, Inference and Method After this first round the table of judgments still has a debt to be discharged. In the "First Section" of the Clue Chapter Kant says that the understanding is the faculty of thought and that all acts of the understanding can be traced back to judgments. This latter claim can be right only if all acts of the understanding,

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i.e., all parts of logic, can in fact be found in some form in the table of judg­ ments. How this claim is to be understood shall be explained in the following. a) Concept

"'The understanding can make no use of these concepts other than by judging" (A 68). Concepts are nothing other than predicates of possible judgments (A 69). Concepts are thereby integrated into the table of judgments with respect to the logical use of the understanding. They have an epistemic function only in judgment, and, conversely, judgment is nothing other than knowledge through concepts. This idea in itself is trivial and has been passed down through the tradition since Plato's Sophist. 24 Kant gives this idea a particular twist. Con­ cepts are predicates in possible judgments, and as such are general. That is why Kant says in the Aesthetic: " Space is not a discursive, or as one says, general concept. . . " (A 24) and "Time is · not a discursive, or as one calls it, general concept. .. " (A 31)-"general concept" is a tautology. "One" is (among others or at least) Christian Wolff. Wolff too had integrated, e.g., the doctrine of concepts into the doctrine of judgments (and inferences). General concepts, he taught, cannot be formed without acts of the understanding in judgments and inferences: "Notiones universales non possunt formari absque secunda & tertia mentis operatione. " 25 But he speaks of "notiones universales" as if there could be other kinds. For Kant, due to the distinction between sensibility and under­ standing, concepts are general per se, and as such they are always possible predicates of judgments. In order to understand how singular judgments are possible, despite the fact that all concepts are general, let us cite a suggestive passage from the Logik- Wien : "The form of a concept consists in universal validity. Repraesentatio, quae pluribus est communis . . . But the use of a concep­ tus can be singularis. For what can hold for many things, can also be applied to a single case. I think of a human being in individuo, i.e., I use the concept of human being in order to have an ens singulare" (XXIV 908). When we encoun­ ter proper names later in Kant's doctrine of judgments and inferences, we can, according to this passage, view them only as stand-ins for "individual human beings. " 26 If concepts as such are general, determining their location in the table of judgments is not difficult: the specific doctrine of concepts appears under the heading of quantity. The relation of subordination among concepts is deter­ mined by the extension of the subject concept; it depends on how it is character­ ized by the predicate concept. This determination is accomplished through the comparison of concepts, and in this comparison consists the peculiar act of the understanding carried out at the position of quantity and leading to that deter­ mination. If I compare the concept of divisibility with that of body, I discover that all bodies are to be subsumed under this predicate, etc. What is important is the following: General logic does not investigate the source of concepts

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THE TABLE OF JUDGMENTS

(whether, e.g. , they are empirical or non-empirical in nature), but rather only their use in knowledge. Their use is possible only in judgment. Thus, the corresponding acts of the understanding can and must be developed as acts of judgment. "Thus, we do not divide concepts into universal, particular, and singular, but rather only judgments ... We have said above that the understand­ ing is the faculty of rules. But this is the same thing, for when I have a concept, I always have a foundation of rules" (Logik- Wien, XXIV 909). Judgment requires the conceptual (not numerical)27 determination of the extension for which knowledge of the predicate concept is supposed to obtain. The concept, which as merely general refers to many, not only can but must be specified with respect to the three available possibilities of universal, particular, and singular. b) Judgment

Judgment is traditionally defined or determined as affirmation or negation, and Kant shares this conception. For example, when Kant says in item 4 of his explanation, "Problematic judgments are those where one accepts the affirma­ tion or negation as merely possible (optional)" (A 74), affirmation and negation are viewed as the actual acts of the understanding in judging. The logos capable of truth is kataphasis or apophasis, as Aristotle teaches in De Jnterpretatione (Chapter 5). For Wolff judgment consists in attribution (Zusprechen) and denial (Absprechen) : "Omne judicium ex duabus constat notionibus, notione scilicet rei, cui aliquid tribuitur, vel a qua aliquid removetur, & notione illius, quad eidem tribuitur, vel ab ea removetur." 28 The communis opinio is repeated in Lambert's Dianoiologie : "Judgment is the combination ( Verbindung) or sepa­ ration of two concepts . . . One calls attribution affirmation, non-attribution negation, and the word that expresses the affirmation or negation is called the copula. " 29 When affirmation or negation is treated, the specific quality of the judgment is at issue. The particular kind of judgment that Kant takes as foundational and submits to formal analysis is very restricted compared to the various truth-bearing judgments constituted by affirmation and negation. It is an epistemic judgment without indexical expressions (e.g. , I, here, now). 30 The following (kinds of) judgments are not considered: ''Today (yesterday, tomorrow) there is (was, will be) a sea battle," "Caesar died on the Ides of March," "The present king of France is bald" (theory of knowledge). But also "This food tastes good," "This landscape is beautiful" (theory of taste)/ "This land is my property" (theory of morals). The exclusion of statements about individuals that can be identified in space and time as singular objects or events is important for an interpretation of the entire Critique. The judgment "Cajus is mortal" does not refer to this person hie et nunc, but rather to "the" individual as an instance of something

The Systematic Idea of the Table

65

general, just as, e.g., "space" and "time" are names (cf. A 27) of something singular-general. Further, numerically determinate judgments are excluded. Despite the quantification, it is left open whether the concern is with all or some xs. All judgments that formulate the (of course arbitrarily repeatable) act or result of counting, measuring, and weighing are, one must assume, excluded from epistemic judgments, e.g., the judgment "Seven plus five is twelve," but also judgments of the form "(This determinate) A lies between B and C." The kind of judgment Kant has in mind is represented by such claims as "All bodies are divisible (heavy)," "Some bodies are metal," and "Cajus is mortal." Consequently, the table of judgments does not stand in the tradition of the doctrine of judgments of Aristotle's De Jnterpretatione, but rather in the tradition of Aristotle's Analytics, thus the doctrine of syllogisms. The former work treats of truth-bearing judgments generally (and their problematic areas, such as the case of tomorrow's sea battle). Only a small selection of this abun­ dance of possible judgments is admitted into Kant' s doctrine of judgments, namely, those with which Aristotle's doctrine of syllogisms operates, extended with special justification for singular and indefinite judgments and, under the heading of relation, hypothetical, and disjunctive judgments. The integration of modality into judgment is also an innovation. But primarily the following is important: Judgment is investigated exclu­ sively as an epistemic judgment (in the sense delimited above) and as a premise in a categorical, hypothetical, or disjunctive inference. Just as concepts were characterized as predicates of possible judgments, so judgment is characterized as the major premise (and thus also as the minor premise or the conclusion) of a possible inference. c) Inference

Is it possible to locate the doctrine of inferences under the heading of relation? As was already explained, it should not be claimed that categorical, hypotheti­ cal, or disjunctive judgments in some way contain the corresponding inferences and thus that there would be no need for independent acts of judgment (in the subsumption of the minor premise under the major premise) and the culminat­ ing act of reason in drawing its conclusion. Rather, the present interpretation claims that the very relation that is characterized here as a function of the understanding is such that it is adopted as a prestructuring element into the doctrine of inferences, namely, by creating the places at which judgment can take action with respect to particular cases and reason can draw its conclusion. The following passage from the Transcendental Dialectic establishes the correctness and indispensability of this claim: "In every syllogism I first think a rule (the major premise) through the understanding. Second, I subsu�e a piece of knowledge under the condition of the rule (minor premise) by means of the faculty of judgment. Finally, I determine my knowledge through the predicate

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THE TABLE OF JUDGI\1ENTS

of the rule (conclusion), hence a priori by reason. Thus, the relation between knowledge and its condition represented by the major premise, as the rule, constitutes the various kinds of syllogisms. They are thus precisely three-fold, as are all judgments in general, insofar as they are distinguished by the way in which they express the relation of knowledge in the understanding, namely, as categorical or hypothetical or disjunctive syllogisms" (A 304). The middle premise is decisive and difficult, both in its content and its "thus." What is the knowledge, what its condition, and wherein consists the relation? That this middle premise is formulated at all means that the rule cannot simply be replaced by some judgments which stand under the heading of relation (why the heading of relation and not that of quantity or quality?). It means, on the contrary, that this is precisely what needs to be grounded in the relation "between knowledge and its condition." Is something being asserted here about the internal relation between the elements of the major premise (in the case of the categorical judgment: condition c!nd predicate) or about a rela­ tion involving the minor premise and conclusion? In the first case the middle premise would be superfluous, since one could immediately say which kinds of judgments are available as rules. In the second case there must lie in the judg­ mental relation itself a predisposition of possibilities to be realized in a particu­ lar instance by judgment and reason. Only this second case justifies the "thus." We must interpret this to mean that knowledge is the subject of the conclusion, which stands to the condition, the predicate of the conclusion, and subject of the rule (sc. in the case of categorical inferences) in the relation of the categori­ cal, hypothetical, or even disjunctive judgment. But then the relation of the categorical, hypothetical, or disjunctive judgment must determine conversely knowledge of the conclusion-formally, since the content depends on an autonomous act of judgment. But that means that the relation expressed in the second premise and the conclusion is already contained in the judgment under the heading of relation. They contain unsaturated or free variables: in the categorical judgment the x to which the predicate refers through the subject concept, in the hypothetical judgment the decision whether the condition obtains (or not), and in the disjunctive judgment the decision which of the . alternative conditions is or is not the case. The place for judgment's decision is given in the categorical, hypothetical, or disjunctive judgment. It must be filled out by an act that the understanding cannot perform. The drawing of the conclusion by means of reason then proceeds automatically (it is "necessary"). The same state of affairs is expressed in a slightly different formulation in another passage of the "Introduction" to the Transcendental Dialectic: "Thus, every syllogism is a form of the derivation of knowledge from a principle. For the major premise always supplies a concept [the predicate] which assures that everything that is subsumed under its condition can be known from it according to a principle" (A 300). The predicate is what makes the syllogism possible.

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If Kant says of an inference of reason ( Vernunftschluj3) (i.e. , the conclusion), " . . . the inference of reason is itself a judgment that is determined a priori in the entire extent of its conditions" (A 3 2 1-322), the same is said here from the perspective of a complete syllogism ( Vernunftschluj3) : the major premise indicates the entire extent of the condition under which the conclusion ex­ presses its determinate knowledge. The passage continues: "I could also derive the proposition: Cajus [x] is mortal [b] from experience by means of the understanding. However, I am looking for a concept [a] that contains the condition under which the predicate (assertion in general) of the judgment is given (i.e. , here, the concept of human being [a]) and after I have subsumed it under this condition, taken in its entire extent (all humans are mortal), I thus determine the knowledge of my object accordingly (Cajus is mortal)" (A 3 22, letters supplied). 32 To support further the claim that the characterization of judgment involves a certain limited incorporation of the doctrines of concepts and inferences into the doctrine of judgments, I refer again to a passage from the "Introduction" to transcendental judgment in general (A 1 32-1 36): Nothing remains for general logic other ''than the task of analytically distinguishing the mere form of knowledge in concepts, judgments, and inferences, and thereby bringing into existence formal rules of all use of the understanding" (A 1 3 2- 1 3 3). Or earlier: "Since this merely formal logic abstracts from all content of knowledge (whether it be pure [or] empirical, and concerns only the form of thought (of discursive knowledge) in general, it can also encompass in its analytic part the canon for reason, whose form has its secure rule ( Vorschrift), which can be seen a priori by means of the mere dissection of the acts of reason into its moments, without thereby taking into consideration the special nature of the knowledge employed in it" (A 1 3 1 ). This dissection of the acts of reason represents a reference back to the table of judgments and its moments. General or formal logic is characterized as the Regelwerk of the understanding ("of all use of the understanding") or even of reason, in strong contrast to the faculty of judgment, which subsumes under rules, an activity that cannot be grasped by general logic: "General logic contains no provisions for the faculty of judgment, and cannot do so" (A 1 32). Thus, Kant must maintain that the doctrine of inferences, as an object of formal logic, can be treated in the doctrine of the rules or judgments of the understanding: Every rule is the major premise of an inference, whereby categorical rules or judgments are simultaneously the minor premise and the conclusion of every possible inference; thus the three moments of relation in fact provide the entire matter of the doctrine of inferences. The table of judgments guarantees complete enumeration of all possible syllo­ gisms-there can be no modes of inference other than the three modes of relation ( Verhtiltnis) under the heading of relation (Relation), and these three must in fact exist in accordance with the structure of this relation. Judgment proves to be a part of a possible inference; it is not a coincidence that categori-

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THE TABLE OF ruDGl\1ENTS

cal, hypothetical, or disjunctive inferences appear as the third level of general logic. The state of affairs described in this manner is reported as follows in the Logik-Busolt: "All acts of the understanding aim at judgments and (every object that we know) every concept is at the same time a predicate for a possible judgment. Thus, one can explain the understanding, previously explained as the faculty of concepts, as the faculty of judgments or rules: For the understanding is the source of rules, since every judgment is a rule, and every rule a judgment� e.g. , all human beings are mortal. Thus, as soon as I see a human being, this judgment is a rule for me, and this human being must also die" (XXIV 662663, parentheses supplied). The headings of quantity and quality have a secure place in the tradition of logic since Apuleius, 33 and the heading of modality is also ancient in terms of content (modus formalis), although Crusius coins the specific term that Kant uses. 34 Apparently, a prior form of the heading of relation that uses Kant 's specific term cannot be found in the traditional doctrine of judgments. 3 5 With respect to content and the specific form of the word '"relation" ( Verhaltnis), there is a relevant passage in doctrine of inferences in Meier's A uszug aus der Vernunftlehre. The first section, which concerns "learned (gelehrten) syllo­ gisms", reads: "If several true judgments contain the sufficient ground of the truth of another, they are thereby combined (verbunden) with each other § 1 5, and in this relation of true judgments consists the connection of truths (nexus veritatum)." 36 One author for whom the concept of relation is used in both the doctrine of judgments and the doctrine of inferences (although not for classi­ fyong the structure of judgment) is Crusius: "A proposition is the action of the understanding where one pays attention to the relation of at least two con­ cepts . . . " / and: "But the relation that they [inferences] have by means of their ideas, whereby one must admit the conclusion for the sake of the previous propositions, is the form of the inferences. " 38 Kant raises "relation" in a com­ pletely novel way to an independent heading of judgment. It is an identical concept for judgments and inferences. 7

d) Judgment and Inference. Historical Excursus

Reich correctly notes that for Kant the doctrine of judgment is the "core" of general pure logic (57). Aristotle's position is different. Ernst Kapp comments as follows: "The object of Aristotelian logic is syllogizesthai, thus the funda­ mental concept is the syllogism." Aristotelian logic can be "grasped in its uniqueness only through the concept of the syllogism," which explains "without further ado the one-sidedness of its doctrine of judgment and the complete lack of a logical doctrine of concept." 39 The Port Royal Logic testifies to Kapp's point and at the same time gives voice to an objection: "Cette partie que nous avons maintenant a traiter, qui comprend les regles du raisonnement, est

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estimee la plus importante de la Logique, et c'est presque !' unique qu'on y traite avec quelque soin. Mais ii y a sujet de douter si elle est aussi utile qu' on se l'imagine." 40 The shift of focus from inference to judgment can be illustrated briefly by the definition of syllogism that Aristotle provides at the beginning of the Analytica Priora: "A syllogism is discourse in which, certain things being stated, something other (heteron ti) than what is stated follows of necessity from their being so. " 4 1 The point of interest for us is the heteron ti. The ancient skeptics had already complained that the conclusion must be contained in the first premise, and thus cannot yield anything else or anything new.42 When Francis Bacon emphatically titles his logic Novum Organon, he does so because of the idea that the ancient Aristotelian organon is and must be barren; it cannot produce anything new. Kant adorns his Critique with a motto from the author who replaced the old testament of logic with a new one. The Novum Organon is supposed to replace Aristotle's " Vetus Organon" and to enable the methodological discovery of unknown states of affairs. Descartes also proposed no syllogistic rules in his Regulae ad directionem ingenii. Syllogistic form is no guarantee of truth. The truth must be known independently of any syllogism­ "advertendum est, nullum posse Dialecticos syllogismum arte formare, qui verum concludat, nisi prius eiusdem materiam habuerint, id est, nisi eamdem veritatem, quae in illo deducitur, iam ante cognoverint. Unde patet illos ipsos ex tali forma nihil novi percipere... " 43 And Locke also follows the general trend in his low opinion of the doctrine of inferences. The Essay concerning Human Understanding adopts the basic structure of Aristotle's organon, but it uses only the doctrine of concepts in Book II, Of Ideas (which take the place of concepts), and the doctrine of judgments in Book IV, after an interval concerning words and language. Locke unmasks in detail the syllogism as irrelevant for any extension of knowledge (IV 17, 4-8). In the Latin translation read by Kant: "Si quis Asiae aut Americae gentes quasdam dierit, plures ibi reperiet non minori acumine in disserendo, quam ipsemet est, etiamsi iis baud auditus unquam est syllogismus: nee puto, quempiam, cum intus et apud semet ipse ratiocinatur, ad formam syllogisticam recurrere" (§ 4). The famous dictum, "Non vero Deus in hominem parcus adeo fuerit, ut eum Animal tantum bipes effecerit, atque Aristoteli penniserit, ut rationalem eum redderet" (IV 17, 4), refers to the 44 forma artificialis of syllogisms, not to the doctrine of concepts or judgments. Kant's own concern with the doctrine of inferences is seen in the typically polemical title The False Subtlety of the Four Syllogistic Figures (1762). In this work he announces "that no other basic force of the soul is required for a complete concept than for a distinct one (since precisely the same capacity [the understanding] that knows something immediately as a mark [Merkmal] in a thing is used to represent in this mark yet another mark and thus to think the thing through a more distant mark); it is just as obvious that the understanding and reason, i.e., the faculty of knowing distinctly and that of drawing infer­ ences ' are not different basic faculties. Both consist in the capacity of judging,

