A New Critique of Theoretical Thought. Deel 2. The General Theory of the Modal Spheres

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Part II
The epistemological problem in the light of the cosmonomic idea

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Chapter I

§ 1 - The way in which the epistemological problem is posed on the immanence-standpoint and the metaphysical background of the critique of cognition rooted in this standpoint.

The inter-modal systasis¹ of meaning as the condition for all theoretical synthesis.

The functional modalities of meaning guaranteeing the different aspects their sphere-sovereignty are integrated into the cosmic coherence of time. In this cosmic temporal coherence they show an intermodal systasis of meaning. The modal aspects do not owe their existence to theoretical synthesis, although without theoretical disjunction from one another they cannot be articulately distinguished. Anyone who ignores the cosmological priority of meaning-systasis to theoretical synthesis, cannot even properly pose the epistemological problem.

The fundamental mistake made by the critique of knowledge rooted in the immanence-standpoint was that it had not grasped the cosmological meaning-problem implied in the theoretical cognitive attitude as such.

This critique was led astray by the prejudice of the self-sufficiency of theoretical thought, and tried to isolate the human cognitive faculty within certain immanent functions of consciousness.

From the outset this critique of knowledge was founded in a group of problems raised by a metaphysics that had burdened immanence-philosophy since the time of the Eleatics.

1 Translator's note: This obsolete word is used here in a special sense to distinguish the natural coherence of our integral experience of reality from the theoretical attitude implied in the word ‘synthesis’.

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This group of problems originated from the theoretical breaking-up of the cosmic meaning-coherence of the full temporal reality. On the one hand was placed the phenomenon related to the sensory perceptive function, and on the other hand the noumenon which could only be grasped by theoretical thought (considered to be intuitive or not).

This metaphysics centred in the problem of substance, i.e. the problem about a permanent being of things, hidden behind the sensory phenomena and, as such, independent of human consciousness. The epistemology based on this metaphysics took the functionalistic view that human knowledge is due either exclusively to sensory perception, from which also logical thought must take its content, or that it originates from the cooperation of the logical and the sensory function, or that logical thought is an independent source of knowledge of the noumena. Epistemological criticism then inferred that the ‘substance’ is either cognizable or not.

Since Kant the ‘substance’ in this metaphysical sense was called the ‘thing in itself’. In ultra positivistic nominalism the existence of a substance behind the sensible phenomena was flatly denied.

So the main problem of this critique of cognition became: Is it possible for us to get adequate knowledge of true reality, i.e. of the ‘Ding an sich’, behind the sensory phenomena, from the (isolated) functions of consciousness which are to be accepted as the exclusive sources of human cognition? If intuition (intuitive evidence) was supposed to play a part in the cognitive process, it was either identified with the inner certainty of the psychical function of feeling, or intuition was elevated above the sensory and analytical functions, as a superior rational organ to apprehend the noumena. It was sometimes also reduced to the immediate evidence of the logical fundamental concepts and basic truths of thought.

Until Hume and Kant, epistemology generally held to the view that the real ‘Gegenstand’ of human cognition transcends the phenomenon and must be sought in the true reality behind the sensory phenomena. Kant asserted that his conception was a ‘Copernican revolution’ in epistemology. As we know, his ‘transcendental-idealistic’ view regarded the ‘Gegenstand’ of knowledge as the product of a universally valid subjective formative process. In this a ‘given’ chaotic sensory experiential material is arranged by the ‘transcendental consciousness’ into a syn-

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thesis of logical categories and forms of sensory intuition. Thus the functionalistic attitude of Humanistic epistemology based on the immanence-standpoint became even more emphatic. From the outset Kant derives human knowledge from only two origins: sensitivity and logical thought. From the latter function of consciousness every intuitive factor was explicitly eliminated. And following the steps of English ‘empiricism’, he starts from the dogmatic supposition that the ‘datum’ in experience is of a purely functional sensory character. This datum is supposed to contain nothing but the sensory impressions as yet lacking any kind of order. Everything in the empirical world of things that is beyond the un-arranged sensory impressions must consequently be the product of some ‘gegenständliche Synthesis’, starting from the transcendental logical subject.

