第 19 页

concreto, possesses only subjective validity. One person connects

the notion conveyed in a word with one thing, another with another

thing; and the unity of consciousness in that which is empirical,

is, in relation to that which is given by experience, not

necessarily and universally valid.

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

(consequentiae immediatae) 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.

All Sensuous Intuitions are subject to the Categories, as

Conditions under which alone the manifold Content of

them can be united in one Consciousness. SS 16

The manifold content given in a sensuous intuition comes necessarily

under the original synthetical unity of apperception, because

thereby alone is the unity of intuition possible (SS 13). But that act

of the understanding, by which the manifold content of given

representations (whether intuitions or conceptions) is brought under

one apperception, is the logical function of judgements (SS 15). All

the manifold, therefore, in so far as it is given in one empirical

intuition, is determined in relation to one of the logical functions

of judgement, by means of which it is brought into union in one

consciousness. Now the categories are nothing else than these

functions of judgement so far as the manifold in a given intuition

is determined in relation to them (SS 9). Consequently, the manifold

in a given intuition is necessarily subject to the categories of the

understanding.

Observation. SS 17

The manifold in an intuition, which I call mine, is represented by

means of the synthesis of the understanding, as belonging to the

necessary unity of self-consciousness, and this takes place by means

of the category.* The category indicates accordingly that the

empirical consciousness of a given manifold in an intuition is subject

to a pure self-consciousness a priori, in the same manner as an

empirical intuition is subject to a pure sensuous intuition, which

is also a priori. In the above proposition, then, lies the beginning

of a deduction of the pure conceptions of the understanding. Now, as

the categories have their origin in the understanding alone,

independently of sensibility, I must in my deduction make

abstraction of the mode in which the manifold of an empirical

intuition is given, in order to fix my attention exclusively on the

unity which is brought by the understanding into the intuition by

means of the category. In what follows (SS 22), it will be shown, from

the mode in which the empirical intuition is given in the faculty of

sensibility, that the unity which belongs to it is no other than

that which the category (according to SS 16) imposes on the manifold

in a given intuition, and thus, its a priori validity in regard to all

objects of sense being established, the purpose of our deduction

will be fully attained.

*The proof of this rests on the represented unity of intuition, by

means of which an object is given, and which always includes in itself

a synthesis of the manifold to be intuited, and also the relation of

this latter to unity of apperception.

But there is one thing in the above demonstration of which I could

not make abstraction, namely, that the manifold to be intuited must be

given previously to the synthesis of the understanding, and

independently of it. How this takes place remains here undetermined.

For if I cogitate an understanding which was itself intuitive (as, for

example, a divine understanding which should not represent given

objects, but by whose representation the objects themselves should

be given or produced), the categories would possess no significance in

relation to such a faculty of cognition. They are merely rules for

an understanding, whose whole power consists in thought, that is, in

the act of submitting the synthesis of the manifold which is presented

to it in intuition from a very different quarter, to the unity of

apperception; a faculty, therefore, which cognizes nothing per se, but

only connects and arranges the material of cognition, the intuition,

namely, which must be presented to it by means of the object. But to

show reasons for this peculiar character of our understandings, that

it produces unity of apperception a priori only by means of

categories, and a certain kind and number thereof, is as impossible as

to explain why we are endowed with precisely so many functions of

judgement and no more, or why time and space are the only forms of our

intuition.

In Cognition, its Application to Objects of Experience is

the only legitimate use of the Category. SS 18

To think an object and to cognize an object are by no means the same

thing. In cognition there are two elements: firstly, the conception,

whereby an object is cogitated (the category); and, secondly, the

intuition, whereby the object is given. For supposing that to the

conception a corresponding intuition could not be given, it would

still be a thought as regards its form, but without any object, and no

cognition of anything would be possible by means of it, inasmuch as,

so far as I knew, there existed and could exist nothing to which my

thought could be applied. Now all intuition possible to us is

sensuous; consequently, our thought of an object by means of a pure

conception of the understanding, can become cognition for us only in

so far as this conception is applied to objects of the senses.