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but when one judges mediately, then one infers" (II 59). The conviction that the faculty of concepts, judgments, and inferences is a single basic faculty, namely, the understanding (as a generic concept ! ), remains despite all the revolutions in logic. It is the foundation of the table of judgments and the key to its interpre­ tation. Tetens 's Philosophische Versuche iiber die menschliche Natur und ihre Entwicklung of 1777 provides confirmation: "From this it is also evident that derivation [inference] is in itself nothing other than a relating of ideas, just like judging, only that it presupposes another relation of ideas, and therefore it is, as it were, an expanded, extended, and elevated relating, but still an effect of the same faculty of relating, which must simply be active in a higher degree when it infers and concludes. " 45 The doctrine of judgments as the proper core of logic is thus well­ established in the tradition, and it also coheres well with the systematic location of syllogisms in the Dialectic, the logic of illusion. For the transcendental logic of truth (cf. A 293), no function of their own can be attributed to inferences. The doctrine of transcendental inferences by contrast has an indispensable function for knowledge. Kant retains (more like Leibniz and Wolff than Locke) the importance of inferences for epistemology. Wolff, following the example of Leibniz, 46 was sharply opposed to the view that syllogisms are unimportant: "Whoever looks only at the above proof hastily imagines being able to compre­ hend and prove everything clearly without having to turn to the form of syllo­ gisms," states the Verniinfftige Gedancken� Descartes, Tschimhaus, and Locke are named as hasty philosophers. 47 As Kapp correctly notes, the logic that Kant says Aristotle created and completed as a science is formal logic. 48 In one of its dominant branches it is formal because it works figuratively with schemata, and thus forms, and derives its inferences from the figurative, formal location of concepts. 49 When Kant applies the concept of form to his own logic, whose core has in the meantime become judgment, he does so in the wake of the Aristotelian doctrines of schemata and figures. This frees up a concept of form that is used independ­ ently of the specific definition of logical form in the second-edition deduction of the categories. There Kant writes: "The logical form of all judgments consists. in the objective unity of apperception of the concepts contained in it" (B 1 40). Kant here extends the concept of form within his transcendental philosophy, but this does not imply that the concept of "form of the understanding" in the passages preceding the table of judgments is comprehensible only through the second edition. e) Doctrine ofMethod

The characterization of judgment with respect to the options that the under­ standing discovers in its determination of the quantity of the (subject) concept, the quality of the connection, and the relation of the predicate to the subject or

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of propositions to one another is now complete. The same holds for the struc­ ture of the doctrine of elements of logic outlined in this characterization. There is also a fourth characterization of every judgment as an actual epistemic judgment. This characterization is possible only by locating judgment in an epistemic process, i.e., in the syllogistically conceived methodus of knowledge. This location is not external to the epistemic judgment (as a Judicium distinct from the propositio) but is rather constitutive of it and thus belongs to its complete characterization. There is no judgment until a decision is made as to whether its content is posited as merely provisional, as already given, or as necessary. Here I can refer only to the immediately following detailed interpre­ tation of the explanations, in particular under Kant's number 4. 8. Judgment and General Logic: Summary

Concepts are predicates of possible judgments, judgments are rules and thus premises in possible inferences. Consequently, concepts are used in judgments, and judgments in inferences. The former is established for the table of judg­ ments by the "First Section," whereas the latter is discovered through a detailed analysis of the relation that is possible and necessary in a judgment between the predicate and subject, or alternatively between two or more propositions in a judgment, with the help of later statements about inferences. Judgment presup­ poses the doctrine of concepts insofar as it can be treated in general logic, and the doctrine of inferences follows (subject to the epistemic act of judgment, which the understanding can predelineate but not realize). The relation between concepts or judgments on the basis of which categorical, hypothetical, or disjunctive inferences are possible is identical to the relation that appears in the table of judgments. To this extent the table of judgments "contains" all the elements of general logic. A comparison of the extensions of concepts is under­ taken in judgment and expressed by the quantification of the subject concept. The essential affirmation or negation of the relation made possible by this comparison is expressed in the copula, and this can be based on the relation between concepts or judgments. This then puts judgment in a position to become a component of methodically determined knowledge. Under the head­ ing of modality, judgment is located in a continuum of epistemic judgments. No isolated judgment could be knowledge. In this manner the progression through judgment and its formally deter­ mined positions yields the structure of general logic in its four parts. Without the structure of the table of judgments, the logic of the Critique of Pure Reason would collapse.

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THE TABLE OF JUDGl\IBNTS 9. A Detailed Interpretation of the Explanations

The passage containing Kant's explanations presents arguments for the com­ pleteness of the three moments for each of the four headings. Accordingly, it must be the central passage for clarifying the claim to completeness. (One gets the impression that no one wants to deny this trivial fact, yet that none of the commentators has paid heed to it.) To begin, we find the division often mentioned above between the first three headings and the fourth heading (A 74). But we also find grouped together quantity and quality, on the one hand, and relation and modality, on the other hand. This occurs when Kant connects items 1 and 2: "Similarly, infinite judgments must, in transcendental logic. . . " (A 71)-infinite judgment is treated as parallel and complementary to the case of singular judgment. There is no bridge at all between 2 and 3. However, in 4 Kant refers back to 3 (" In the above example, the sentence: there is complete justice . . . " [A 75]), and when 3 concludes with the note, "And this is all that I find it necessary to note so far as concerns what follows" (A 74), one can perhaps identify "what follows" as item 4 (an interpretation that concurs with this will be explained below). None of the four headings is treated in isolation. Only the moments are treated in this manner. The only reference to the headings is found at the beginning of the explanation of modality, in reference to the special status of this heading as compared to the other three. We must also consider the follow­ ing among the entirely incidental features of the explanations: Explanations 1, 2, and 4 all conclude with a reference to the moments of thought in their entirety: "and deserves a special place in a complete table of the moments of thought in general" (A 71); " . . . and to this extent they must not be passed over in a transcendental table of all moments of thought in judgment. . ." (A 73); " .. .in this manner one can call these three functions of modality as many moments of thought in general" (A 76; initially one might think that it should be reversed: "the three moments of modality are as many functions of thought"). This point is surely important for the question of the completeness of the three moments in each case. 50 The explanation in 1 divides into three sections. First, it confirms that singular judgments do not need to be treated separately with respect to their use in syllogisms� they can justifiably be treated as universal judgments. Second, as knowledge, however, singular judgments are certainly to be distinguished from universal judgments. And third, it is therefore the case that singular judgments occupy a place of their own in a complete table of all moments of thought in general. The explanation in 2 is structured in the same way. Again, it first confirms that general logic can assign the third moment (here: infinite judgment) to the first (here: affirmation) and, accordingly, it need not be presented separately. Second, there is the transcendental perspective on the table of judgments (in the

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sentence: "But the former [transcendental logic] also views judgment according to the value or content of this logical affirmation by means of a merely negative predicate, and according to what kind of addition this makes to the entirety of knowledge," A 72): with respect to the entirety of knowledge, infinite judgment is distinct from affirmative judgment. And third: "Thus, these infinite judg­ ments . .. " (A 73)-they occupy their own place in a "transcendental table of all moments of thought in judgments" (A 73). The passage under item 2 that we have passed over ("If I had said of the soul. .. without it being that for this reason the concept of the soul is increased in the least, and is affirmatively characterized as affirmative," A 72 and A 73) explains what is meant by the example of the judgments "The soul is not mortal" and "The soul is immortal." 'The logicians correctly say that in the use of judgments in syllogisms ... " (A 71); we re-encounter the phrase "the use of judgments in relation to one an­ other" in the summary of the paragraph (in the parenthetical text). 5 1 Clearly, the logicians52 represent the perspective of general logic, explicitly mentioned under item 2. Thus, it is the case that general logic likewise presents the first two headings (as well as the two remaining headings of relation and modality), but it identifies only two moments for quantity and quality. The explanatory passage serves to justify the introduction of the third moment in each case, and thus the completeness of the table of judgments in this section. In both cases the point of view that transcends general logic is that of the epistemic value of the singular or the infinite judgment in comparison with other knowledge. In item 2 this is designated as the point of view of transcen­ dental logic. The reader is familiar with this point of view from the ''Introduction" to the Transcendental Analytic. However, the explanation of the table of judgments does not develop its argument in terms of the distinction between pure a priori knowledge and empirical knowledge (A 55-56), essential for transcendental logic, but rather refers to the possible importance of infinite judgment for transcendental knowledge (A 73). 5 3 The function of the under­ standing designated in the third moment has thus not yet received any tran­ scendental characterization, but it is open to it. This point of merely proleptic incorporation of the transcendental perspective is expressed in a similar way in the Logik- Wien; there Kant says of infinite judgments: "The relation is the same as in an affirmative judgment, but the negation is still there, and conse­ quently they are to be distinguished from affirmative judgments. This issue appears to be a subtlety in logic. But in metaphysics it is important not to have passed over it here" (XXV 930). The purely formal, not yet transcendental-philosophical aspect according to which the third moments of quantity and quality are introduced is the relation of the knowledge expressed in singular and infinite judgments to a totality. Singular judgment is compared to universal judgment and relates "to it as unity to infinity" (A 71). Infinite judgment places the individual subject (e.g., the

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THE TABLE OF JUDGMENTS

soul) in the sphere of the possible that remains even if the affirming predicate is withdrawn ("But this limits the infinite sphere of everything possible only to the extent that mortality is separated from it and the soul is placed in the remaining extent of its space . .. " A 72-73). We shall see that the third moment under the heading of relation also places knowledge in relation to a sphere as a whole. This perspective completes the preceding moments and because it thematizes the whole, cannot be transcended by further moments-such must be the form of arguments for the thoroughgoing three-fold structure of the moments, to which the whole of an a priori necessary syllogism is then added under the heading of modality. Thus, an indeed contentful perspective is rendered valid, but not in such a way that it already receives its transcendental­ philosophical characterization. It remains purely formal and can be grasped as a function of the understanding, or as a form of the understanding, within the framework of the moments of thought in general. At the end of item 2 it reads: " ... because the function of the understanding exercised here can perhaps be important in the field of pure knowledge a priori" (A 73). We need not search for the passage to which Kant wants to refer here by reading and interpreting the succeeding parts of the Critique of Pure Reason (an undertaking whose result might be problematic). The (or at least one) reference can be found by noting the superficial fact that the same term ' non-mortal' recurs in the explication of the transcendental Ideal (A 57 1-583, esp. A 574). There too we find reference to the limit that is designated by the predicate (A 577). The basic idea is the following. Kant distinguishes the detenninability of concepts from the thoroughgoing determinacy of things (and thus also of objects of experience). According to the principle of non­ contradiction, only one of two contradictorily opposed predicates can be attrib­ uted to concepts. "But every thing, according to its possibility, stands under the principle of thoroughgoing determinacy according to which of all possible predicates of things, insofar as they are compared with their opposites, one must be attributed" (A 57 1-572, emphasis supplied). The predicates are not compared with each other only logically and either affirmed or negated in the judgment, "but rather the thing itself, (is) compared transcendentally with the . sum of all possible predicates" (A 573). In this lies the difference between the merely logical negation of mortality in the judgment "The soul is not mortal" and the transcendental negation that is expressed in the predicate of immortal­ ity. This predicate places the subject in the sphere of that which remains from the sum of all possible predicates, the omnitudo rea/itatis, when it is limited by the concept of non-mortality� "omnis (positio et) negatio est determinatio"-by limiting the sum of all possible predicates, the contradictory predicates of mortality and immortality determine the thing to which the subject concept applies in the same way. This transcendental principle is valid both for things like the soul and for objects of experience (Cajus). Formal logic abstracts from all content of knowledge.

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Kant' s explanation of the transcendental Ideal confirms that the incorpora­ tion of an individual thing (or object) under the heading of quantity, and of an infinite predicate under the heading of quality, amount to complementary locations of the subject and predicate from the perspective of their comparison with the infinite totality (A llheit) and with all other possible predicates. The completeness of the three moments under each heading is therefore determined by progressing from a merely logical determination, in terms of the duality of general and particular and of affirmation and negation, to the complete deter­ minacy of the thing or object itself (to be explained later transcendental­ philosophically). The reference of unity to infinity and of the predicate to the sum of all possible predicates is accomplished through a mere comparison. However, this comparison does not proceed ac;cording to the principle of non­ contradiction, but rather according to the principle of excluded middle, which establishes a reference to the omnitudo of that with respect to which the alter­ natives are conceived as necessary. This function of the understanding cannot be exercised without considering the content of the knowledge. However, it still remains (if we can paraphrase the intention of the passage) purely formal. While the sequence of the moments under the remaining three headings is justified internally and thus cannot be changed, a reversed structure is conceiv­ able among the three moments of quantity: we begin with one, proceed to some, and then through induction or enumeration arrive at all. (The category of quantity moves from unity through plurality to totality, A 80.) Why doesn't the table of judgments follow this model? At a certain level Kant justifies the sequence "universal-particular-singular": "The logicians correctly say that in the use of judgments in syllogisms one can treat singular judgments like uni­ versal judgments" (A 7 1 ). Since Kant is interested in judgments as epistemic judgments in possible syllogistic contexts, he can follow the practice of the logicians who, in the Aristotelian tradition, begin with universal judgment in the doctrine of syllogisms and then limit it� according to this tradition, the particular follows sensibly and necessarily upon the universal. With his singu­ lar judgment, Kant has then merely filled a third position, one which Aristotle marked with his indefinite judgment. 54 But this does not answer the systematic question why, once singular judg­ ment has been introduced, one cannot begin with it. From the previous analysis this much can be ascertained: singular judgment could not be a judgment of perception with which experience could begin. The proposition "Cajus is mortal" (A 322) does not register an empirical phenomenon at a certain place at a certain time, but rather individualizes the type human being. Cajus is not a name of a historical person, but rather a stand-in for a name. Determination of the person as an individual in epistemic judgment is (even transcendentally) possible only under the assumption of totality. Omnitudo is not, conversely, the result of a plurality of individual items of knowledge.-We shall return to this point in the following explanation of relation.

