The Hitchhiker’s Guide to All Pure Concepts of the Understanding

After establishing the conditions for experience and how objects can be intuited in the Transcendental Aesthetic, Kant goes on to develop on their cognitive qualities, or, in other words, how objects can be thought, in the Transcendental Analytic. He begins his exposition by introducing the idea of transcendental logic. This concept refers to one in the distinction of two versions of logic, the other one being general logic. While General knowledge “contains the absolutely necessary rules of thinking […] without regard to the difference of the objects to which it may be directed” (CPR 194), transcendental logic refers to the rules governing thought, giving consideration to objects. This in turn is divided into two parts, the analytic and the dialectic, the former referring to the specific conditions under which though has objects and, and the latter referring to the fall of the understanding into “ the dangers of making a material use of the merely formal principles of pure understanding […] and of judging without distinction about objects that are not given to us” (CPR 199). The most salient and attention-given one of these two is the Transcendental Analytic.

As it consists of the analysis of all a priori knowledge, Kant assigns it four essential parts. (1) The concepts must be pure, (2) belong to intuition, (3) be elementary, (4) and that the table of them be complete (CPR 201), the latter one being of much further interest to Kant. He explains that the concepts must cover the whole field of understanding not in an arbitrary fashion, but rather as part of the idea of a whole of a priori knowledge and a division of the concepts composing that knowledge (CPR 201). But never fear, Kant provides us with the ultimate guide to the discovery of all pure concepts of the understanding. He explains that since these concepts “spring, pure and unmixed, as absolute unity” (CPR 204), they must be related to one another on the basis of the same concepts. This connection also serves as a rule that can determine the completeness of all the a priori concepts. We can apply this rule when concepts come into use, which can only be done through judgment. In other words, since concepts can only make use of objects through their judgment, it is through these judgments that we can learn of these a priori concepts. As the “mediate cognition of an object” (CPR 205), judgment serves as the expositor of a priori concepts. The functions of judgment can be categorized in four ways, each containing three modes: quality (affirmative, negative, infinite), quantity (universal, particular, singular), relation (categorical, hypothetical, disjunctive), and modality (problematic, assertoric, apodictic). Yet, although Kant claims this list to avoid arbitrariness, his claim, to me, seems unfounded.

Kant explains pure concepts lie in the human understanding “until with the opportunity of experience they are developed and exhibited in their clarity” (CPR 203). If experiences expose a priori concepts, granting that these concepts that precede experience do in fact exist, then it follows that these are what allow us to see the functions of judgments. It seems, then, arbitrary to limit judgment to only the list Kant provides us with. We can always conceive the idea that, as we progress, we may one day come across experiences that may be conceptualized, or “judged,” in other ways different from those he mentions. Even if we can’t think of other ways, we cannot limit causality as the concept of all experience, especially if Kant gives no justification for doing this other than out of necessity. As such, we can never “complete the table of concepts,” not until we exhaust every experience that might “develop and exhibit the clarity of pure concepts,” which I cannot conceive as possible. In this way, Kant just leads us back to “milking the billy-goat” instead of the discovery of all pure concepts of the understanding.