“It is clear that in the ordinary treatment of logic there is a serious error in that distinct and complete concepts are treated before judgments and ratiocinations, although the former are only possible by means of the latter.” “I say, then, first, that a distinct concept is possible only by means of a judgment, a complete concept only by means of a ratiocination. In fact, in order that a concept should be distinct, I must clearly recognise something as an attribute of a thing, and this is a judgment. In order to have a distinct concept of body, I clearly represent to myself impenetrability as an attribute of it. Now this representation is nothing but the thought, ‘a body is impenetrable.’ Here it is to be observed that this judgment is not the distinct concept itself, but is the act by which it is realised; for the idea of the thing which arises after this act is distinct. It is easy to show that a complete concept is only possible by means of a ratiocination: for this it is sufficient to refer to the first section of this essay. We might say, therefore, that a distinct concept is one which is made clear by a judgment, and a complete concept one which is made distinct by a ratiocination. If the completeness is of the first degree, the ratiocination is simple; if of the second or third degree, it is only possible by means of a chain of reasoning which the understanding abridges in the manner of a sorites.... Secondly, as it is quite evident that the completeness of a concept and its distinctness do not require different faculties of the mind (since the same capacity which recognises something immediately as an attribute in a thing is also employed to recognise in this attribute another attribute, and thus to conceive the thing by means of a remote attribute), so also it is evident that understanding and reason, that is, the power of cognising distinctly and the power of forming ratiocinations, are not different faculties. Both consist in the power of judging, but when we judge mediately we reason.”[682]
In the section before us this same standpoint is maintained, but is expressed in a much less satisfactory manner. Concepts are no longer spoken of as complete judgments. In the above passages Kant always speaks of the concept as the subject of the proposition; it is now treated only as a predicate.[683] This difference is significant. The concept as subject can represent the judgment as a whole (or at least it does so from the traditional standpoint to which Kant holds); the concept as predicate is merely one element, even though it be a unifying element, in the total act of judging. This falling away from his own maturer standpoint would seem to be due to Kant’s lack of clearness as to the nature of the analogy which he is here drawing between analytic and synthetic thinking. It is connected with his mistaken, and merely temporary, comparison of a priori with discursive concepts. His position in 1762 alone harmonises with his essential teaching. Now, as then, he is prepared to view judgment as the sole ultimate activity of the understanding, and therefore to define understanding as the faculty of judging.
But the new Critical standpoint compels Kant to reinterpret this definition in a manner which involves a still more radical transformation of the traditional doctrine. The categories constitute a unique type of concept, and condition the processes of discursive thought. They are embodied in the complex contents from which analytic thinking starts; and however far the processes of discursive comparison and abstraction be carried, one or other of these categories must still persist, determining the form which the analytic judgment is to take. The categorical judgment can formulate itself only by means of the a priori concept of subject and attribute, the hypothetical only by means of the pure concept of ground and consequence, and so with the others. And there are in consequence just as many categories as there are forms of the analytic judgment. This is how the principle of the metaphysical deduction must be interpreted when the later and deeper results of the transcendental deduction are properly taken into account. In deducing the forms of the understanding from the modes of discursive judgment Kant is virtually maintaining that analytic judgment involves the same problems as does judgment of the synthetic type. The categories can be derived from the forms of discursive judgment only because they are the conditions in and through which it becomes possible.
But though Kant, both here and in the central portions of the Analytic, seems to be on the very brink of this conclusion, it is never explicitly drawn. As we shall see,[684] it would have involved the further admission that there is no absolute guarantee of the completeness of the table of categories, and no satisfactory method of determining their interrelations. To the very last general logic is isolated from transcendental logic. The Critical enquiry is formulated as if it concerned only such judgments as are explicitly synthetic. The principle of the metaphysical deduction is not, therefore, stated by Kant himself in the above manner; and we have still to decide the difficult question as to what the principle employed by Kant in the deduction actually is.
Kant makes a twofold demand upon the principle. It must enable us to discover the categories, and it must also in so doing enable us to view them as together forming a systematic whole, and so as having their completeness guaranteed by other than merely empirical considerations. The principle is stated sometimes in a broader and sometimes in a more specific form; for on this point also Kant speaks with no very certain voice.[685] The broader formulation of the principle is that all acts of understanding are judgments, and that therefore the possible ultimate a priori forms of understanding are identical with the possible ultimate forms of the judgment.[686] The more specific and correct formulation is that to every form of analytic judgment there corresponds a pure concept of understanding. The first statement of the principle is obviously inadequate. It merely reformulates the problem as being a problem not of conception but of judgment. If a principle is required to guarantee the completeness of our list of a priori concepts, it will equally be required to guarantee the completeness of our list of judgments. Even if the above principle be more explicitly formulated, as in the Prolegomena,[687] where judging is defined as the act of understanding which comprises all its other acts, it will not enable us to guarantee the completeness of any list of the forms of judgment or to determine their systematic interrelation. We are therefore thrown back upon the second view. This, however, only brings us face to face with the further question, what principle guarantees the completeness of the table of analytic judgments. And to that query Kant has absolutely no answer. The reader’s questionings break vainly upon his invincible belief in the adequacy and finality of the classification yielded by the traditional logic.