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Under the heading of quantity judgments are either universal, particular, or singular. Kant's explanations assume that universal judgments are affirmative: .. , All ... " not "No . .. " Merely logical explanation of the first two moments would have demanded the introduction of the two logical forms "No . .. " and "Not some" ; they play no specifically transcendental role, although they are also not excluded. The text explaining the heading of relation (Relation) divides into four parts. First, the three moments of relation (called Verhaltnis here) are presented and distinguished according to principles that stand in need of explanation. Second ("The hypothetical proposition. .. "), hypothetical judgments or proposi­ tions are treated. Third ("Finally the disjunctive judgment. .. "), disjunctive judgments or propositions are treated. Fourth ("And this is all. . . "), there is a sentence that appears to relate the preceding passage-in particular the expla­ nation of hypothetical and disjunctive judgments, not the first section-to the text of item 4. We note that the third point suggests, with its 'finally' (denique), that he has already treated, first, categorical and then, second, hypothetical judgment. However, it is the presentation of all three moments that was first; categorical judgment is not considered separately. We shall attempt to understand the justification of this unjustified 'finally. '-The switch from Relation to Verhaltnis is grounded in no substantive difference (which would then be unjustified), but rather in the status of the two passages. As was noted above, the table presents the headings in Latin (and the moments of relation and modality) in a methodus tabellaris; it thereby bestows on them the dignity of a classical canon. As much as possible, the explanatory passage follows the more modest lingua volgare. In item 3 (and 4) Kant uses in addition to the concept of judgment that of a proposition, and mostly (but not always) when a judgment appears in a (hypothetical or disjunctive) combination. His various attempts in other writ­ ings and in the Rejlexionen at distinguishing between judgments and proposi­ tions according to other perspectives 55 need not interest us here, as long as the difference that is suggested by the passage suffices: Judgment is an independent­ logical unity, whereas a proposition tends to be regarded as a judgment that is part of a larger judgment. "All relations of thinking in judgments . . . " Here Kant asserts completeness with respect to the three moments of relation, and the reader must conjecture that some thought underlying the following statements can justify this · claim. Whether one can discover this thought in the passage appears doubtful. The concept of relation must be made more precise. Just as, under the first heading, referring a concept to a plurality ( Vie/es) requires the quantification of a concept, so relation as such, with a priori necessity, offers three alternatives between which the understanding must decide. Perhaps the following thought will help: The concern is not with symmetrical relations, as the concept sug-

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gests, but rather with assymetrical ones. Judgment is understood as the relation of the predicate to the subject, not conversely of the subject to the predicate, of the ground to the consequent, not of the consequent to the ground, and of knowledge to the components comprehended under it (infra) and combined among themselves (inter se). Predicate and subject and ground and consequent lie, for example, on completely different levels, so that it is difficult to find a tertium in which one of the relations can be in any way correlated with the other. However, from a purely external point of view, the directions of detenni­ nation of predicate with respect to subject and of ground with respect to conse­ quent are opposite, whereas disjunctive judgment neutralizes the directions and subordinates the components to a higher unity. If we call these components (which in this �ontext are not distinguished as to concepts and judgments) a and b in both of the first two cases and a, b, c . . . Y in the third case, the following relations could be in question: 1. b to a (" All human beings [a] are mortal [b]")� 2. a to b ("If all human beings are mortal [a], the persistently evil person will not be punished according to principles of justice [b ]") � 3 . "The world ( Y) exists either through mere chance (a), or through inner necessity (b), or through an external cause (c)." 1 and 2 are related to each other inversely (in 1 the predicate detennines what is designated by the subject concept, since mortality detennines human beings; in contrast, in 2 being a human being is the ground for the mortality: if x is a human being, then x is mortal). 3 neutralizes this relation via a unity with complementary parts or alternatives. Thus, b determines a (realized in a categorical judgment), a detennines b (realized in a hypothetical judgment), and a, b, c determine each other reciprocally in Y (realized in a disjunctive judgment). The additional sentence, "In the first kind of judgment only two concepts, in the second two judgments, in the third several judgments are considered in relation to one another," is of only limited help. None the less a principle of progression and completeness becomes visible: two concepts as the minimum, two judgments as an extension, several judgments as the maximum with respect to relata within a judgment. Numerical completeness is addressed in connection with the two possible fillers (concept, judgment), and a kind of combinatorial completeness proof is achieved in a manner similar to what we have already observed in Lambert. 5 6 After this preliminary analysis, if we consider the passage in which Kant elucidates hypothetical and disjunctive judgments, we can observe the influence of the principle of progression. The decisive sentences read: "The hypothetical proposition, ' If there is perfect justice, the persistently evil person will be punished, ' contains the relation of two propositions" and "Finally, the disjunc­ tive judgment contains a relation of two or several propositions to one an­ other.. . " The numerical principle that determines the sequence here is clear. The empty retrospective of the 'finally' now becomes intelligible: It is a matter of enlarging the first element, the relation of two concepts in the case of cate-

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THE TABLE OF JUDGMENTS

gorical judgment. We thus have a complete system of 1 . two concepts, 2. two propositions, and 3. two or more propositions. This suggests that the relation between two concepts must be a categorical judgment, the relation between two and only two propositions must be a hypothetical judgment, and the relation of at least two propositions must be a disjunctive judgment. The passage explaining relation appears to offer two systems, one logical­ relational and one numerical (involving two concepts and two or more proposi­ tions), both structured as internally consistent and closed. In both cases, the principle of classification appears to have little to do with the logical prob­ lematic of the three forms of judgment. Rather it gives the impression of a taxonomy external to the doctrine of the forms of judgment. In order to find the truly interesting point with respect to completeness, we must compare the explanation of item 3 with those of quantity and quality. In all three cases Kant is concerned exclusively with the third moment. Even in the last case disjunctive judgment occupies almost half of the explanatory passage. The words that signal a commonality of content: Item I : relation of unity to infinity, of the judicium singulare to the judicia communia; item 2 : the entire extent, the infinite sphere of everything possible; item 3: the sum-total of divided knowledge, the whole sphere of knowledge. Common to each of the third moments is the relation of a given individual to the whole in which the individual is located. Located: space clearly serves as a foil for comprehending this specifically logical relation and at the same time the moment in the relation that transcends mere logic. The first two moments can perhaps be taken as positions and their merely logical negations or rever­ sals: The negation of "All" leads to �,Some," the negation of affirmation to negation� the reversal of the direction of determination in moving from cate­ gorical judgment to hypothetical judgment. In the third moment this internal reference is abandoned, and the judgment is related to a presupposed totality of content. Under the heading of relation, the reference of individual pieces of knowl­ edge to the whole is so conceived that the mutually exclusive pieces of knowl­ edge constitute among each other (inter se) the whole under (infra) which they are conceived as parts. When Kant refers the aut of the disjunction not to two, but rather "several judgments" (A 73), it is clearly not the purely logical exclu­ sion of two contradictory judgments, but rather the reciprocal exclusion of several judgments whose content is so determined that it entirely fills the sphere of knowledge. In conclusion, one problem must be mentioned that Kant does not address in his explanation of the moments of relation but which presents itself to the reader. In categorical judgment two concepts provide the matter of the relation, in hypothetical judgment it is two propositions, and in disjunctive judgment it is two or more propositions. Is this relation itself of a homogeneous nature? If it is, the relation of the predicate and the subject would have to be necessary,

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since implication and disjunction have a necessary character in propositional logic. We shall return to the modal status of the moments of relation in the discussion of modality. "And this is all that I find necessary to note so far as concerns what follows" (A 74), reads the concluding formulation in item 3. One can read this as a reference to item 4 and then argue, in contrast with the explanation of the third moment in items 1 and 2, that it is not primarily a question of showing that ''the function of the understanding exercised here can perhaps be important in the field of pure knowledge a priori" (A 71). Rather, disjunctive judgment also needs to be mentioned for the purposes of general logic, and the special expla­ nation is added only as a preparation for the heading of modality. However, if we consider that disjunctive judgment places pi�ces of knowledge in relation to an entire sphere of knowledge, then it cannot be completely excluded that ··what follows" is identical to that part of the Critique to which the conclusion of item 2 refers, namely, the transcendental Ideal. But independently of this interpretative point we can still ascertain that, according to the explanatory passage, the third moment of each of the first three headings has to do with the whole, thus with reason, whereas this is not true of the first two moments. We now turn to the final heading, that of modality. Above we referred to th.e special place of Kant's "problem child," 57 which he now immediately empha­ sizes. The paragraph itself suggests the following articulation: After referring to their special status ( 1 : "The modality of the judgments. . . thought in general"), Kant defines or explains the three moments of judgment through the different kinds of affirmation and negation (2 : ''Problematic judgments... view it as necessary") a section follows in which problematic judgment is located in hypothetical and disjunctive judgments and explained in more detail through recourse to the remarks under item 3 (3: "Thus, both judgments are. ..arbitrary acceptance of them into the understanding"). Then follow logical actuality or the truth of assertoric judgment and finally the logical necessity of apodictic judgment, determined by their position in hypothetical or disjunctive syllogisms (4: "The assertoric judgment speaks of logical actuality .. .logical necessity"). A final observation on the structure just sketched (5 : "Because everything here... ") leads to the conclusion that one could "also call these three functions of modal­ ity as many moments of thought in general" (A 76). Kant writes in a footnote to the second section (A 75, cf. above) : "Just as if thought in the first case were a function of the understanding, in the second case, one of the faculty of judgment, and in the third case, one of reason" � this theme is clearly alluded to in the concluding phrase of item 4 just cited, namely, that one could "also call these three functions of modality as many moments of thought in general" (A 76). Modality, it appears, unifies thought in general, which previously had unfolded into its three basic functions of con­ cepts, judgments, and rules for inference.

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The modality of judgments is not acquired or articulated by placing "it is possible that p," "it is actual that p," or "it is necessary that p" in front of the proposition "p. " 58 Modality is a feature that is inherent in every epistemic judgment as such, as a judicium purum. Clearly, Kant can speak of logical possibility, actuality, and necessity because he locates each of the moments of modality in hypothetical and disjunctive judgments or propositions (as prem­ ises) and in the propositions that follow from them syllogistically (which are always categorical). Assertoric judgment is characterized logically as the minor premise in a hypothetical inference. Apodictic judgment appears to be acquired as the conclusion of an inference not further described. According to this syllogistic topology, assertoric and apodictic judgments are thus categorical judgments, whereas problematic judgment is described as a component propo­ sition in a hypothetical or disjunctive judgment. But this is just one layer in the logical characterization of the three moments of modality. The situation becomes more comphcated when one notes that Kant says of assertoric judgment (or proposition) that it is "already combined with the understanding according to the latter' s laws" and of apodictic judgment that it thinks "the assertoric proposition as determined by these laws of the under­ standing itself' (A 76). According to and by-how is this apparently precisely calculated relationship to be understood?59 Kant does not explicate the laws of the understanding. He presupposes that the reader is familiar with them or thinks that what is meant could be gathered from the context without any specification of the laws in question. If we accept the latter alternative as the key idea to the interpretation (to be supported later by the former alternative), we are forced to make the following rearrangement (Revirement) : Kant defines problematic judgment as a partial proposition in a hypothetical or disjunctive judgment or proposition (as a major premise), but at the same time it is conceived of as an independent judgment, "as an optional judgment that it is possible for someone to accept" (A 75). In regards to the moments of relation, a possible judgment can thus certainly appear as a cate­ gorical judgment. If we think of assertoric judgment as "already combined with the understanding according to the latter's laws," we then move to hypothetical judgment, in which a proposition is characterized according to a certain rule: "if p, then q." For apodictic judgment we can then say, following this line of thought, that it is conceived of as a component proposition in a disjunctive judgment� it is "determined by these laws of the understanding itself' (A 76)­ through the determination of the other components it follows necessarily that p or not-p. Such an experiment leads to the coordination of problematic with categori­ cal, assertoric with hypothetical, and apodictic with disjunctive judgment. Kant presumably regards the laws of the understanding as the same laws that were already mentioned in the introduction ("Idea of a Transcendental Logic"): "Thus, the merely logical criterion of truth, namely, the agreement of

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knowledge with the universal and formal laws of the understanding and reason, is the conditio sine qua non, consequently the negative condition of all truth. But logic cannot go further, and it cannot discover any error that concerns not the form but rather the content through any touchstone" (A 59-60). One will think (given knowledge of the author's other statements) of the principles of non-contradiction, of sufficient reason, and of excluded middle and attempt to coordinate these logical laws or principles with the moments of relation and modality in question. Categorical judgment is at least logically possible, i.e. , it may "also be obviously false" (A 75). It is defined logically with respect to the principle of non-contradiction. 60 Hypothetical judgment asserts the consequent of "if-then." It is connected with the understanding according to the principle of sufficient reason. In the disjunctive judgmen� "aut p aut q aut. .. " the neces­ sity of one of the component propositions is posited through the determination of the others (and conversely), thus a necessity is formulated a priori according to the principle of excluded middle. This is approximately how the reader must understand the incorporation of the "laws of the understanding." (We can add here that-according to Kant-with quantitatively, qualitatively, and rela­ tionally determined judgments, together with the "laws of the understanding (and of reason)," we are supposed to have in hand all formally possible judg­ ments and the syllogistic rules of derivation.61 ) The passage under consideration claims that an apodictic proposition considers "the assertoric proposition as determined by these laws of the under­ standing" (A 76). This remark introduces a further layer of considerations. Kant undertakes the process of locating the moments of modality in the syllo­ gistic structure, so that problematic judgment appears in the hypothetical or disjunctive major premise, assertoric judgment appears in the minor premise (as a categorical proposition in a hypothetical inference), and apodictic judg­ ment appears as the conclusion (as a categorical proposition qua conclusion of a presumably disjunctive inference). Further, he suggests that problematic judgment be regarded as categorical judgment, assertoric as hypothetical judgment, and apodictic as disjunctive judgment, according to the three laws of the understanding. Third, however, in a further layer of argumentation it is assumed that the three moments are concerned with one and the same judg­ ment, initially asserted as merely possible, then as actual, and finally as neces­ sary. In this last step, it is precisely the assertoric judgment that is regarded as determined by the laws of the understanding� it is now deduced with logical necessity. The identity of the modally declined judgment is assumed in the second section as well as at the end of the third section and then again in the fourth. At this level the syllogistic topology serves only the acquisition of logical modality in general� it does not determine propositional content. When Kant says of logical necessity that it is "affirmative a priori," we must think of the formulation of a syllogism: "Finally, I determine my knowledge through the predicate of the rule (conclusio), consequently a priori through

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reason" (A 304). But how this a priori necessity of a syllogism is supposed to inform the modal status of the judgment will presumably remain an insoluble puzzle. We can now move to the level at which the heading of modality can occupy the position of the fourth part of Aristotelian textbooks, namely, method. The course is laid out whereby one proceeds from an initially arbitrary and prob­ lematic thesis to a hypothetical justification of this thesis and then to the proof of its necessity. The propositional content remains identical throughout the three stages of knowledge; only its epistemological status is changed. Thus, one cannot determine from the proposition or judgment as such, insofar as it is determined by the first three headings, where it is located in the context of the acquisition of knowledge. However, every judgment, according to the thesis of the table of judgments, occupies one of the three possible positions. The tempo­ ral epistemic process (the problematic proposition is assumed "initially," "for a moment" ; the assertoric proposition is "then,'' "already" combined with the understanding; "finally" comes the status of necessity) runs irreversibly in an unambiguous direction. It is possible that not all of the theses providing the raw material attain the status of the other two stages. The knowledge of the last stage is determined by all laws of the understanding and reason: it is free of contradiction, justified, and follows with necessity from the falsity (impossibility?) of the possible alternatives in the whole of knowledge. Associated with this methodology is a process of subjective assent and gradual acceptance. In a sense, the synkatathesis or assensus in its various stages, as it was developed in Hellenistic philosophy, corresponds to the doc­ trine of method in the Aristotelian tradition. In the first presentation of the three moments of modality a grammatical peculiarity leads to precisely this connection; when it reads, "Assertoric, since it is viewed as actual (true)" (A 74-75), the sense dictates that ' it' be referred, on the one hand, to the content of the judgment, i.e. , the propositional content, but, on the other hand, to affirmation and negation. Thus, it should read: "Assertoric judgments are those where what is judged is viewed as actual and affirmation or negation is viewed as true." The same holds for the following 'it, ' where it should then read: "Apodictic judgments are those where one regards what is judged and affirmation and negation as necessary" (A 75). In the passage that follows, the sphere of belief and certainty or assent is taken up in the idea that everything "is gradually incorporated into the understanding" (A 76)62 -this incorporation up to complete certainty runs parallel to the methodically guided process of acquisition of knowledge. It should be noted here that not any arbitrary provisional belief attains the level of absolute cer­ tainty and episteme, but failure is not predetermined by the fact that the realm of objects does not qualify, either ontologically (Plato) or transcendental­ philosophically (Kant), for the highest level of assent. Kant does not build a class division between the problematic and assertoric or apodictic judgments in

