A Commentary to Kant's 'Critique of Pure Reason' — Kant — John Shaqi
A Commentary to Kant's 'Critique of Pure Reason'
Kant · en
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.