This view is absolutely contrary to the true character of naïve experience, which does not know of a ‘Gegenstand’ in antithetical relation to the logical function of thought.

The erroneous identification of the datum in cognition and that which has been theoretically isolated.

In this functionalistic attitude epistemology simply took for granted that which should be the chief problem of any critique of knowledge, viz. the abstraction of the sensory and logical functions of consciousness from the full systasis of meaning of the modal aspects of human experience¹. Our transcendental critique

1 This fundamental error is also inherent in an epistemology like that of Driesch or Volkelt, though it assumes the possibility to trace its supposed ‘datum’ behind the logical and psychical functions of consciousness, behind every abstraction of a ‘transcendental’ epistemological subject. This supposed ‘datum’ is in reality the theoretically isolated empirical fact of the self-assurance of the individual subjective consciousness. Volkelt's argument is typical. He asserts that this ‘reine empirische Selbstgewiszheit’ is a datum, which is absolutely free of thought and has, therefore, an a-logical character: ‘It is essential’, he argues, ‘to conceive the self-assurance of consciousness in its purity. Assertions made on the ground of this assurance should not be interwoven with anything derived from thought. In ordinary life, a well as in the sciences, this self-assurance is usually more or less mixed with some thought. This should be eliminated.’ (Gewiszheit und Wahrheit, 1918, p. 64).
I merely ask: Is it possible for ‘pure self-assurance’ (conceived by Volkelt in the sense intended by the functionalistic immanence view) to separate itself in this way from the meaning-coherence into which consciousness has been fitted? It is theoretical analysis alone that can perform this abstraction. In other words the supposedly ultimate empirical fact itself proves to be a theoretical abstraction in which thought can in no way be eliminated. It is not a genuine datum. It remains something beyond my understanding how a thinker of Volkelt's rank can be unaware of this simple truth. Or rather - it is only understandable from the absolutization of the primary theoretical synthesis in which the immanence-standpoint is founded.

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of theoretical thought, explained in the Prolegomena, has shown that this abstraction is only made in theoretical thought in a process of disjunction and opposition.

The logical and psychical functions (with their modal subject-object relations) are certainly not given in their abstraction from the other modal-functions of experience. The real datum of human experience precedes every theoretical disjunction. It has an absolutely systatic character.

The assumption that certain functions of consciousness, theoretically isolated in the synthetic act of cognition, are the datum, was nothing less than the cosmological capital sin. And on the basis of this pseudo-datum the attempt was made to formulate the epistemological problem. Thus a critique of knowledge, born out of a false metaphysics, was proclaimed the gateway to philosophy, before it was realized that there is a cosmological meaning-problem pre-supposed in the theoretical isolation of certain functions of consciousness. All modal structural relations were eradicated by means of the subject-object schema of this epistemological theory, thus camouflaging its cosmological petitio principii.

In this respect the so-called critical trend in epistemology became the model of all cosmological dogmatism.

It is true that the great Königsberg thinker was very far above the uncritical ‘dogmatism’ of many of his epigones. In his doctrine of the theoretical Ideas he was certainly led by a truly transcendental motive. But the starting-point of his Kritik der reinen Vernunft remains a dogmatic one in the sense that he does not realize the problems involved in his pre-suppositions. Ancient, scholastic and pre-Kantian Humanistic metaphysics, called dogmatic since Kant's criticism, were more critical, in this respect at least, than their great antagonist. They gave an account of the cosmonomic Idea on which their epistemology was based. They did not make the mistake of tackling the epistemological problem before founding their epistemology in a theory of

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the cosmic coherence in which the gnoseological relation is fitted (be it a metaphysical theory, viz. the theory of ‘being’).