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such a way that judgments about empirical states of affairs belong to the first class and a priori judgments belong to the last class. Correspondingly, apodictic judgment is to be sure "'affirmative a priori" (A 76), but this "a priori" refers not to the propositional content as such, but rather to the final degree of prov­ ability. All epistemic judgments treated by the table of judgments provide the homogeneous material for problematic, epistemically provocative theses, assertoric claims, and the treasure chest of judgment established as necessary in the non plus ultra of conclusive knowledge. The three moments of modality are presented as three stages in one epis­ temic process. The path leads from an arbitrary assumption (albeit one not lacking in motivation) to knowledge of necessity. With this heuristic (" ... serves . . . to find the true one," A 75) the preceding headings of the table of judgments are used, but not extended in content. The cognitively necessary moments of quantity, quality, and relation determine a judgment that is taken over as complete under the heading of modality and located in the whole of knowledge. In this manner we preserve Kant's programmatic statement that modality does not add anything new to the content, and at the same time it is true that one can "call these three functions of modality as many moments of thought in general" (A 76). Three functions of modality, not (only) moments, and they are as many moments of thought in general. Modality reflects the functions of thought in general. In such a reflection problematic judgment is to be associated with quantity, assertoric judgment with quality, and necessary judgment with relation. The first heading, as one might follow this thought, designates the extensional comparison carried out in each judgment. The comparison leaves it open whether a concept stands in an actual relation with another. Under the heading of quality, precisely this is affirmed or denied in the sense of a comparison; relation then adds the connec­ tion ( Verkniipfung) and thus the necessary combination (Verbindung) of the predicate with the subject (or two or more judgments). This sketches an order of cognitive process in the triangle of judgments expressed under the heading of modality, but which might already be discovered in proceeding from the first to the third heading. The reader is invited to this reflection and at the same time inclined to leave it as a mere possibility. " . . . so that one initially judges something problematically ... " (A 76)-who is this "'one"? The reader must assume that an empirically contingent subject is intended, since the transcendental subject cannot be the subject of temporal changes. But isn't this arbitrary "one" in danger of error? Subjectively, the form of progression from problematic to necessary judgment does have internal evidence, but the alleged necessity can rest on a faulty inference, and the asserted truth can be an illusion. If the concern here is epistemological, we must be able to find an antidote for subjective idiosyncrasies with their merely fictitious certainties. If we view the Critique of Pure Reason as a whole, such an antidote can be found. It is seen in free criticism: "Upon this freedom

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depends even the existence of reason, which has no dictatorial authority, but rather whose statements are always nothing other than the agreement of free citizens, each of whom must be able to express his misgivings, or even his veto, without reservation" (A 73 8-739). Just as little as there is a modally determined judgment, and thus in general an epistemic judgment, to which one of the three moments of modality is ascribed in complete isolation, can there be a private "one" who achieves knowledge-there is no private reason, and there is no isolated epistemic judgment. Anticipating our considerations pertaining to the genesis of the table of judgments, a passage may be cited from the Logik­ Blomberg. It concerns the establishment of truth or of assertion (after a prior stage of merely problematic assumption) : "we obtain no new knowledge when we determine that something is true. Rather, what happens is nothing other than that all other human beings cease judging it and agree to it. As long as an issue is still debated, as long as disputes are exchanged between the two sides, the issue has not yet been settled" (XXIV 204 )-the truth, according to this, is nothing other than the consensus omnium that declares the debate to be over and the truth found according to the example of a legal verdict. However, this aspect is not to be considered in detail within the framework of our analysis of the table of judgments. 63 The question of the completeness of the three moments of modality is not treated separately in the explanatory passage-the triad and its arrangement is apparently so evident for Kant that it requires no special discussion. First, the combination of possible, actual, and necessary is used in earlier works and by other authors and logicians as an indubitable triad (more on this later). Second, there is the trio of epistemic faculties in the footnote already cited: understand­ ing, judgment, and reason. Third, although it is closely related to the last point, there is the three-fold structure of syllogisms� that it consists in a major prem­ ise, a minor premise, and a conclusion requires no further explanation. 10. The Completeness of the Table of Judgments

In the introduction to the Clue Chapter Kant says that the pure concepts of the understanding must cohere according to a concept or an idea. "But such a coherence provides a rule . . . " (A 67). The coherence that provides a rule for discovering all pure concepts of the understanding is the table of judgments. Our detailed analysis of the table and its explanation has shown that it is conceived of as a coherent whole (conceived-our interpretation has said nothing about the question as to how the individual parts and the whole are to be evaluated) . As a coherent morpheme it satisfies the condition demanded of the clue, namely, that it establish a coherent structure (Zusammenhang) for locating the categories. The table must cohere according to a concept or an idea. We found that there are no indications that Kant sought this concept or idea in the "I think" in order to derive the table of judgments from a highest

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point and to protect the coherent system from being merely empirical and contingent in its entirety (if that is possible, and the coherence does not already guarantee its a priori status). What idea is to be placed in the position of this a priori guarantee of the soundness, and not only of the coherence, of the table of judgments? Does not contingent judgment remain alone in the end, a judgment that might represent a different formal structure in another language? Is it not merely an empirical fact of traditional logic, with its four-fold division of concept, judgment, inference, and method? The Critique 's answer is that the "First Section" develops the decisive idea that secures the table of judgment from empirical contingency. Intuition and the understanding confront each other. Understanding is the faculty of concepts. Concepts can be used only in judgments. Jud_gments are "functions of unity among (unter) our representations" (A 69). Judgment is an articulated unity. And now the three-fold process that we have run through a number of times: Concepts refer to a plurality� in judgment they are subjected to a conceptual determination of this open plurality. Second, judgment as such is at least affirmation or negation. Third, in judgment concepts are not only compared but connected, i.e., an epistemic relation is posited that is identical to the relation in possible inferences. For heuristic purposes we can be guided by the linguistic formulation of a model judgment, and progress through it: from the quantification of the subject concept, to the copula, to the relation of the predicate to the subject (or the further moments of relation). The fourth heading is then added when this epistemic judgment is located in the process of knowledge. This process reveals both the single concept or idea and the coherent struc­ ture from which and in which the table of judgments offers a guarantee of its completeness and a priori status. It is not "surprising" 64 that Kant nevertheless says that no reason can be given "why we have precisely these and no other functions of judging" (B 146)-we find the discursive forms, just like the forms of intuition, in the fact of our (always linguistic) thinking and intuiting. This fact is as such contingent and cannot be justified or derived by means of a final proof (Letztbegrundung). 1 1. Supplementary Considerations Concerning the Table Kant' s analysis leads to four headings or topoi, locations. In every actual epistemic judgment they must be occupied by one and only one of the three moments that are possible under each heading. Only after a full determination through the four headings is an epistemic judgment complete. Purely formally, no variable should be able to influence how one of the other ·locations is occupied. However, in fact the character of judgments as epistemic favors certain combinations. Thus, disjunctive judgment is supposed to com­ pletely determine the subject concept: "The world exists either through mere

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chance, or through inner necessity, or through an external cause" (A 74). The component propositions cannot be negative because they are supposed to determine positively the sphere of the concept as a whole (contradictory judg­ ment is to be excluded outright).-Purely formally, one could invent a modal declension for hypothetical and disjunctive judgments. But in fact the concern is with necessary connections between judgments.-The Critique does not explain which possible combinations come into question. Kant never claims that all formally possible combinations are actually possible; such a claim would be ridiculous. 65 The modal characterization of inferences is not a topic of discussion in logic or in transcendental philosophy, but it can be raised by way of the idea of knowledge of the fourth heading: paradoxically, all results (the conclusions of individual syllogisms) are only problematically necessary under the aspect of epistemic progress. What Newton says is in a sense postponed by Lessing ad Kalendas Graecas : Are the laws actually laws of nature, or only provisional, eternally revisable opinions?-For Kant this is never decided. In this manner relation and modality are actually intertwined: they make possible the constant revision of the apodictic judgment, "This judgment expresses an actual law of nature." The epistemology of the Critique contains no instruction for deciding apodictically in a concrete case whether a certain event is a cause of another event; just as little does it provide a criterion for deciding finally and conclu­ sively with regard to an alleged and only provisionally posited law: Yes, this law obtains in nature. But at the same time the Critique of Pure Reason aims to make it possible that certain judgments can be valid as objective knowledge of nature. From the first perspective, modal iteration is always possible and necessary; from the second perspective, there is knowledge that is no longer subject to revision. 12. Toward Evaluating the Table

The judgments or propositions of Kant's general logic are not epistemic judg­ ments. They make knowledge of metaphysics, mathematics, natural science, etc. , possible in the first place, but are in their own right only the formal canon of these sciences. Consequently, they cannot be true or false, and no question arises how general logic is possible as a science. Perhaps the fact that general logic is presented in the Critique of Pure Reason in the form of a table with certain concepts, rather than in a continuum of judgments, does justice· to this pre-epistemic state of affairs. If we attempt to evaluate the table of judgments on the basis of the preceding (or a better or more logical) interpretation, we are faced with the alternative of evaluating it either, as for Hellenistic or Hegelian logic, as a body of knowl­ edge, thereby pursuing an interpretation of our own, or, as for the Aristotelian tradition and Kant, as a theorem that cannot be evaluated as true or false

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knowledge. In the first case we would have to explain why logic is necessarily a part of philosophy and thereby an instance of substantive knowledge, and why Kant's position is thus false or untenable in its very approach. If we follow the second variant, the evaluation must refer either to the table's systematic coherence or to its function for knowledge. The former case involves internal criticism; in the latter case, Kant's logic could be confronted with another, more efficient logic. First, as to systematic coherence. I would like to limit the discussion to the domain of the three kinds of judgment under the heading of relation. The concept of relation here means something other than the relation in judgment that is either affirmed or negated. As such it would be nothing other than the quality of judgment. The concept of relation and form that is distinct from quality refers to the matter that can be connected in judgment. It concerns either concepts or propositions, and with propositions either two or more. Now the mode of connection in a hypothetical judgment, in which at most two propositions are connected, is necessary. It concerns logical implication, not the real implication of an "if always up to now x, then up to now y" -sequence. The au t-au t-au t relation of disjunctive judgment also requires the status of neces­ sity. There is no difference here between the disjunction of contradictory propositions and the contentful disjunction that we find in the edition of 1781. If we equate the connection found in categorical judgment with the modality of implication and disjunction, an untenable restriction results: Categorical judgments, and correspondingly categorical inferences, must be necessary, not problematic or assertoric. If we do not make this equation, and thus do not make the entire relation necessary, then, in contrast, it is not systematically clear why the relation in hypothetical and disjunctive judgment is tied down to the status of necessity-why do we not find three modalities here? If these considerations are correct, the heading of relation in the table of judgments is not internally coherent and consequently cannot be used as the basis for a unification of Aristotelian and Stoic doctrines of syllogism. The premises in a categorical syllogism (and correspondingly its conclusion as well) must be capable of modal differentiation, whereas the major premise must be necessary in hypothetical and disjunctive inferences. In his doctrine of the three kinds of inference Kant presupposes a homogeneous concept of relation, but precisely this is not given apart from the external combination of diverse materials of judgment. With respect to completeness, the heading of relation lacks any copulative connection or the possibility of its construction from elements taken from predicate or propositional logic. Since it lacks a copulative in addition to the disjunctive relation, the table of judgments gives us no logical means of distin­ guishing, for example, between the disjunction of each of the three moments and the conjunction of the four headings. But completeness implies that every epistemic judgment is determined by all four headings (et A-et B-et C-et D) and

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by only one moment from each heading (aut A -aut B-aut C). Thus, the logic of the table is not intelligible according to its own logic. If we consider the function of the table of judgments for epistemic judg­ ments, which are supposed to be made formally possible by them, two problem areas can be emphasized. First, it is difficult to see how mathematical judg­ ments of the type "7 + 5 = 12" or "A lies between B and C" can satisfy the formal demands of general logic with single-place predicates. But what kind of structures are they, if not judgments according to the criteria of logic? If the Critique of Pure Reason abandons us here, in a realm of mathematical knowl­ edge for which it itself makes a claim, it requires its own special mathematical logic or logic of mathematics in addition or in contrast to the table of judg­ ments. Second, it is difficult to see how Kant's doctrine that all concepts are con­ ceptus communes66 can be maintained within the epistemology of the Critique. With the judgment "Caius is mortal" (cf. A 32�) we can proceed in such a way that we take the proper name as a representative for a singular human being. What is decisive is that we are dealing with a member of the class of the gen­ eral concept "human being" and that not the concept but rather the use of the concept in the judgment is singular. But what about the five central objects of the Critique : space, time, self, world, and God? In the first edition of the Critique Kant avoids speaking of the concepts of space and time (for the first time at A 87), for he claims in contrast to Wolff that concepts are by their very nature general concepts (A 24, A 31). Consistent with this, he even speaks of the pure intuition "which bears the name of space" (A 27). Thus, "space" and "time" are proper names for the unusual singular structures that we discover in ourselves through transcendental-philosophical reflection as unmistakable intuitions and that we must treat "as singular beings" (VIII 240). But when Kant speaks of the concepts of space and time (as at A 87 and throughout the Transcendental Aesthetic in the second edition), then the concept in each case is a conceptus singularis67 -which is not supposed to exist and is not provided for in the doctrine of concepts and the table of judgments. The same thing can be said of the I, the world, and God. Their transcendental-philosophical charac­ terization apparently does not allow that we acquire general knowledge of the conceptus communes selfs, worlds, and gods and then subsume the transcen­ dental objects-the one I, the one world, and the one God-under universal judgments just as we do with Caius (so that not the concept but the use of the concept in judgment is singular). The core of transcendental philosophy con­ cerns conceptus singulares, which are not supposed to be possible according to the separation of intuition and-an always general-concept. In the table of judgments Kant has not introduced any doctrine into philoso­ phy that could be called "classical." The analysis of judgment in Plato's Soph­ ist, Aristotle's syllogistic in the Analytica Priora, and his doctrine of judgment in De lnterpretatione became classics. These works became the foundation for

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repeated reflection for the traditional branches of logic and are still influential today. Kant's distinction between analytic and synthetic judgments deserves, as he himself says, "to be classical" in the critique of human understanding (IV 270), and so it has been received, just as the various formulations of the Cate­ gorical Imperative and other doctrines of his theoretical, practical, and teleo­ logical philosophy. The table of judgments does not belong to these systemati­ cally contemporary realms of Kantian philosophy. It hardly plays a role in the development of logic. Something must be wrong in the table of judgments, something that blocks its development into systematically relevant doctrines. The problems that were discussed in the preceding evaluation have presumably played a role in this. 13. On the Structure and System of the 'Critique of Pure Reason' Kant often expresses the architectonic plan of his works of critical philosophy. In a (not yet published) transcript of his anthropology lectures from the second half of the seventies Kant notes: "Some [human beings] have an architectonic mind. They plan drafts and oversee everything, which they then leave for technical heads to work out. In this manner masons and carpenters have tech­ nical heads. They can build a house quite well if they are given the draft that an architectonic head, who may not have a technical head, must have worked out. Similarly, some philosophers can present many philosophical propositions quite well, but they have never tasted the sublime element of philosophy." 68 Or in a lecture transcript of the Philosophical Encyclopedia: "It is easier to work out the parts of a science than the idea that determines its entire extent, source, and nature. That is architectonic" (XXIX 34; 69 cf. the Critique A xii). In the tran­ scripts from the first half of the seventies, there is, if I am right, no counter­ part-the problem of architectonic, one can perhaps infer, concerns Kant for the first time during the phase in which he is deciding about the systematic, and thus also literary, form of the planned work. The Critique of Pure Reason is surely designed by an "architectonic head." And Kant warns his readers and interpreters not to criticize the details before they have understood the idea of the whole: "Every philosophical presentation can be pinched (zwacken) in individual places (since it cannot present itself as ironclad in the way of a mathematical presentation), while yet the structure of the system, taken in its unity, is not in the least endangered. Few have the agility of mind, and even fewer have the inclination to familiarize themselves with a new system" � whoever "has mastered the idea of the whole" can dissolve apparent contradic­ tions very easily (B xliv). 7 0 If we put names in the places of doctrines, Euclid is located at the beginning of the Critique in the Aesthetic (with the representation of space leading the way), then Aristotle follows (i.e., the Aristotelian tradition of logic in a pro­ found reinterpretation) in the table of judgments, and only with the Transcen-

