Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason — trans. F. Max Müller

hending among the many one single representation, which is referred immediately to the object. Thus in the judgment that all bodies are divisible,^ the concept of divisible applies to various other concepts, but is here applied in particular to the concept of body, and this concept of body to certain phenomena of our experience, [p. 69] These objects therefore are represented mediately by the concept of divisibility. All judgments therefore are functions of unity among our representations, the knowledge of an object being brought about, not by an immediate representation, but by a higher one, comprehending this and several others, so that many possible cognitions are collected into one. As all acts of the understanding can be reduced to judgments, the understanding may be defined as the faculty of jiidging. For we saw before that the understanding is the faculty of thinking, and thinking is knowledge by means of concepts, while concepts, as predicates of possible judgments, refer to some representation of an object yet undetermined. Thus the concept of body means something, for instance, metal, which can be known by that concept. It is only a concept, because it comprehends other representations, by means of which it can be referred to objects. It is therefore the predicate of a possible judgment, such as, that every metal is a body. Thus the functions of the understanding can be discovered in their completeness, if it is possible to represent the functions of unity in jicdgments. That this is possible will be seen in the following section.

1 Verbrnderlich in the First Edition is rightly corrected into theilbar in later editions, though in the Second it is still veranderlich.

p. 58

Trans cenden tal A na lytic

METHOD OF THE DISCOVERY OF ALL PURE CONCEPTS OF THE UNDERSTANDING [p. 70]

Section II

Of the Logical Function of the Understanding in yiidgme7its

If we leave out of consideration the contents of any judgment and fix our attention on the mere form of the understanding, we find that the function of thought in a judgment can be brought under four heads, each of them with three subdivisions. They may be represented in the following table : —

Quantity of fudgments

Universal.

Particular.

II

Singular.

Ill

Quality

Relation

Affirmative.

Categorical.

Negative.

Hypothetical

Infinite.

Disjunctive.

IV

Modality Problematical. Assertory. Apodictic. f.-c .

As this classification may seem to differ in some, though not very essential points, from the usual technicalities of logicians, the following reservations against any [p. 71] possible misunderstanding will not be out of place.

I. Logicians are quite right in saying that in using judgments in syllogisms, singular judgments may be

Transcendental Analytic 59

treated like universal ones. For as they have no extent at all, the predicate cannot refer to part only of that which is contained in the concept of the subject, and be excluded from the rest. The predicate is valid therefore of that concept, without any exception, as if it were a general concept, having an extent to the whole of which 'the predicate applies.

But if we compare a singular with a general judgment, looking only at the quantity of knowledge conveyed by it, the singular judgment stands to the universal judgment as unity to infinity, and is therefore essentially different from it.

It is therefore, when we consider a singular judgment {^judicinrn singnlare\ not only according to its own validity, but according to the quantity of knowledge which it conveys, as compared with other kinds of knowledge, that we see how different it is from general judgments {jndicia communia\ and how well it deserves a separate place in a complete table of the varieties of thought in general, though not in a logic limited to the use of judgments in reference to each other.

2. In like manner infinite judgments must, in transcendental logic, be distinguished from affirmative ones, though in general logic they are properly classed together, and do not constitute a separate part in [p. J2\ the classification. General logic takes no account of the contents of the-pr£dicate__(though it be negative), it only asks whether the predicate be affirmed or denied.

Transcendental logic, on the contrary, considers a judgment according to the value also or the contents of a logical affirmation by means of a purely negative predicate, and asks how much is gained by that afifirmation, with reference to the sum total of knowledge. If I had said of the soul, that it is not mortal, I should, by means of a nega6o Transcende7ital A^ialytic