Sensuous intuition is either pure intuition (space and time) or

empirical intuition- of that which is immediately represented in space

and time by means of sensation as real. Through the determination of

pure intuition we obtain a priori cognitions of objects, as in

mathematics, but only as regards their form as phenomena; whether

there can exist things which must be intuited in this form is not

thereby established. All mathematical conceptions, therefore, are

not per se cognition, except in so far as we presuppose that there

exist things which can only be represented conformably to the form

of our pure sensuous intuition. But things in space and time are given

only in so far as they are perceptions (representations accompanied

with sensation), therefore only by empirical representation.

Consequently the pure conceptions of the understanding, even when they

are applied to intuitions a priori (as in mathematics), produce

cognition only in so far as these (and therefore the conceptions of

the understanding by means of them) can be applied to empirical

intuitions. Consequently the categories do not, even by means of

pure intuition afford us any cognition of things; they can only do

so in so far as they can be applied to empirical intuition. That is to

say, the, categories serve only to render empirical cognition

possible. But this is what we call experience. Consequently, in

cognition, their application to objects of experience is the only

legitimate use of the categories.

SS 19

The foregoing proposition is of the utmost importance, for it

determines the limits of the exercise of the pure conceptions of the

understanding in regard to objects, just as transcendental aesthetic

determined the limits of the exercise of the pure form of our sensuous

intuition. Space and time, as conditions of the possibility of the

presentation of objects to us, are valid no further than for objects

of sense, consequently, only for experience. Beyond these limits

they represent to us nothing, for they belong only to sense, and

have no reality apart from it. The pure conceptions of the

understanding are free from this limitation, and extend to objects

of intuition in general, be the intuition like or unlike to ours,

provided only it be sensuous, and not intellectual. But this extension

of conceptions beyond the range of our intuition is of no advantage;

for they are then mere empty conceptions of objects, as to the

possibility or impossibility of the existence of which they furnish us

with no means of discovery. They are mere forms of thought, without

objective reality, because we have no intuition to which the

synthetical unity of apperception, which alone the categories contain,

could be applied, for the purpose of determining an object. Our

sensuous and empirical intuition can alone give them significance

and meaning.

If, then, we suppose an object of a non-sensuous intuition to be

given we can in that case represent it by all those predicates which

are implied in the presupposition that nothing appertaining to

sensuous intuition belongs to it; for example, that it is not

extended, or in space; that its duration is not time; that in it no

change (the effect of the determinations in time) is to be met with,

and so on. But it is no proper knowledge if I merely indicate what the

intuition of the object is not, without being able to say what is

contained in it, for I have not shown the possibility of an object

to which my pure conception of understanding could be applicable,

because I have not been able to furnish any intuition corresponding to

it, but am only able to say that our intuition is not valid for it.

But the most important point is this, that to a something of this kind

not one category can be found applicable. Take, for example, the

conception of substance, that is, something that can exist as subject,

but never as mere predicate; in regard to this conception I am quite

ignorant whether there can really be anything to correspond to such

a determination of thought, if empirical intuition did not afford me

the occasion for its application. But of this more in the sequel.

Of the Application of the Categories to Objects of the

Senses in general. SS 20

The pure conceptions of the understanding apply to objects of

intuition in general, through the understanding alone, whether the

intuition be our own or some other, provided only it be sensuous,

but are, for this very reason, mere forms of thought, by means of

which alone no determined object can be cognized. The synthesis or

conjunction of the manifold in these conceptions relates, we have

said, only to the unity of apperception, and is for this reason the

ground of the possibility of a priori cognition, in so far as this

cognition is dependent on the understanding. This synthesis is,

therefore, not merely transcendental, but also purely intellectual.

But because a certain form of sensuous intuition exists in the mind

a priori which rests on the receptivity of the representative

faculty (sensibility), the understanding, as a spontaneity, is able to

determine the internal sense by means of the diversity of given

representations, conformably to the synthetical unity of apperception,

and thus to cogitate the synthetical unity of the apperception of

the manifold of sensuous intuition a priori, as the condition to which