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dental Deduction have we reached the modern cogito, that is, Descartes (with­ against Descartes-the now merely formal transcendental apperception, robbed of its knowable content). Then to continue the correlation, with the Principles we have reached Newton. This textual and systematic order corresponds to the temporal sequence in which Kant developed the first three doctrines: in 1770 the Aesthetic is finished (even if it does not yet bear the name and departs in important details from its conception in the Critique); in the first half of the seventies Kant develops the theory of judgment, or at least its approximate features; and in the second half of the seventies, after euphorically overestimat­ ing the "I think," still regarded as contentful, the discovery of the Paralogisms finally completes the development of the doctrine of transcendental appercep­ tion of 1781. The "cogito," or the spontaneity of the "I think," is not present at the beginning of either Kant's development or his system, but rather compre­ hends only post festum what can never be deduced from the emptiness and antic indeterminacy of the I, namely, intuition and logically structured think­ ing. The function of the formal determination of intuition and thought in the "Aesthetic" and the table of judgments is to make both of these available to the mere "I think." The "cogito" arises in the plan where Euclid and Aristotle, intuiting and thinking, are to be combined. The combination is achieved in the Transcendental Deduction, in the knowledge that both intuiting and thinking are conscious and so must be able to be unified in the consciousness of I. The Deduction answers the question as to how in detail that is possible. The following will serve as a very basic sketch of the rest of the Critique's edifice: The Aesthetic teaches-against Descartes-that the representations of space and time are both given with immediate certainty and necessity: "Space is a necessary representation a priori... We can never represent to ourselves that there is no space. .. " (A 24) and: "Time is a necessary representation .. . it itself [time] cannot be removed" (A 31). We have a primitive faculty of intuition of space and time, no less primitive than the cogitatio. (It is unavoidable that this faculty is at times combined with the corporeality of human beings: "But such an intuition presupposes a sensible subject which itself belongs to the world" (Rejl. 5118; XVIII 96). For a being like God, who is outside the spatial­ temporal world because he has no body, spatial and temporal intuition is surely not necessary; nor, Kant must add, so much as possible. Only our inesse en­ ables space-time-intuition, and that means that space and time are subjective intuitions and are real only from an internal perspective.) Thus, the Aesthetic reveals the common space-time-world in which human beings and objects are found. The next, still non-Cartesian move, is the revealing of a logical structure in which all thinking human beings find themselves a priori: when we think and thus speak (there is no thought without language) we participate in struc­ tures that form all thought in general. This logic, which is provided prior to Cartesian subjectivity, is the sphere in which every human being is no longer

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found in a (common) space-time-world, but rather participates in a common epistemic logic. Here is where Cartesianism begins, understanding space and time as forms of consciousness and logic as a subjective achievement. Were this understand­ ing incorrect, the world and its phenomenal and logical-linguistic dimension would be without a subject and thus not possible. But this subject finds both as given unities; it can initiate its own actions and communicable thought and knowledge only in the spatio-temporal world that it itself realizes on the basis of these givens. Beyond the synthesis of intuiting and thinking the I is nothing, and there is no intuiting and thinking without the highest point, the I as the objective unity of transcendental apperception. Thus, we can say that the Critique as a theory of human knowing cannot begin with an "I think" as a highest point and then deductively descend to the forms of intuiting and think­ ing. The structure of the Critique does not begin with the coping stone, the thrinkos, 7 1 even if its possibility as such really depends on it. The Transcendental Aesthetic defines space and time as the only forms of intuition that are necessary for us. "In this investigation we will find that there are two pure forms of sensible intuition as principles of a priori knowledge, namely space and time, the consideration of which will concern us now" (A 22). Similarly, we find in the Transcendental Logic that the functions of thought in judgment can be brought under four headings and twelve moments (A 70). We can immediately add here Kant's remark from 1 787 : No reason can be given "why we have precisely these and no other functions of judging, or why space and time are the only forms of our possible intuition" (B 146). We ··have" these forms and thus cannot derive them via transcendental­ philosophical reflection, but rather only discover them and render them trans­ parent. Kant says of the doctrine of space and time that it forms an organon: "The second important concern of our Transcendental Aesthetic is that it should not obtain favor merely as a plausible hypothesis, but rather is as certain and undoubted as could ever be demanded of a theory that is to serve as an or­ ganon" (A 46). The function of the theory as an "organon" cannot refer to geometry because the Aesthetic as a whole, thus time too, is described as an organon. 7 2 The Aesthetic serves as an organon in the Deduction of the Pure Concepts of the Understanding and in the Solution of the Dialectic of the Pure Concepts of Reason. Just as the doctrine of space and time constitutes an indisputable theory, so analogously general pure logic is "a demonstrated doctrine" (A 54). And when he anticipates the table of judgments by saying "But such a coherence provides a rule according to which the place of every pure concept of the understanding and their completeness can be determined a priori. . . " (A 67), the table of judgments has an analogous instrumental function of enabling the (what will later be called Metaphysical) Deduction of the Categories. Here too there is a parallel between the Transcendental Aesthetic

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and the table of judgments, both of which are prior to the discovery and expli­ cation of the pure concepts of the understanding, the Principles, the Dialectic, and the Doctrine of Method. The foundation of the entirety of transcendental philosophy is thus anthropologically contingent-we can abstractly conceive of beings with other forms of intuition and other forms of thought (which would have to be non-linguistic and non-conceptual and thus incomprehensible to us). The Critique of Pure Reason is even written in the tradition of Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding� that its subject is human understanding goes without saying. "Accordingly, we can speak of space, of extended beings, etc., only from the standpoint of a human being. .. " (A 26)� "Time is thus only a subjective condition of our (human) intuition . . . " (A 35). And the Analytic "is the dissection of our entire a priori knowledge into the elements of pure knowl­ edge of the understanding" (A 64)-our, namely, our human knowledge. We do not have access to any other understanding� the human epistemic faculty is given to us as such; we find it given and can ciissect it analytically, but we can never deduce it a priori or generate it in its peculiarities from a highest point. The table of judgments, which is grounded in the understanding as the faculty of concepts, determines the structure of the Critique of Pure Reason. In its logical part and in the doctrine of method that follows it, the Critique is structured entirely according to the blueprint of the table of judgments and consequently grounded in it in all the sections that follow the table of judg­ ments. Under the aspect of morphology or conceptual architectonic, the division between the first three headings of the table of judgments and the fourth, namely, modality is identical to the division between the presentation of the categories, Principles, and syllogisms, on the one hand, and that of the doctrine of method, on the other hand. When under the heading "Of the Final End of the Natural Dialectic of Human Reason" Kant writes, "That is the completion of the critical task of pure reason, and we want to. take this up now" (A 670), and when at the end of this chapter and thus of the Doctrine of Elements he repeats that the Critique is thereby completed (A 702), he adopts the structure of logic as it is found in the table of judgments. According to this structure, the doctrines of concepts, judgments, and inferences exhaust all content and leave only the need for reflection as to how the understanding deals with the material in question, how it gradually incorporates pieces of knowledge into its under­ standing. The heading of modality and the doctrine of method are located in the same systematic position. Thus, the claim that modality adds "nothing to the content of judgment" (A 74) finds its counterpart in the idea that the Doctrine of Elements has precisely determined the construction tools and material, so that the Doctrine of Method can be concerned with the plan of the building (A 707). In both passages Kant explicitly informs the reader about this division. Within the Doctrine of Elements recourse to general logic occurs in three systematic places: prior to the categories (in the form of the table of judgments),

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prior to the Principles, and prior to the doctrine of Ideas. Prior to the Principles, the principle of non-contradiction is treated as the highest principle of all analytic judgments (A 1 50-1 53). The principle of non-contradiction belongs "only in logic" (A 1 5 1 ) and is a conditio sine qua non of all knowledge in general. Its function here is special, as a necessary and sufficient criterion of analytic, not synthetic, judgments, a difference that general logic as such does not recognize. The treatment of general logic in the Dialectic is more detailed. We find it in the section "Of the Logical Use of Reason" (A 303-305). According to it the logical structure of the doctrine of syllogisms is made profitable for the doc­ trine, not of reason generally, but of pure reason (in contrast to pure under­ standing). If syllogisms were not grounded in the relation of judgments, as was explained above, there would occur at this point a rupture intolerable for the systematic plan. The three-fold concern with general and formal logic in the rhythm of concept, judgment, and inference allows us to observe from the start an asym­ metry with respect to the doctrine of concepts: formal logic is developed prior to the categories, and it is developed not as a mere general logic of concepts in order to derive the categories, but rather as logic in general. Logic as a whole is present in the table of judgments. It represents all acts of the understanding and reason in general (insofar as these do not become possible through the act of determining judgment alone). Then the doctrine of judgments follows. Only the principle of non-contradiction is taken from the doctrine of judgments, but the arrangement itself reveals that the table of "judgments" is not well suited for the logic of judgments alone, for it would then be located in the wrong place. What is true of the table of judgments, namely, that general logic as a whole is reflected and must be reflected in its structure, can be ascertained for the categories as well. The categories as concepts of the pure understanding are concepts, on the one hand, only of the understanding and not of reason, but, on the other hand, they are basic concepts of our epistemic faculties in general. Correspondingly, they can and must have a constitutive function in all concep­ tual acts, even those of reason (albeit without a schematism). Just as in the table of judgments and its acts of unity formal logic contains the doctrines of con­ cepts, judgments, inferences and method in nuce, so the table of categories developed from it contains the acts of unity of the pure understanding as the faculty of knowledge in general. Even the special conceptual acts of pure reason can be systematically justified only through recourse to the table of categories, and in 1 788 the Critique of Practical Reason develops the categories of free­ dom (V 66-7 1 ). The structure of the Critique of Pure Reason is riddled with tensions and incongruencies that impede understanding and force complicated interpreta­ tions. Given the dualism of the Doctrine of Elements and Doctrine of Method, which is part of traditional logic, the Aesthetic, as the first part of the Doctrine

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of Elements, slides into logic in an unfortunate way. However, in the first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason Kant clearly immunizes himself against this interpretation (Doctrine of Elements = part of logic� Aesthetic belongs to the Doctrine of Elements, therefore . .. ) by counting as parts of logic only the Analytic and the Dialectic, thus, the prefiguration of logic in the table of judgments and then the development of transcendental logic in the doctrine of the categories, principles, and inferences. Thus, the Aesthetic does not belong in the Logic, although its subsumption under the Doctrine of Elements suggests it. In the Critique of Practical Reason the Aesthetic of the first Critique is counted as part of the Analytic: "The Analytic of theoretical pure reason was divided into Transcendental Aesthetic and Transcendental Logic. . . " (V 90; cf. also XX 290-291: " . . . and what was dogmatically proved a priori previously in the Analytic"-i. e., in the Transcendental Aesthetic and in the Transcendental Analytic). This annexation of the Aesthetic into the Analytic corresponds to the Critique of Practical Reason ' s interest in placing its own Aesthetic, the doc­ trine of the motives of pure reason, as the third section of the Analytic of Practical Reason following the doctrines of principles and concepts, thereby standing the order of the first Critique on its head, but also integrating the Aesthetic into the Analytic and then retroactively sanctioning it from the perspective of the first Critique. This new division achieves a complete dichot­ omy of the doctrines of elements and method and a division of the former into Analytic and Dialectic, an ordering that the Critique of Judgment takes over in both of its parts. The second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason accommo­ dates this new division by speaking of the "concept of space" and the "concept of time" throughout the Transcendental Aesthetic. We have seen that the first edition avoids this conflation of intuition and concept within the Transcenden­ tal Aesthetic. In the mid-sixties Kant undergoes a crisis that finds its literary expression in the Dreams of a Spirit-Seer Explained by Dreams of Metaphysics. The meta­ physics of the Aristotelian tradition, with its solid scholastic structure in Wolff and Baumgarten, cannot satisfy the new theoretical and practical epistemic interests, specifically, the desiderata of a refutation of Hume and an absorption of Rousseau' s influence. Kant projects the basic draft of a completely new concept of metaphysics: he adopts the old motif of a dual world, a mundus intelligibilis and a mundus sensibilis, giving the one a metaphysics of nature and the other a metaphysics of morals. In a sense, Newton is responsible · for the laws of the former, while the laws of the latter are conceived according to Rousseau's idea of a general will. The Critique ofPure Reason serves to destroy the old and construct the new metaphysics. It replaces an ontological doctrine of things with the transcenden­ tal doctrine of the "a priori concepts of things in general" (A 11-12). The Aesthetic and Analytic of the Critique of Pure Reason serve to prove the

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possibility of true knowledge, referred to objects of experience ( and not to things as such). Correspondingly, they can form the Critical foundation of the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science� the Dialectic delivers a proof that an ontologically justified metaphysica specialis is not feasible. In the further development of the Critical project, the Metaphysics of Morals, which receives its critical foundation in a newly conceived Critique of Practical Reason, 7 3 occupies the systematic position of rational cosmology. In this new conception, which becomes prominent in the eighties, the realm of the meta­ physics of nature is assigned to the understanding (following the Transcenden­ tal Analytic), while-after eliminating a metaphysica specialis directed at theoretical knowledge-the realm of the metaphysics of morals is assigned to reason. The systematic outline of the Critique of Pure Reason, which combines Locke's epistemology (from sensation to reflection) and traditional metaphys­ ics, is conceived as an anabasis. It begins with sensibility, proceeds to the thought of human beings and their experiential knowledge in order then to climb beyond the I, past the world as a whole up to God: I, world, God of course as concepts of pure reason, not as objects of possible experience nor as known things in themselves. If the individual parts are regarded as determina­ tions of thinking or knowing, then the objective unity of apperception is the "highest point." Beyond its acts of synthesis there are neither space- and time­ intuitions nor any acts of the understanding or reason. Only the highest being itself, declared by Christian Wolff as the phi/osophus absolute summus, 7 4 could both begin and end the dogmatic portrayal of pure reason with an "I am who I am."

IV. ON THE GENESIS OF THE TABLE Introduction We can now proceed to an analysis of particular difficulties involved in the genesis of the table of judgments. If our interpretation is correct, we will not observe Kant attempting to drive a tunnel into the contentless "I think," leading him directly to the division of logical headings and moments that "seems to depart from the typical style of logicians in several, albeit non-essential re­ spects" (A70-71). Rather the converse is true: he will adopt the systematic division that was in various ways present in traditional Aristotelian logic and attempt to unify it, i.e., seek to develop it according to a concept or idea. How­ ever, I would like to begin with a detour that is important for evaluating the systematic function of the table of judgments. Kant presents the table of judgments as portraying those headings and moments of thought that we find when we pay attention to only the form of the understanding in judgment. The form of judgment or of thought in general is initially presented in the Critique as given, just as the forms of intuition are. In connection with the table of judgments, there are two related matters that form a kind of framework but are not discussed, but rather silently presupposed. They are treated more extensively in Kant's later considerations, notes, and publications concerning the table of judgment than they are in the Critique of 1781 and, correspondingly, they have engendered considerable discussion throughout the history of interpretation. This is not an accident; there are systematic reasons for it. One matter concerns logical principles such as the principle of non­ contradiction, the principle of sufficient reason, and the principle of excluded middle, which Kant presupposes as valid in putting forward the table of judg­ ments. The other matter concerns the fact that the form of the understanding must be thought, and thus produced by the thinking I. Relation, e.g. , can be nothing other than a connection that either is grounded in the "I think" or does not occur at all. Later (in section 3) we shall return to consider more closely this second point, with which we are already familiar. In the first section of this chapter I briefly discuss the logical principles. If we see Kant's general and transcenden­ tal logic as the result of a decision from among available alternatives, then the logical principles must be regarded as rejected candidates for the position that the table of judgments occupies in the Critique. In the second section I investi­ gate the Blomberg and Philippi transcripts with respect to the doctrines of concepts, judgments, and inferences. Third, we shall consider several passages from the Duisburg-Nachlass from the mid-seventies. The I-problematic, which Kant continues to discuss not within general logic but in the Transcendental Deduction of the Critique of Pure Reason, is especially dominant in these

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notes. Fourth, I shall briefly discuss the situation immediately prior to 1781.­ These remarks will consider the development of Kant's thought in the seven­ ties, but not in order to pursue its particular complications during the individual phases. Rather, our interest lies only in noting what Kant has and what he has not developed with respect to the results of 1781. 1. The Logical Principles In Wolff' s metaphysics the highest logical principles form the foundation of philosophy in general. After the "Prolegomena" the Philosophia Prima sive Ontologia begins with the two chapters "De Principia Contradictionis" and "De Principia rationis sufficientis." 1 One of the strands of Kant's early metaphysics follows this pattern. In his Nova dilucidatio principiorum primorum cognitionis metaphysicae of 1755 Kant starts with the principles of Wolffian metaphysics (modified especially under the pressure of Crusius's objections). In Prop. II of the first section his explanation asserts the principle: "Veritatum omnium bina sunt principia absolute prima, alterum veritatum affirmantium.. . alterum veritatum negantium . .. Quae ambo simul vocantur communiter principium identitatis" (I 389). The second (and third) principle is that of "rationis deter­ minantis, vulgo sufficientis" (I 391). Kant develops natural theology, cosmol­ ogy, and rational psychology (including the issue of freedom) from these logical principles. Presupposing such a connection between logical principles and objective metaphysical knowledge represents an isomorphism of thought and being, of logic and metaphysics. The logical principles are, from the start, principles of truth. A deductive structure of metaphysics is possible due to this connection between logic and being. We need not follow how Kant develops this metaphysics. In the mid-sixties he loses trust in a continuum that proceeds from logical principles through ontology to metaphysica specialis and makes room for a completely new kind of metaphysics. Under the auspices of Rousseau the plan for a metaphysics of morals arises in practical philosophy, and Hume's skepticism provokes its speculative counterpart, the metaphysics of nature, in theoretical philosophy. To enable this two-fold metaphysics-this is the idea inspired by Locke-we need a prior investigation of the human epistemic faculty, a critique of human pure reason, and of transcendental knowledge as knowledge "that is concerned not with objects, but rather with our a priori concepts of objects in general" (A 11-12). But then the highest principles of being and thought lose their function. In their place arise the forms of the acts with which human understanding accomplishes its thinking and its intuition-dependent knowledge.