In recent times the isolation of the critique of knowledge has again been recognized in various quarters as a piece of dogmatism. The need has been felt of an ontological foundation for epistemology in the cadre of a phenomenological description of the intentional acts of human cognition. This fact doubtless means a deepening of philosophic thought. But on the immanence-standpoint the primary theoretical synthesis, contained in the theoretical attitude of knowledge as such, and thus also in the phenomenological attitude, cannot become a problem. For, as explained in the Prolegomena, immanence-philosophy stands or falls with absolutizations, made by means of theoretical logical thought. They can no longer be recognized as such, because in the cosmonomic Idea theoretical thought has been declared self-sufficient. This transcendental basic Idea of immanence-philosophy with its primary absolutizing of theoretical synthesis is the source of all uncritical dogmatism in epistemology in whatever varieties it may present itself.

§ 2 - The critical formulation of the epistemological problem. Meaning-systasis, logical synthesis and inter-modal synthesis of meaning.

In opposition to this really dogmatic attitude in epistemology it should be first acknowledged that what has been theoretically isolated is never the ‘datum’. On the immanence-standpoint this ‘datum’ has been falsified. The real ‘datum’ is the systatic coherence of meaning. In mature naïve pre-theoretical experience reality is grasped in the full systasis of its modal functions. In this systasis the psychical and the logical functions prove to be bound up with all the other modal functions of human experience in an insoluble temporal meaning-coherence.

Here it is necessary to resume the first and the second transcendental basic problem, formulated in the Prolegomena, with respect to the theoretical attitude of thought.

The epistemological problem only arises in deepened thought, in which the logical function by means of a theoretical abstraction is opposed to the non-logical aspects of experience as its theoretical resistant. The fundamental question of epistemology should, consequently, not be formulated: How is universally valid experience of the ‘Gegenstand’ (i.e., the resistant to the logical function of thought) possible?

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The primordial question should be: What do we abstract from the real datum of experience in the fundamental antithetical relation of theoretical thought which gives rise to the problem of the ‘Gegenstand’? And only in an unbreakable coherence with this primordial question should the second problem be raised: How can the theoretical antithesis between the logical function of knowledge and its non-logical ‘Gegenstand’ be reconciled by an inter-modal theoretical meaning-synthesis?

By the first fundamental question the epistemological problem is intrinsically connected with its cosmological pre-suppositions which alone give it meaning.

The necessity of distinguishing between analytical synthesis and inter-modal theoretical synthesis of meaning.

At this point it is necessary to introduce an important distinction generally unknown in immanence-philosophy. This distinction is indispensable in order to place the epistemological problem on a correct cosmological basis.

There are two different kinds of synthesis:

One is the logical functional mode of uniting, implied in the analytical structure of meaning; the other is the inter-modal, inter-functional meaning-synthesis. The latter has no transcendental-logical character, but is based on a theoretical disjunction of the cosmic systasis of meaning.

Every theoretical cognitive synthesis is an inter-modal synthesis of meaning¹. On the other hand, the logical synthesis, found also in pre-theoretical naïve thought, is an indispensable element in the empirical meaning-systasis. To this subjective analytical synthesis is related the objective systasis of logical characteristics implied in the logical object-side of empirical reality (cf. p. 389 ff.).

Considered according to its analytical aspect, every subjective concept, including the theoretical one, is a synthesis of a multiplicity of analysed conceptual moments.

Aristotle speaks of a σύνϑεσις τις νοημάτων ὥστε ἓν ὄντων². He does not, however, realize the difference between analytical synthesis and theoretical meaning-synthesis. This distinction de-

1 This meaning-synthesis is fundamentally different from Kant's supposed ‘transcendental synthesis’, as will appear in the sequel.

2 De anima III, 4, 430 a 28.

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pends on the insight into the cosmic systatic meaning-coherence, lying at the foundation of theoretical thought. In principle it cannot be understood on the immanence-standpoint. In order to grasp the real meaning of this distinction, it is necessary to break with that peculiar hypostasis of theoretical thought, inherent in the immanence-standpoint in all its variations. It is this hypostatization which makes the insight into the meaning-structure of naïve experience impossible.

