| The transcendental unity of apperception is alone objectively valid; the empirical which we do not consider in this essay, and which is merely a unity deduced from the former under given conditions in 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. |
| SS 15. The Logical Form of all Judgements consists in the Objective Unity of Apperception of the Conceptions contained therein. |
| 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. |
| [*Footnote; 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. |
| SS 16. All Sensuous Intuitions are subject to the Categories, as Conditions under which alone the manifold Content of them can be united in one Consciousness. |
| 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. |
| SS 17. Observation. |
| 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. |