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THE TABLE OF JUDGMENTS 2. The Early Logic Transcripts

In order to understand properly the logic transcripts from the early seventies, it is prudent to recall the relevant teachings of Lambert, whose attempts Kant had followed from the mid-sixties as related to his own and who is viewed as the true gray eminence of Kant's logic. 2 In addition to Meier's Vernunftlehre, which Kant used for his logic lectures, Lambert's logic is surely an important influence. The first volume of J. H. Lambert's Neues Organon oder Gedanken uber die

Erforschung und Bezeichnung des Wahren und dessen Unterscheidung vom Jrrthum und Schein appeared in 1 764, a year before Kant entered into corre­ spondence with him. 3 In his Dianoiologie oder Lehre von den Gesetzen des Denkens (the title of the first volume) Lambert develops his doctrine of judg­

ments. If we focus our attention on the doctrines that are relevant to Kant's project, we see the following: § 1 1 8 briefly recalls the issue of the clarity and distinctness of concepts. It is perhaps not unimportant that he speaks here of representation and consciousness: "Concepts are mere representations (§ 7) and with a clear representation of a thing there is a confused consciousness of its marks (Merkmale) but a clear consciousness of its marks demands a distinct representation" (76-77). One sees how the Cartesian doctrine of clare et dis­ tincte has permeated the doctrine of concepts. Kant too will employ the concept of consciousness in his long-standing search for the proper form of logic. However, in the edition of 1 78 1 Kant no longer speaks of consciousness, but rather of the Aristotelian tradition's operationes mentis. The doctrine of marks has given way to a new logic, one that is not oriented toward concepts but rather toward judgment-In § 1 1 9 the definition of judgment cited above4 follows: "Judgment is the combination or separation of two concepts� accord­ ingly, at least three components occur necessarily in each judgment," namely, subject, copula, and predicate. Every judgment can be brought into this "form" (§ 1 20). This is followed by a division of the special kinds of judgments or propositions. Lambert begins with the copula (affirmation and negation), which is for Kant the quality of judgment (§ 121). "The other division is with respect to the subject" (§ 122). The predicate can, if the subject represents a generai concept, be attributed (or not be attributed) to all or some of the individuals comprehended under the subject. Lambert discusses the resulting combinatorial possibilities and distinguishes, in a somewhat confusing way, four kinds of propositions within this genus (which is for Kant the heading of quantity). After the form of composite judgments Lambert presents the form of simple judgments (§ 1 3 1 ). He lists three forms of composite judgments-hypothetical, copulative, and disjunctive-and finds: "There is still another division of propositions that stems from certain very general determinations that one adds to the connective. These determinations all depend on the distinction between possible, actual, necessary, and their opposites" (§ 137). These properties of

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judgments are, however, distinct from the previous ones: "The distinction between these propositions constitutes the special character of the doctrine of the possible, actual, and necessary. But since these concepts belong to ontology, and do not depend only on the external form of knowledge, we shall treat them here, but only insofar as the form of knowledge itself provides an occasion for it" (§ 137). Thus, we can vaguely discern the sequence of quality, quantity, relation, and, clearly demarcated, modality. But Lambert continues with obser­ vations that increase the scope of the doctrine of judgments. This should warn us against presuming that we are already in the presence of Kant's table of judgments. The idea of completeness is lacking. However, the systematic structure of itself clearly invites such a thought. Lambert does not use the concept ''operatio mentis" or act of the understanding, which we have encoun­ tered in many authors in the Aristotelian tradition of logic, as well as in Wolff, and which plays an important role for the idea of unity and completeness in Kant. A further decisive difference is that for Lambert hypothetical and dis­ junctive judgments are composite judgments. But that misses the idea that is crucial to Kant's logic, namely, that of making the relation involved in such composition into a determination of the relation of the predicate to the subject as well and-to the contrary-transforming the two composite judgments into simple ones. In the transcript of Kant's logic lecture that bears the signature "Blomberg" the table of judgments is presented as follows. After an initial reference to its connection with the doctrine of concepts reminiscent of Wolff ("distinct con­ cepts are those that can be known through a judgment", XXIV 273 ), judgment is considered (using Kant's later terminology) in the following order: quality, quantity, an inserted reference to modality, relation. The matter of judgment is supplied by the subject and predicate concepts: "the 2 concepts that are com­ pared with each other. . . constitute the matter of judgment. Now that concept that is to be made distinct through a comparison with its mark is called the subject. whereas the concept that is joined as a ground of distinctness to the mark [ ! ] is called the predicate" (273-274). The form of judgment, by contrast, is "the relation" ( Verhaltni/3), designated by the copula, the est or est non (274). In Kant's model, Meier's logic, no use is made of the concepts of matter and form-Lambert might be influential here. The discussion of quantity follows (" All judgments are either universal or particular. . ." 275). After an intermezzo on "modality" (more on this shortly), relation is revisited: "All relation in judgments is either a relation of connection or a relation of opposition. A judgment in which the relation of connection of two judgments is signified is called a hypothetical judgment. But a judgment in which the relation of opposition of two judgments is signified is called a dis­ junctive judgment. Namely, one speaks of relation- (relative) judgments where one thinks the relation of two judgments to one another. .." (276). And the presumed foundation for Kant's view: "The relation between two problematic

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THE TABLE OF JUDGMENTS

judgments is either one of connection or opposition. Disjunctive judgments, which can contain only two contradictorily opposed judgments, result from the latter" Re.fl. 3094� XVI 655). A principle of completeness is developed here under (what is later called) the heading of relation: Judgment, according to its form, is a relation� it can appear in the two qualities of affirmation and nega­ tion. Now this can be transferred to the relation of two (problematic) judg­ ments: the affirmative relation results in hypothetical judgment, the negative in disjunctive judgment. This exhausts the possibilities. The principle of com­ pleteness relates not to the two possibilities of modus ponens and modus to/lens, but rather to affirmation of the consequent in hypothetical judgment and the exclusive aut in the disjunction of two and only two judgments. We shall return to this second point shortly. But it should already be clear at this point that Kant is simply interested in a systematization of the determinations of judg­ ment in the context of his logic lectures. A claim to completeness is also raised with respect to the possibilities of quantity wht3n he says: "A ll judgments are either universal or particular... There are no more judgments quoad quantita­ tem" (275)� or concerning what is later called modality: "Omnia Judicia sunt vel problematica vet assertoria (decisive)" (276), and for quality, which is still identified with relation: "A ll relation in judgments is either a relation of con­ nection or a relation of opposition" (276). One finds marked differences com­ pared to the idea of 1 78 1 : Kant does not seem to have spoken to his audience about a "table"; and the terms "heading" and "moment" have not yet occurred either. He distinguishes matter and form of judgments, but he does not refer the latter to acts of the understanding (and their unity under the name of "function"). Correspondingly, the idea that all acts of the understanding are comprehended in the act of judgment is also absent. The doctrine of concepts uses the doctrine of judgments and to that extent belongs to it� Kant accepts the position, also advanced by Wolff, that the distinctness of a concept consists in the exposition of its marks in the form of judgments. There is a comparable relation to the doctrine of inferences through its correspondence with the three forms of judgment, which appear la!er as the moments of relation, but relation is not articulated and grounded in detail. Presumably, the idea of the identity o( the concept of relation in the doctrines of judgments and inferences is still absent. The proof of completeness for the three "relations"-categorical, hypotheti­ cal, and disjunctive-that is carried out here is precisely excluded in the analo­ gous considerations of the Critique of Pure Reason. Here the proof is carried out purely logically, by way of permutations of affirmation and negation. Consequently, in the case of disjunctive judgments we are limited to two propositions connected by an aut. In the Critique it is supposed to be several, at least two, judgments. Furthermore, Kant is interested in the substantive totality of what is designated by disjunctive judgment and not in the relation between two contradictorily opposed component judgments. At a superficial level he

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thus returns to Meier, who had already allowed for several component judg­ ments in a disjunctive judgment (§ 307� XVI 654). One further observation: In the textbook Kant uses for his lectures, Meier's "Logic," hypothetical and disjunctive judgments are treated, as they are for Lambert, as iudicia composita (cf. § 304� XVI 651)-however, without decid­ ing what the nonetheless assumed unity of hypothetical (§ 305) and of disjunc­ tive judgments consists in. Analogously, hypothetical and disjunctive inferences belong in the realm not of ratiocinia ordinaria, but rather of extraordinaria (§ 367). They are located in this order at the head of the composite judgments and extraordinary syllogisms that follow. Through the coordination of simple and composite judgments Kant discovers the possibility of taking hypothetical and disjunctive inferences out of the realm of the ratiocinia extraordinaria and placing them on the same level as categorical inferences. In this way a move becomes visible that will lead to a connection between the three fundamental acts of the understanding in judgment in the Critique. 5 And now we come to the interpolation that concerns what will later be modality: "The following remark should be noted: Omnia Judicia sunt vel problematica, vel assertoria (deciding)" (XXIV 276). The note that Kant apparently made concerning this point in his copy of the A uszug aus der Vernunft/ehre reads: "omne iudicium est vel problematicum vel assertorium; the latter are that wherein the predicate is viewed (as) in actual connection with the subject. An example of the former is: God is corporeal" (Re.fl. 3094; XVI 655). 6 There is a parallel to this in the Logik-Philippi: "All judgments are either 1. Judicia problematica, in which I consider the relation of the predicate to the subject. 2. Judicia assertoria in which I posit it. In order to avoid errors I must judge problematically as much as possible" (XXIV 464). It is clearly assumed that, after sufficient examination, I can move from the problematic status of a judgment to the assertoric status of the same judgment. The "omnia judicia" in Blomberg and the corresponding passages from the other cited texts, surprisingly enough, contain no objection to Meier: "The representation of the mode and manner in which the predicate is or is not attributed to the subject is the determination of the concept of connection and its negation (modus formalis). Either a judgment has such a feature or it does not. The latter is an impure judgment (iudicium modale, modi.ficatum, com­ plexum qua copulam), whereas the former is a pure judgment (iudicium pu­ rum)" (§ 309, XVI 662-663). So far as can be gathered from the Blomberg and Philippi transcripts (XXIV 277 and 463), Kant accepts this division without criticism. Thus, in this phase he does not yet connect the division of problem­ atic and assertoric judgments with the "modus fonnalis." Tonelli, who has already pointed this out,7 concludes his account of the tradition of modal judgments and Kant's organization of problematic and assertoric (and apodictic) judgments with the following remark: '" Assertoric' and 'apodictic' are thus completely unknown in the tradition of the division of

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THE TABLE OF JUDGMENTS

judgments. Kant is the first to use 'problematic' in this connection. 'Problematic' and 'assertoric' undoubtedly stem from the opposition between skeptical and dogmatic modes of thought, which was so important for Kant in the seventies" ( 1 56). As valuable as Tonelli's entire investigation is, this specific final claim may block the path to Kant's ideas, which are completely unproblematic with respect to the moments that will later function as the triad of modality: in the explanatory passage of the Critique Kant expressly speaks of a gradual incorpo­ ration into the understanding, "so that one initially judges something prob­ lematically, then accepts it assertorically as true, and finally claims it as indi­ visibly combined with the understanding, i.e., as necessary and apodictic" (A 76). Thus, there is an epistemic process that leads a judgment through the moments. The meta-level of skepticism and dogmatism has nothing to do with that. There may be a philosophical development from dogmatism through skepticism to criticism, but this movement hrs on a level distinct from the movement from problematic to assertoric and apodictic judgment. In the Logik-Blomberg Kant speaks of skeptical and dogmatic modes of thought (XXIV 203-2 1 8), and we do encounter what may be a Kantian expres­ sion of "the problematic mode (Art) of philosophizing" (XXIV 2 1 2). Without any need for preliminary investigation, dogmatism decides that we possess certain knowledge, whereas dogmatic doubt claims that all investigation is useless. The skeptic of the problematic mode of philosophizing provides, by contrast, a rational approach. Such a skeptic begins to investigate and does not maintain that it is useless. Yet here too it is almost impossible to make the contrast between skepticism and dogmatism fruitful for the moments of modal­ ity (or even their prototypes) because there is no procedure leading from the one position to the other. The difference is not in the kinds of judgment, but rather in the mode of thought of the person who judges. To be sure, the progression from problematic to assertoric judgment is then located in the process that is here designated as one of true skepticism. However, one is not thereby proceed­ ing from skepticism to dogmatism or vice versa-there is no movement between these positions. Tonelli himself cites authors whose usage leads in a direction that is com­ patible with Kant's. For example, Crusius: "Thus, there is a task (problema), a kind of thought in which an end that one seeks is thought in an indeterminate idea, and the mode and manner is sought in which it can be made determi­ nate. " 8 The epistemic process is identified here: as prob/ema something is "still" undetermined� the epistemic movement leads to determination-for Kant, to a decision. Tonelli writes: "The term 'assertoric' is completely foreign to the philo­ sophical tradition. " 9 -lt is indeed foreign to the philosophical, but it is not foreign to the juridical tradition. In his study of 1 906 P. Hauck already notes this fact. 1 ° Compare the beginning of the relevant Blomberg passage:

On the Genesis of the Table

1 03

"Established truths are those truths against which no further objection can be made.-To these belong, e. g., the Res Judicatae, that is, things established in foro by a legally binding judgment" (XXIV 203). If this is the proper context, it becomes intelligible that Kant initially uses this classification of problematic and assertoric alongside the other division and accepts a dual pattern-it is the gradation of judicial procedure in a legal trial, from ''judicium praevium," that is, problematic, provisional, preliminary, and exploratory judgment to the authoritative, definitive, decisive judgment that terminates discussion and the back-and-forth of the judicial procedure. 1 1 According to Kant's opinion it was Francis Bacon who began the epistemic process with preliminary, problematic judgments. In the Rostock manuscript of the Anthropology from the Pragmatic Standpoint we find: "Sagacity or the talent for exploration is also a gift of nature: understanding how one should search (questioning nature or other human beings) well (with luck). A talent of judging in a preliminary fashion where the truth is likely to be found and being able to track it down. Bacon of Verulam in his very person has given an excellent example in his Organon of this art of judging in a preliminary fashion (iudicii praevii) through which the method of natural science is brought onto its proper track" (VII 405). The method of natural science is brought onto its proper track-this could function as the motto if not of the Critique, then at least of the fourth heading of the table of judgments. Precisely that fascinated Kant and defined his method of discovery as it appears under the heading of modality in compressed form. 1 2 I n the context o f knowledge every judgment, as Kant teaches already at the beginning of the seventies, must be assigned to one of the two stages in the development of knowledge. After discussing what is later added as quality, a Reflexion on logic that could stem from approximately the same time, and in which judgment is analyzed, states: "According to position. problematic and dogmatic or asser­ toric" (Rejl. 3084; XVI 650). The word 'position' (Position) can be traced back to a set of considerations from the early sixties that Kant must have had in mind during his reflection on the later moments of modality. I shall cite two well-known claims from the Only Possible Proof that make the connection immediately clear: "Existence is not a predicate or determination of any thing" (II 72) and "Existence is the absolute position of a thing and is thereby distin­ guished from every predicate, which qua predicate is always posited merely in relation to another thing" (II 73). Existence is not a predicate. Accordingly, it does not belong to the propositional dimension of a judgment. Kant then introduces three kinds of possible positions: possibility, actuality, and necessary existence. " .. .in which I posit it," is how it reads in the Logik-Philippi : the positing is added to the complete judgment as an act of decision. We already cited a passage above from the Logik-Blomberg: "We obtain no new knowledge when we determine that something is true. Rather, what happens is nothing

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other than that all other human beings cease judging it and agree to it." (XXIV 204 )-the content is already determined prior to the modal determination. In light of these remarks it is preferable not to adopt Tonelli' s suggestion of relating problematic and assertoric judgments only to the problem of skepticism and dogmatism. Rather, we should, on the one hand, pay attention to the references to the methodology and heuristic of knowledge that can already be found in Crusius, complementing them with the idea of reaching a verdict in a legal procedure, and, on the other hand, keep in mind the "doctrine of positing" from the problem of natural theology. In accordance with the results of our terminological inquiry, it seems that we are in both contexts outside the logic of the Aristotelian tradition. The question of the status of knowledge-whether it is supposed to be valid merely problematically and provisionally or already assertorically and authorita­ tively-is foreign to the original Aristotelian doctrine of judgments. This consideration is to be found neither in De Jnter_nretatione nor in the Analytica Priora. Even the methodology found in the Analytica Posteriora does not recognize the distinction that is introduced here along with modality. The historical location onto which one can project the innovation is, first, certainly the Hellenistic doctrine of synkatathesis, 1 3 the assensus that one gives to a (therefore still provisional) suggestion. (This follows the example of the-more political than juridical-forming of judgment in an assembly.) Second, the doctrine of method in the fourth part of all of the modern Aristotelian doctrines of logic: with its schema of an epistemic process, the heading of modality refers unambiguously to the method of acquisition and securing of knowledge. It is unclear when Kant discovers the practice of the logic books as a possible schema for his table of judgments. Kant probably speaks first of the "operationes mentis" around 1780, and it is quite possible that only then did he discover the derivability of all acts of the understanding from acts of judgment and the fruitfulness of the structure of logic for the table (and the structure of the Critique). We shall return to this. Only after the Blomberg and Philippi logics does Kant settle the distinction between problematic and assertoric judgments, enlarged by a third ··moment,'.' in the realm of modality, and only then can he consistently object to Meier: "Without modality no judgment is possible� thus modal judgment is not im­ pure" (Re.fl. 3111 � dating unclear� XVI 663). It is of course a modality that he interprets in a different way from Meier. With respect to logic as a whole, the usus /ogicus of the understanding and its acts in general, sometime. in the seventies Kant locates modality reinterpreted in the fourth part of logic. He places modality under the heading of methodology. Modality, interpreted as a methodology of knowledge with its three-step progression of "initially," "then," and "finally" (A 76), enables, as was mentioned above, the incorporation of another element of logic that was not originally Aristotelian, but rather Helle­ nistic.