§ 3 - The Kantian distinction between analytical and synthetical judgments.

We must now consider, whether or not there are judgments containing an exclusively analytical synthesis. This question touches the well-known distinction, made by Kant in the Introduction to his Kritik der reinen Vernunft, between analytical and synthetical judgments. On this distinction Kant's entire epistemology is based; with it his view stands or falls. He defines analytical judgments as those sentences in which the connection of the predicate with the subject is thought through identity. In synthetical judgments this connection is supposed to be thought without identity. Synthetical judgments are thus supposed to add a predicate to the concept of the subject not previously contained in the latter, so that this predicate cannot be inferred from the subject by analyzing its elements.

Kant gives the following example of an analytical judgment: ‘All bodies are extended.’ He then adds: ‘For I need not go beyond the concept which I connect with “body” in order to find extension as bound up with it. I have merely to analyze the concept, that is, to become conscious of the manifold which I always think in that concept, in order to meet with this predicate: it is therefore an analytical judgment’¹.

On the other hand the judgment: ‘All bodies are heavy’ is assumed to be synthetical in character, because the predicate has not been implied in the concept of the subject.

1 Kr. d.r. V. (Groszh. W. Ernst Ausg., Bnd. III, p. 42): ‘Denn ich darf nicht über den Begriff, den ich mit dem Wort Körper verbinde, hinausgehen, um die Ausdehnung als mit demselben verknüft zu finden, sondern jenen Begriff nur zergliedern, d.i. das Mannigfaltige, welches ich jederzeit in ihm denke, mir nur bewuszt zu werden, um dieses Prädikat darin anzutreffen; es ist also ein analytisches Urteil.’

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The relation between the logical and the linguistic structure of a judgment. The multivocality of the word ‘is’.

This reasoning is far from clear. In the first place, Kant makes a logical problem dependent on the linguistic structure of a judgment. The copula forming the linguistic relation between that of which something is said in a signifying way, and that which is expressed in the predicate, is of central importance. But Kant does not realize this. The word ‘is’ by no means always signifies a logical relation of identity. Symbolic logic must be credited with having pointed this out emphatically, especially De Morgan¹ and B. Russell². On the other hand these thinkers are also guilty of confusing the logical and the linguistic question by attributing an original symbolic signifying function to the concept as such (‘notion’ as a ‘denoting’ term in Russell).

The word ‘is’, connecting the so-called ‘linguistic subject’ with an adjectival predicate, never means a relation of identity according to the logical aspect of a judgment. As to the logical state of affairs it only signifies what might be called an analytical implication of that which is predicated in that about which we predicate something. (The term ‘implication’ is used here in the sense of analytical inherency)³. It is simply impossible to identify the concepts body and extension logically. For the present the relation between the logical and the linguistic structure of a judgment must be left alone, because the linguistic structure as such is not at issue here. We only want to answer the question whether the concept ‘extension’ is implied in

1 De Morgan, Formal Logic, pp. 49, 50.

2 B. Russell, The Principles of Mathematics, Vol. I, p. 64 observes: ‘The word “is” is terribly ambiguous, and great care is necessary in order not to confound its various meanings. We have (1) the sense in which it asserts Being, as in “A is”; (2) the sense of identity; (3) the sense of predication, in “A is human”; (4) the sense of “A is a man”, which is very identity. In addition to these there are less common uses, as “to be good is to be happy”, where a relation of assertions is meant, that relation, in fact, which, where it exists, gives rise to formal implication.’
Lask has very emphatically warned against confounding the linguistic and the logical senses of the copula in his Die Lehre vom Urteil’ (1912).

3 Russell apparently gives the analytical relation of implication a narrower sense by distinguishing it from a predication. I do not see a sufficient ground for this distinction in the logical aspect. In itself a predication is a linguistic figure. As to its logical meaning it can only denote that the predicate is analytically implied in the concept denoted by the linguistic subject of the sentence.

