The Logical Form of all Judgements consists in the Objective
Unity of Apperception of the Conceptions contained therein.
SS 15.
I could never satisfy myself with the definition which logicians
give of a judgement. It is, according to them, the
representation of a
relation between two conceptions. I shall not dwell here on the
faultiness of this definition, in that it suits only for categorical
and not for hypothetical or disjunctive judgements, these latter
containing a relation not of conceptions but of judgements themselves—
a blunder from which many evil results have followed.
* It is more
important for our present purpose to observe, that this definition
does not determine in what the said relation consists.
[*]
The tedious doctrine of the four syllogistic figures concerns
only categorical syllogisms; and although it is nothing more than an
artifice by surreptitiously introducing immediate conclusions
(consequentiæ immediatæ) among the premises of a pure syllogism,
to give ism' give rise to an appearance of more modes of drawing a
conclusion than that in the first figure, the artifice would not
have had much success, had not its authors succeeded in bringing
categorical judgements into exclusive respect, as those to which all
others must be referred— a doctrine, however, which, according to SS
5, is utterly false.
But if I investigate more closely the relation of given cognitions
in every judgement, and distinguish it, as belonging to the
understanding, from the relation which is produced according to laws
of the reproductive imagination (which has only subjective
validity), I find that judgement is nothing but the mode of bringing
given cognitions under the objective unit of apperception. This is
plain from our use of the term of relation is in judgements, in
order to distinguish the objective unity of given representations from
the subjective unity. For this term indicates the relation of these
representations to the original apperception, and also their necessary
unity, even although the judgement is empirical, therefore contingent,
as in the judgement: "All bodies are heavy." I do not mean by this,
that these representations do necessarily belong to each other in
empirical intuition, but that by means of the necessary unity of
appreciation they belong to each other in the synthesis of intuitions,
that is to say, they belong to each other according to principles of
the objective determination of all our representations, in so far as
cognition can arise from them, these principles being all deduced from
the main principle of the transcendental unity of apperception. In
this way alone can there arise from this relation a judgement, that
is, a relation which has objective validity, and is perfectly distinct
from that relation of the very same representations which
has only
subjective validity— a relation, to wit, which is produced according
to laws of association. According to these laws, I could only say:
"When I hold in my hand or carry a body, I feel an impression of
weight"; but I could not say: "It, the body, is heavy"; for this is
tantamount to saying both these representations are conjoined in the
object, that is, without distinction as to the condition of the
subject, and do not merely stand together in my perception, however
frequently the perceptive act may be repeated.