On the Genesis of the Table

I 05

The incorporation of the doctrine of concepts into the doctrine of judgments can proceed within the framework laid out by Wolff. At the beginning of the section "Of Learned (geltihrten) Judgments" in the Logik-B/omberg it reads: "Actually, we are already familiar with judgments from the previous section because we treated of distinct concepts, which can arise only through a judg­ ment, for knowing distinctly means knowing through one clear mark. But knowing something through a clear mark just means judging" (XXIV 273). In the Critique Kant will abandon the logic of marks and integrate concepts into the doctrine of judgments by claiming that they can be used for knowledge only in judgment-In the doctrine of syllogisms from the Logik-B/omberg Kant distinguishes between ')udicium ordinarium" and ''judicium extraordinarium" as possible first premises of syllogisms. The former is categorical judgment, and "all ratiocinia Extraordinaria are either Hypothetica or Disjunctiva" (XXIV 285). However, what is decisive is not that Kant still retains here the classifica­ tion of ordinary and extraordinary inferences as they are found in Lambert and Meier, but rather that the relation (Verhaltnis) in them is in effect identified with the relation (Relation) of the corresponding judgments as their respective major premises. Through the same concept of relation (Verhaltnis), the doctrine of inferences depends on the corresponding determination of judgments. They can be only categorical, hypothetical, or disjunctive. The elimination of the division into ordinary and extraordinary modes of inference is tangible in the (late, cf. XXIV 979-980) Logik-Politz: Syllogisms cannot (which had not even been in question up to this point) be classified according to the quantity, quality, or modality of judgments. In the text of the Academy edition (and in the manuscript) it reads: "Inferences cannot be classi­ fied ratione qua/itatis because every major premise is a rule, thus general, and not quantitatis because it is the same whether the conclusion is affirmative or negative, and not modalitatis because every conclusion contains a necessity, thus all are apodictic" (XXIV 586-587; quantitatis and qua/itatis must of course be reversed in this passage). The passage continues: "According to relation they are classified into categorical, in which the major premise is a categorical proposition, hypothetical, in which the major premise is a hypo­ thetical or problematic proposition and the minor premise assertoric, and disjunctive syllogisms, in which the major premise is a disjunctive proposition. The author calls the categorical ordinary, the others extraordinary, but this is wrong; they are all three completely correct, distinct acts of the understanding" (XXIV 587). Nata bene: the "acts of the understanding," the "operationes mentis," are referred to the three coordinated syllogisms; precisely this forms a cornerstone of our interpretation of the table of judgments in the Critique. If Adickes has dated the following Reflexion correctly, the important idea for the table of judgments, that of an internal connection of the doctrines of concepts and inferences, is advanced in the omicron phase (shortly after 1772) : "All knowledge consists in judgments. Now judgments may be immediate or

1 06

THE TABLE OF JUDGfvfENTS

mediate (syllogisms); (a determinate) thinking is called judging. The concepts themselves are predicates" (Re.fl. 4638; XVII 620). Here concepts are incorpo­ rated into the doctrine of judgments not on account of the clarity of their marks, but rather because they can be determined only as possible predicates. 3. The Doctrine of Apperception around 1 775

So far Kant's logic, especially the doctrine of judgments, has been analyzed as an experiment in the field of modern logic. The transcripts from his logic lectures and the Rejlexionen revealed Kant's attempts at a new orientation within the tradition of the Organ on. In the seventies considerations pertaining to logic are often combined with a problematic circumscribed roughly by the notions of "consciousness," "I think," and "apperception." The acts of the understanding considered in the Aristote­ lian tradition are more clearly grasped as achievP.ments of unity on the part of a unitary subject. The realm that appears under the heading of relation in the Critique of Pure Reason, and whose systematization we followed above inde­ pendently of the I-problematic, thereby necessarily comes to the fore. In the mid-sixties the I is no mere form of unity, as it is in 1 78 1, but rather grounds it as a substance. The path of Kant's views regarding the I does not lead straight to the conception of 1 78 1 , but rather culminates in the mid-sixties and is then supressed in the second half of the seventies. As mentioned above, Kant changes his conception of the I, and thus the parts of his system that depend on it, with the discovery that knowledge of a substantial self is possible neither through immediate intuition (in empirical psychology) nor through discursive inference (in rational psychology). The I is disempowered, and the forms of intuition (space and time) and thought are independently developed before being taken up and related (at least with respect to their unity, not to their being given as such) as achievements of the I in the Transcendental Deduction. In the mid-seventies Kant runs the risk of grounding the formal detennina­ tions of the Aesthetic and Logic in a presumed knowledge of the subject. A passage from the (unpublished) Philippi transcript of Kant's anthropology_ lecture of 1 772- 1773 reads: "The I is the foundation of the understanding, of the capacity of reason, and of the entire higher cognitive faculty, for all of these faculties depend on the fact that I attend to and observe myself and that which occurs in me" (3r). In his search for the solution to problems with which Kant saw himself confronted by his Dissertation of 1 770, the I moves to the center of philosophy. Up to the late seventies the intuitively known I is simple, substan­ tial, and free, as we "find when analyzing it." 1 4 In Reflexion 4673, written after April 28, 1 774, the ontologically secured unity of the I is made into the basis of the deduction of the essential traits of space and time. Space and time are single (einig) because a single subject underlies them: "Time [is] single . . . Which means the same as: I can... all objects only in myself and in those representa-

On the Genesis of the Table

107

tions that are found in my single subject. . . " and " Space . . . is a singular (einzelne) representation on account of the unity of the subject. . ." (XVII 636-637 and 638). The infinity of time follows from the function of time in inner sense (637). Space "is nothing other than the consciousness of one's own receptivity, of receiving representations (impressions) of things according to certain rela­ tions among themselves" (63 9). 1 5-In the arguments of the Aesthetic of the Critique of Pure Reason Kant no longer speaks of consciousness, 1 6 and inner sense serves as little as the unity of the subject as a basis for proofs of certain features of space and time. In the first edition of the Critique Kant returns to his position in the Dissertation of 1770. The features of time and space are derived not from an underlying I-unity and from conscientia (a thought that is completely foreign to Kant in 1770), but rather through an analysis of each representation itself. Unity and infinity are assumed as immediately evident: "Idea temporis est singularis, non generalis. Tempus enim quodlibet non cogitator, nisi tanquam pars unius eiusdem temporis immensi" (§ 1 4, 2; II 3 99), and "Conceptus spatii est singularis repraesentatio omnia in se compre­ hendens . . . Quae enim dicis spatia plura, non sunt nisi eiusdem immensi spatii partes. . . " (§ 1 5 , B� II 402). "I am the original of all objects" (Rejl. 4674; XVII 646) : 1 7 only through the representation of the I is the representation of objects, i.e. , the reference of representations to objects, possible because "[t]he I constitutes the substratum of a rule in general, and apprehension refers every appearance to it" (Rejl. 4676 ; XVII 656). This claim to primacy is not carried over explicitly to logic, but it is hard to see how logic could have been able to exempt itself from the genetic principle of the "I think" in a developed theory of apperception in the period around 1 775. Thus: "If something is apprehended, then it is taken up into the function of apperception. I am, I think, thoughts are in me. These are all relations that do not provide rules of appearances but rather bring it about that all appearances are represented as contained under rules" (Rejl. 4676; XVII 656). Wolfgang Carl correctly writes of "I am, I think, thoughts are in me" : "These are the functions of apperception, which can easily be identified as the three relational categories." 1 8-On this basis it would have had to be possible to derive the pure concepts of the understanding and thus all functions of the understanding immediately from apperception. In the Critique of 178 1 the claim to the unity of self-consciousness is ad­ vanced in the Transcendental Deduction: "The synthetic proposition that all the variety of empirical consciousness must be combined in a single self­ consciousness is the absolutely first and synthetic principle of our thought in general. . . the possibility of the logical form of all knowledge necessarily de­ pends on the relation to this apperception as a faculty" (A 1 1 7 footnote). But the logical form can be discovered only independently of the consciousness upon which its unity-engendering function depends, as analogously the con­ cepts of space and time cannot be derived from transcendental apperception,

1 08

THE TABLE OF JUDGMENTS

even though it is true "that even the purest objective unity, namely, that of a priori concepts (space and time) is possible only through the relation of intui­ tions to it [i.e., transcendental apperception]" (A 1 07). In the second edition Kant presents the same doctrine, although there is perhaps a tendency towards a stronger empowerment of the I-unity. Thus, in the Transcendental Aesthetic the careful distinction between a doctrine of the forms of intuition that is to be provided there and of the concepts of space and time 1 9 to be introduced only later is eliminated, and the Aesthetic already speaks of these concepts (cf. B 37 ff. ). But this means that the Aesthetic has already been brought under the rule of the conceptual unity of the understand­ ing. With this, the second edition merely draws a consequence from the first, which had also spoken retroactively of the concepts of space and time and their deduction (A 87), thus in principle subjecting the Aesthetic to the unity of the understanding, without acknowledging that fact in the Aesthetic. The direction is clear: the independence of the Aesthetic is unc!�rmined. In the second edition there is a new definition of judgment, competing with the first definition in the introduction to the table of judgments ("Therefore, judgment is the mediate knowledge of an object. . . " A 68) : " . . . I find that a judgment is nothing other than the way of bringing given knowledge to the objective unity of apperception. This is what is intended by the copula in judgments, in order to distinguish the objective unity of given representations from the subjective unity." Then of representations it is said: " . . . they belong to each other by means of the necessary unity of apperception in the synthesis of intuitions, i.e., according to principles of the objective determination of all representations, insofar as knowledge can be acquired by means of them­ principles which are all derived from the principle of the transcendental unity of apperception" (B 1 4 1 - 1 4 2 )-"derived" ! But Kant expresses neither here nor elsewhere (including the so-called Opus postumum, where Kant indulges in some extravagant positings) the idea that the table of judgments, along with its headings and moments, could actually be derived from transcendental apper­ ception. Rather, it is only that the tendency to attribute a greater role to tran­ scendental apperception and the understanding that is defined through it is. clearer in the second edition than in the first edition, both for the Aesthetic and for the Logic.

4. The Operationes Mentis in the Logic Transcripts of the Late Seventies In the logic transcripts of the late seventies we discover a new element that coheres well with the ideas developed in the preceding analysis: Kant takes an interest, if we can trust the transcripts, in the three-fold structure of traditional logic: "The ancients said: Quot sunt operationes mentis? Resp. tres. apprehen­ sio simplex, Judicium et Ratiocinium," we find in the Logik- Wien (XXIV 904) . 20 In the Logik-Busolt from the late eighties this motif is continued:

On the Genesis of the Table

1 09

"Logic is concerned merely with the understanding; operationes mentis were already classified correctly by the ancients, namely: apprehensio simplex i.e. conceptus iudicium et ratiocinium" (XXIV 653). Kant takes over from Wolff the "'apprehensio simplex," which appears here and in the Logik- Wien in place of concepts: "Tres sunt mentis operationes, quibus ea circa cognoscibile versatur, notio cum simplici apprehensione, judicium et discursus. " 2 1 It should be mentioned here that Wolff receives explicit praise from Kant at the end of the seventies. If the Logik-Blomberg still says "Locke's book de intel/ectu humano is the ground of all true logic" (XXIV 37), we find the following claim in the Logik-Politz: "Among the moderns there are 2 who consider general logic as a whole, namely, Leibniz and Wolff, and the general logic of the latter is the best that we have" (XXIV 509). In the Logik- Wien the "table of judgments" begins, as it does in the Ency­ clopedia quoted above, with quality (XXIV 929). This is possible if what constitutes judgment as such, namely, kataphasis and apophasis, is placed at the beginning. In the Critique Kant's interests have changed: beginning with quantity signals that a sequence of increasing complexity-"concept, judgment, inference"-is intended. The Logik-Busolt, where we can already presuppose the Critique, begins the list of the "headings" with quantity, while the explana­ tion places quality at the beginning" (XXIV 66 1). The definition of judgment as mediate knowledge, which forms one of the cornerstones of our interpreta­ tion, introduces the doctrine of judgments (XXIV 66 1 ) and is discussed once again and justified: "A judgment is therefore a knowledge of knowledge (eine Erkentni/3 von Einer Erkentni/3), or mediate knowledge of objects... " (XXIV 662). There is no talk of consciousness, the I, or transcendental apperception. And then there is the previously cited formulation: "All acts of the under­ standing aim toward judgments, and every object that we know, 22 every con­ cept, is at the same time a predicate for a possible judgment Thus, we can explain the understanding, which was previously characterized as the faculty of concepts, as the faculty of judgments or rules. For the understanding is the source of rules because every judgment is a rule, and every rule a judgment� e.g. , all human beings are mortal. Thus, as soon as I see a human being, this proposition is as a rule for me, and this human being too must die" (XXIV 662663). As soon as I see a human being-the intuition is subsumed under the subject concept of the rule-judgment, and the inference is drawn. In a syllogism another judgment takes the place of the intuition. Thus, the structure is the same� furthermore, it is of course the case that in a syllogism no premise or conclusion can arise that could not be designated as a rule in the table of judgments. Perhaps Kant did not bother in his lectures to note the division between the first three headings and modality. At least there is no trace of it in the Logik­ Busolt. Thus, we cannot take this transcript as a pure reflection of the relevant

1 10

THE TABLE OF JUDG�NTS

passages in the Critique, even if the sentences cited agree with the correspond­ ing passages from 178 1 . This is the material from which the table of judgments and its systematic structure is ultimately put together. Perhaps the puzzle about its completeness remained unsolved for over two hundred years because one was fixated on the alternatives of a highest point or an unsystematic empiricism. But a derivation from above proves not to be possible, and no one would attempt one from below. Kant chose, as we have shown, another path.

