Kant’s Philosophy: Understanding, A Priori Concepts, and Judgments
Kant’s Transcendental Analytic: Understanding and Concepts
The Transcendental Analytic is a crucial section where Immanuel Kant explains the faculty of understanding, which, alongside sensitivity, constitutes human knowledge. While understanding and sensitivity are distinct faculties, they always act together. The understanding allows us to comprehend what sensitivity offers. We understand when we can subsume objects under a concept. Thus, for Kant, understanding is the power of concepts or judgments.
Understanding is the faculty of subsuming one or more objects under a concept. Concepts can be of two types:
Concepts of Experience
These are drawn directly from sensory experience. When applied, they form “judgments of experience.” Such judgments, however, hold no particular interest for Kant, as they do not underpin the universal and necessary truths of physics.
A Priori Concepts
These are concepts that impose an order on our raw sensory impressions. Examples include cause, substance, and limit. This idea fundamentally departs from empiricist philosophy, which asserts that every concept must be derived from experience to possess any validity. For example, an empiricist might argue that by observing objects with surfaces and volumes limited by space, the subject develops the concept of limit. However, Kant would contend that we perceive things as limited precisely because we are applying the a priori spatial concept of limit. This reflects Kant’s Copernican Revolution and the idealistic character of his philosophy.
Once the existence of a priori concepts is established, Kant develops a classification based on the types of judgments. Each type of judgment represents a particular link between a subject and a predicate, which Kant calls a category. Kant determined that there are twelve types of categories (which give rise to twelve types of judgments), classified as:
- According to Quantity
- According to Quality
- According to Relation
- According to Modality
Kant’s Theory of Judgments: Classification and Significance
Before delving into the analysis of themes developed in the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant himself defined a set of key concepts in his foreword. Judgments are the basic elements that constitute all knowledge. A judgment is a relationship between a subject and a predicate, typically in the form “S is P.”
Depending on the relationship expressed between the subject and predicate, and whether or not they relate to experience, judgments are classified as:
Analytical Judgments
In these, the predicate is already contained within the concept that expresses the subject. Analytical judgments are purely formal because they add no new knowledge. They are called “analytical” because the predicate is derived from an analysis of the subject, without recourse to experience. They express what David Hume called “relations of ideas.” These judgments are necessarily true and are governed by the law of non-contradiction.
Synthetic Judgments
In these, the predicate is not contained within the subject, and therefore they are neither necessarily true nor independent of experience. They are called “synthetic” because they link different concepts or things together. They express what Hume called “matters of fact.”
A Priori Judgments
These are judgments obtained independently of experience; thus, no experience can invalidate them, meaning they are always valid. They are universal and necessary.
A Posteriori Judgments
These are obtained subsequent to experience and are therefore neither necessary nor universal.