The fons et origo of all the confusions and obscurities of this section are thus traceable to Kant’s attitude towards formal logic. He might criticise it for ignoring the interdependence of conception, judgment, and reasoning; he might reject the second, third, and fourth syllogistic figures; and he might even admit that its classification of the forms of judgment is not as explicit as might be desired; but however many provisos he made and defects he acknowledged, they were to him merely minor matters, and he accepted its teaching as complete and final. This unwavering faith in the fundamental distinctions of the traditional logic was indeed, as we shall have constant occasion to observe, an ever present influence in determining alike the general framework and much of the detail of Kant’s Critical teaching. The defects of the traditional logic were very clearly indicated in his own transcendental logic. He showed that synthetic thinking is fundamental; that by its distinctions the forms and activities of analytic thought are predetermined; that judgment in its various forms can be understood only by a regress upon the synthetic concepts to which these forms are due; that notions are not merely of the generic type, but that there are also categories of relation. None the less, to the very last, Kant persisted in regarding general logic as a separate discipline, and as quite adequate in its current form. He continued to ignore the fact that the analytic judgment, no less than the synthetic judgment, demands a transcendental justification.
The resulting situation is strangely perverse. In the very act of revolutionising the traditional logic, Kant relies upon its prestige and upon the assumed finality of its results to make good the shortcomings of the logic which is to displace it. By Kant’s own admission transcendental logic is incapable of guaranteeing that completeness upon which, throughout the whole Critique, so great an emphasis is laid. General logic is allowed an independent status, sufficient to justify its authority being appealed to; and the principle which is supposed to guarantee the completeness of the table of categories is so formulated as to contain no suggestion of the dependence of discursive upon synthetic thinking. Formal logic, Kant would seem to hold, can supply a criterion for the classification of the ultimate forms of judgment just because its task is relatively simple, and is independent of all epistemological views as to the nature, scope, and conditions of the thought process. Since formal logic is a completed and perfectly a priori science, which has stood the test of 2000 years, and remains practically unchanged to the present day, its results can be accepted as final, and can be employed without question in all further enquiries. Analytic thinking is scientifically treated in general logic; the Critique is concerned only with the possibility and conditions of synthetic judgment. The table of analytic judgments therefore supplies a complete and absolutely guaranteed list of the possible categories of the understanding. But the perverseness of this whole procedure is shown by the manner in which, as we shall find, Kant recasts, extends, or alters, to suit his own purposes, the actual teaching of the traditional logic.
As noted above,[688] the asserted parallelism of analytic and synthetic judgment rests upon the further assumption that discursive thinking and synthetic interpretation are the outcome of one and the same faculty of understanding. It is implied, in accordance with the attitude of the pre-Critical Dissertation, that understanding, viewed as the faculty to which all thought processes are due, has certain laws in accordance with which it necessarily acts in all its operations, and that these must therefore be discoverable from analytic no less than from synthetic thinking. The mingling of truth and falsity in this assumption has already been indicated. Such truth as it contains is due to the fact that analytic thinking is not co-ordinate with, but is dependent upon, and determined by, the forms of synthetic thinking. Its falsity consists in its ignoring of what thus gives it partial truth. The results of the transcendental deduction call for a complete recasting of the entire argument of the metaphysical deduction. And when this is done, there is no longer any ground for the contention that the number of the categories is determinable on a priori grounds. On Kant’s own fundamental doctrine of the synthetic, and therefore merely de facto, character of all a priori principles, the necessity of the categories is only demonstrable by reference to the contingent fact of actual experience. The possible conceptual forms are relative to actual and ultimate differences in the contingent sensuous material; and being thus relative, they cannot possibly be systematised on purely a priori grounds. This Kant has himself admitted in a passage added in the second edition,[689] though apparently without full consciousness of the important consequences which must follow.
“This peculiarity of our understanding that it can produce a priori unity of apperception solely by means of the categories, and only by such and so many, is as little capable of further explanation as why we have just these and no other functions of judgment, or why space and time are the only forms of our possible intuition.”
THE DEVELOPMENT OF KANT’S METAPHYSICAL DEDUCTION