V. ON THE HISTORY OF THE INTERPRETATION OF THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON In the nineteenth century the Critique of Pure Reason stood under the wide­ spread pressure for the legitimacy of scientific knowledge. The success of Hermann Cohen depends on, among other things, the fact that he interpreted Kant' s Critique as a work that is scientifically tenable and provides the neces­ sary epistemological justification of Newtonian physics. Already in Kants Theorie der Erfahrung of 187 1 the direction was sketched in which Marburg's Neo-Kantianism would proceed. The central question for Cohen is a problem that Kant does not place in the forefront in either the development of the Critique or its first edition, but rather for the first time in the Prolegomena and in the works that follow it: "How are synthetic' propositions a priori possible? This is the basic question of the critique of reason." 1 Propositions, not judg­ ments as for Kant: Cohen thereby immediately opens, terminologically, the possibility of moving the Principles of the Analytic into the systematic center of his project. The Principles receive systematic primacy: "The transcendental a priori status of the forms of thought, as the formal conditions of our experience, depends on the a priori status of the synthetic Principles insofar as they are the basic forms of synthetic judgments a priori" (208), and "The Principles are not propositions of mere sensibility nor of the pure understanding, but rather basic forms of thought that are combined with the manifold of intuition by means of synthetic unity" (209). In the third edition of Kanis Theorie der Erfahrung of 1 9 1 8 he summarizes: "We have come to recognize that the discovery as well as the classification of the categories had to follow from the perspective of the Principles because Kant ultimately justifies the unity of experience from this perspective; accordingly, he returned to the judgment-types, or rather never left them. " 2 As it is put in the Logik der reinen Erkenntnis, the fact is that "however, Kant's table of judgments is not, as it might seem, oriented accord­ ing to his table of categories, but rather according to his table of Princi­ ples... The types of judgment must be derived from the types and directions of pure knowledge. " 3 In the doctrine of Principles "Kant personally achieved the positive goal of his theoretical reflections, a goal that was before him early on: the philosophi­ cal justification of Newton's theory"-thus Cohen's interpretation as repeated in Wilhelm Windelband's Lehrbuch der Geschichte der Philosophie. 4 If Newton' s natural laws are given, and Kant intends to show their philosophical justification post Jestum, then it is unavoidable that we proceed from the Prin­ ciples as the primary fact of the understanding and treat the table of judgments as a deceptive facade: What it appears to justify in the structure of the work has long since been decided. Kant deceives his reader with a theoretical structure in which he himself does not believe and that contradicts the genesis of his theory and its program: How are synthetic propositions a priori possible? Since no one

1 12

THE TABLE OF JUDGtv1ENTS

has discovered and penetrated the independent systematic structure of the table of judgments, it doesn't exist. Despite the author's declarations to the contrary, this structure owes its origin to what it is officially supposed to justify, namely, the system of principles that follows it. With the positivistic conception of philosophy, especially in the second half of the nineteenth century, the Transcendental Analytic (instead of the Tran­ scendental Dialectic, in which the Critique of Pure Reason destroys dogmatic metaphysics) had to come to the fore, and interpretations of the Critique unre­ flectively followed this interest. For Cohen the Principles were the culminating point of the Critique, and his interpretation, led by this interest, proved them to be the genetic and systematic starting point of the whole theory. With the collapse of Neo-Kantianism at the beginning of this century, the epistemological reading of the Critique of Pure Reason became obsolete. Kant was particularly celebrated in 1 924 as the metaphysician of the German tradi­ tion. With Max Wundt, the categories now be:ame the unsurpassable starting point of the system: "Thus, the categories are the ultimate presuppositions whose validity can indeed be shown for knowledge, but which cannot them­ selves be proved from a higher principle because they are already the presup­ position of all knowledge. For this reason there is for their discovery only a 'clue' that the merely empirically acquired table of judgments must provide. " 5 The Dialectic was no longer shoved to the side as it was for Cohen, but rather found renewed attention (as it did in the 1780s during the Spinoza contro­ versy). In the Dialectic the great themes of metaphysics are treated. It can be integrated into the tradition of metaphysics that leads from Aristotle through the Middle Ages to Leibniz and experiences its final great climax in German Idealism. Heimsoeth's commentary, exclusively on the Dialectic of the Critique ofPure Reason, is a late manifestation of this interest. One of the Kant-commentators who did not follow this metaphysical turn was Julius Ebbinghaus. He wanted to return, even past German Idealism, to the Kant that no one had really understood. According to Ebbinghaus Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel had to be viciims of simple mistakes of Kant exegesis. If the completeness of the table of judgments can be shown with Kantian means, then one need not "go beyond" Kant any more. Fichte's philosophy, including its successors, proves to be on the wrong track because it rests on a false prem­ ise. Reich provides the justification for Ebbinghaus' s Kantianism with his attempt at proving that the gap or incoherence in Kant 's considerations is in fact non-existent. In the framework of this philosophy, logic can be erected with Kantian means and the proclaimed completeness of the table of judgments proven to be redeemable. If Hegel writes that "Fichte's philosophy is owed the great honor of having reminded us that conceptual determinations are to be revealed in their necessity, that they are to be derived essentially," 6 we can read

On the History of the Interpretation

113

Reich's work as the attempt at the proof that it is not Fichte but rather Kant to whom this (in our opinion, typically Fichtian) honor is owed. With Reich's dissertation interest in Kant's Critique moves from the Prin­ ciples through the categories to transcendental apperception. It is-if one follows these broad strokes-no accident that Dieter Henrich has provoked along these lines the most intensive Kant-debate since the war, focusing in particular on the second-edition Transcendental Deduction. A series of disser­ tations, papers, and conferences followed his sketch of the proof-structure. Henrich' s interest in the I-problematic formed the nucleus of the Heidelberg School. 7 Whereas Reich's idea was to render Fichte and his followers superfluous with his proof of the completeness of the table .of judgments on the basis of a derivation from objective apperception, Henrich wanted to direct attention to problems in the structure of self-consciousness that Kant and Fichte had touched upon, but not adequately solved. Henrich rejects Reich's claim of being able to derive formal logic from self-consciousness: "Kant, who was no doubt responsible for the fact that theoretical aspirations were placed on a connection with a principle of self-consciousness, was not at all concerned to declare this self-consciousness a self-sufficient or solitary principle. He used it as a princi­ ple, but as a theoretical principle that functions in a broader framework. Nei­ ther the basic logical forms, nor the modes of justification of science and metaphysics, nor the basic norms cf action as such can be derived from it," as he puts it in a discussion with Habermas.8 This position provides him with a fluid transition from Kant to Fichte, as is also entirely possible with a positive evaluation of Reich's derivation. For what Reich makes the burden of transcen­ dental apperception is-mutatis mutandis-precisely what Fichte gains from the I with respect to logic. Cohen's interpretation makes it possible to understand the Critique of Pure Reason as a theory for explaining Newtonian science, which would otherwise be presupposed without any justification and as a mere "fact." Reich's interpre­ tation has other strategic advantages: it has recourse to an unsurpassable cogito rather than to a precarious historical fact (i.e., the acceptance of Newtonian sciencet with regard to the structure of the argument, the highest point secures an ultimate justification of the table of judgments and thus of Critical philoso­ phy. The "I think" has the further advantage that the I functions as a maker and thus easily redeems the modern dictum and postulate: human beings can know only what they themselves make. 9 The table of judgments is not a free-floating calculus, like the logistic structure that is its analogue, but is rather anchored in the conceptual activity of the knowing subject. And in this manner we have both rescued the responsibility of modern epistemology and thereby enabled a connection with practical philosophy, which was of course made explicit for the first time by Fichte. (We recall here that even the operatio men tis of the Arista-

1 14

THE TABLE OF JUDGrvIBNTS

telian tradition guarantees the epistemological advantages of "making," even if it does not emphasize the I.) Neither Neo-Kantianism nor attention to transcendental apperception, which was initiated by, among others, Reich, leads to the exposure of the foundation of transcendental logic as the Critique develops it in the table of judgments. Neither Cohen nor Reich interprets Kant's Critique with a gener­ alizable method, but rather both support their suggestions with selected quota­ tions. The licenses that they allow themselves necessarily lead them away from the relevant explanations in the text itself and thus into a hermeneutic region in which ever-new ideas, occasioned by Kant, can be supported and brought into play with one another. The present interpretation disempowers and relieves the I of its excessive burdens and exaggerated claims: The "I think" finds before it the unity of space and time and the unity of judgment entirely and completely detemtined in its form. It can assume power over these formal uuities as its own possessions, but we are not in a position to derive these unities from their existential ground. For Kant it is not the I, but rather judgment revealed as a unity, that is the ratio cognoscendi of the headings and moments that represent all acts of the under­ standing in general. The ratio essendi of this form is no more accessible to human beings than the ratio essendi of spatial and temporal intuition. How­ ever, transcendental apperception can lay claim post festum to our recognition of its achievement of unity because it possesses a priori a monopoly on the achievement of unity in general. In the edition of 1781 it is nothing else. Neo-Kantianism was the victim of a methodological mistake: what appeared as systematically necessary and plausible was declared to be the true Kant, and then it was discovered in his texts. With hermeneutic skill any philosopher can be adapted to one's own horizon of understanding. If we tum to the Critique of Pure Reason with the idea of an objective interpretation, one that aims at generality, and pay heed to the methodological rules that issue from this idea, then we see that many, and precisely the decisive, assumptions of Cohen do not stand up to scrutiny. They are false. The same is true, as was shown in extenso, of the most prominent attempt at making transcendental apperception the origin of logic. In his ingenious book Relation und Funktion, Schulthess writes: "It is one of the most debated questions of Kant-scholarship, whether Kant discovered the table of categories from the Principles or from the table of judgments. This question is decisive for the interpretation of transcendental philosopliy. If we assume that the Analogies of Experience have Newtonian principles as their basis, then the phrase " transcendental philosophy' acquires-as it does for Cohen-a meaning derived from philosophy of science. If, by contrast, we proceed from the table of judgments in determining the categories, then we attempt to understand transcendental philosophy as an ontology of the subject" (206). If the systematic structuring of the operationes men/is means deriving

On the History of the Interpretation

1 15

the categories from the table of judgments, which has now been shown to be independent, then we plead for acceptance of the second alternative. However, whether we should designate this second alternative as an "ontology of the subject," after Kant's efforts at showing an ontology of I-consciousness to be paralogistic, is questionable. Kant leaves the ontological status of the subject undetermined in the Analytic and proves its necessary indeterminacy in the Dialectic (cf. also A 247). This interpretation of the table of judgments leads to the conclusion that Kant comprehends logica artijicialis under a systematic idea in a highly artificial manner. We found the unifying perspectives under which the table was developed and the various reasons for the designation and completeness of its four headings and twelve moments. Kant's general logic as it is formulated with respect to its applicability in transcendental knowledge is, so it seems, an internal logic for the Critique of Pure Reason that can be exported neither as a whole nor in individual pieces into other conceptual contexts. Systematic interests cannot enforce conversion of the individual parts of the theory before us, much less hermeneutically rig the interpretation and thus adapt it to one's own understanding. The alternative to this procedure, which contaminates history and system and thus ruins both, is the separation of philosophical interpretation of historically received philosophy, on the one hand, and its evaluation, on the other hand. Only on this basis can a doctrine from a theory be adapted to one's own systematic interests.

APPENDIX Excursus 1 In the chapter "Das urteilstheoretische Modalproblem" of his work Modalitat und empirisches Denken (1986, pp. 34-59) B. Grunewald has presented a meticulous analysis of the moments of modality. Grunewald's special interest is in "problems concerning various interpretations of the expressions 'laws of the understanding' in connection with the differentiation of modes of judgment" (3 9-59). Grunewald assumes here that Kant suggests locating the modes of judgment in syllogisms. He sets out four alternatives as to what could be meant by 'laws of the understanding' and three alternatives for characterizing apodic­ tic judgments (but along with it the other two modal moments as well) : "Either (a) the form of any syllogism already grounds its apodicticity� or (b) the apo­ dicticity of the disjunctive major premise g1ounds its necessity-of course together with an at least assertoric minor premise� or (c) only the apodicticity of both the major and the minor premises can ground the necessity of the conclu­ sion" (44). His explanation concludes aporetically in light of the Clue Chapter of the Critique. The solution that he favors must accept "that the term 'laws of the understanding' cannot be supported in precisely this meaning and defini­ tion" (59), the meaning, namely, of rules in general as major premises. I think this gravamen is destructive, especially since talk of "laws of the understand­ ing" assimilates the preceding "laws of the understanding and reason" (A 57� 59� cf. also IX 51). In these terms, what cannot be intended is major premises that are arbitrary in terms of content serving as rules of the understanding. According to Grunewald alternative (a) fails primarily "because it would not explain the characterization of synthetic judgments a priori in particular as apodictic judgments, which Kant's system necessarily demands" (58-59� cf. 47). Perhaps there is a way around this objection, so that the Principles of the understanding, as synthetic judgments a priori par excellence, are not epis­ temic judgments in the sense in question under the heading of modality. For they do not progress through the stations of mere suggestion, acceptance, and apodictic necessity or certainty. Perhaps as specific theorems of transcendental philosophy they are without competition and for that reason are not considered. Further, Kant seems to want to communicate only an idea as to how one can think of logical possibility, actuality, and necessity� location with respect to purely logical positions in syllogisms serves precisely this purpose (cf. Grune­ wald' s remark about a merely loosely drawn analogy, 56-57). Alternative (a) seems acceptable to me, especially given this latter restriction (even if after a more precise and not merely loose interpretation the misgiving remains as to how the conclusion can itself be apodictic unless at least the major premise is apodictic).-Griinewald does reject the idea that methodological perspectives could play a role under the heading of modality (cf. 55), but he does not con-

Appendix

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sider the special process involved in judgment-making decisions. From his purely logical considerations it is inexplicable how time-determination enters into Kant's text. In Aristotle's Ana(vtica Priora the various modal determina­ tions of premises and conclusions are not connected with time or with any subjectively increasing certainty. Excursus 2

In addition to ''magnitude, quality, and relation there is nothing more that constituted the content of a judgment" (A 74)� modality is added as a fourth heading. The pattern of three layered elements to which a fourth is then added-somehow reflecting, grounding, compr�hending, or even first realizing them-is also found in other theories of Kant that do not depend on the table of judgments. Whether it led or misled Kant in setting up the table cannot be decided. I shall mention three especially striking cases in which we encounter the same structure as in the table of judgments. In An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment? Kant says the following: "But nothing other than freedom is required for this enlightenment; and it is the most harmless of everything that might be called freedom, namely: making public use of one's reason in all its parts. Now I hear from all sides the calls : Do not reason! The officer says , do not reason, but rather drill ! The tax collector: do not reason, but rather pay! The cleric: do not reason, but rather believe ! (Only a single ruler in the world says: Reason as much as you want and about what you want, but obey ! )" (VIII 36-37). The officer, the tax collector, and the cleric are representatives of the three classes of the taxable citizen, the nobility, and the clergy (anticipated by Plato's Republic with its three classes). As in Plato the all-encompassing cardinal virtue is added to the virtues of the three classes, so here the king is added as the fourth position, encompassing the state and holding it together: a position with which the philosopher can iden­ tify. ·'All the interests of my reason (speculative as well as practical) can be combined in the following three questions: 1 . What can I know? 2 . What should I do? 3 . What may I hope?"-thus the well-known claim from the Canon of Pure Reason in the Doctrine of Method (A 804-805). It is less known that Kant is taking up and reformulating a hermeneutical maxim of medieval theology: "Littera gesta docet, quid credas, allegoria / Moralis quid agis, quid speras anagogia." 1 The immature Thou (Du), who is supposed to learn from oriental texts what should be believed, done, and hoped, becomes for Kant the self-enlightening I that replaces belief with knowledge and does not search for answers to its questions in a book that has been handed down to it. "Littera gesta docet. . . "-the literal interpretation stands in contrast to the three alle­ gorical interpretations and forms their basis, even if it is then to be forgotten. Kant too supplements his three questions with a fourth: "The plan that I made

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THE TABLE OF JUDGI\1ENTS

quite a while ago for the requisite treatment of the field of pure philosophy was directed toward solving three tasks : 1 ) What can I know? (metaphysics) 2) What should I do? (morals) 3) What may I hope? (religion); upon which finally the fourth should follow: What is man?" (XI 4 1 4; cf. IX 25 and XXVIII 5 3 3 534). The Anthropology answers the question about man-"But i n principle one could count all of this as anthropology because the first three questions refer to the last one" (IX 25). Thus, the isomorphic structure: There are three distinct basic questions� the fourth is added. On the one hand, the fourth question has equal standing. On the other hand, it has a special status by virtue of comprehending everything prior. A further striking example is the theory of the university in the introduction to the Conflict of the Faculties. The three higher faculties refer to the three great areas of interest to human beings as they have been formulated since Plato, namely, the soul, external goods, and one's own body, corresponding to the order of the theological, juridical, and medi