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the concept ‘body’, according to the logical aspect of the concept, and whether that of ‘heaviness’ is not.

Now the question becomes very urgent: What does Kant mean after all by the concept of a body?

Apparently he anticipates his views expounded in detail in his Transzendentale Aesthetik, when he considers extension to be logically implied in the concept ‘body’. He conceives of space as an a priori form of sensory intuition: ‘That bodies are extended is not an empirical judgment, but a proposition which holds a priori. For before turning to experience, I already have in my concept “body” all the requisite conditions for the judgment. And I have only to extract the predicate from the concept in accordance with the principle of contradiction. Thereby I become conscious of the necessity of the judgment; a necessity which I could never learn from experience’¹.

By implication Kant's argument admits that the concept ‘body’ is not purely analytical in meaning. But why does not ‘heaviness’ belong to this concept then? If the matter is considered in an objective-logical way, the assertion that the notion ‘heaviness’ is not implied in the concept ‘body’ (of course he means material body, otherwise the predicates ‘extension’ and ‘heaviness’ would not refer to the same subject) does not rest on any tenable ground.

Rather it appears that the concept ‘heaviness’ is necessarily implied in an objective logical sense in the concept ‘material body’. Also in the subjective-logical aspect of the judgment the concept ‘heaviness’ should be implied in the concept ‘body’, in accordance with the analytical principium contradictionis.

For in the logical object-function of empirical reality the original subjective energy-effect of matter, in its subjection to the law of gravitation, has been analogically objectified. This alone entitles us to attribute the characteristic of gravity to the general concept ‘material body’.

Again we ask: What does Kant really understand by the concept of a ‘body’ in which the predicate ‘heaviness’ is supposed to be not implied?

1 ‘Dasz ein Körper ausgedehnt sei, ist ein Satz, der a priori feststeht, und kein Erfahrungsurteil. Denn ehe ich zur Erfahrung gehe, habe ich alle Bedingungen zu meinem Urteil schon in dem Begriffe, aus welchem ich das Prädikat nach dem Satze des Widerspruchs nur herausziehen und dadurch zugleich der Notwendigkeit des Urteils bewuszt werden kann, welche mir Erfahrung nicht einmal lehren würde.’

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All ‘empirical judgments’ are synthetical according to Kant. In the light of his dogmatic prejudice concerning the ‘sources of our knowledge’ this means: all judgments based on the sensory aspect of human perception are synthetical. Their ‘predicate’ is not implied in the concept of their ‘subject’. From this it follows that in Kant's argument all ‘empirically’ established ‘predicates’ in a judgment (according to its logical aspect) should be excluded from the concept of the ‘subject’. This conclusion, however, is obviously contrary to the truth that, with regard to its logical aspect, every judgment is subject to the analytical principium identitatis and the principium contradictionis.

In an affirmative judgment of a logically correct structure the predicate can never contain an element which is not analytically implied in the concept of the ‘subject’. In other words: Viewed from their modal logical aspect all judgments are necessarily analytical. Also theoretical judgments, originating from an inter-modal synthesis of meaning, have necessarily an analytical structure according to their logical functional aspect. This truth is so little open to refutation that it is almost a tautology, In the arithmetical judgment: 2 + 2 = 4, the notion 2 + 2 must be implied according to the logical aspect in the concept 4. This holds even though the logical implication, in its subjection to the principia identitatis and contradictionis, can only be verified in an inter-modal theoretical synthesis of meaning. For it is inherent in the number 4 that it consists of the sum of smaller units, which is therefore implied in its concept.

Or, to use another example of a ‘synthetical judgment a priori’ given by Kant himself: In the judgment: ‘Everything that happens, has a cause’; causality must belong to the concept of happening, if the judgment is not to be obviously false in a logical sense.

The distinction between ‘formal object’ and ‘material object’.

There is another objection to the above argument. It has been raised by Alexander Pfänder. In a note, published by Reicke¹ Kant observes:

‘In an analytical judgment the predicate is concerned with a concept; in a synthetical judgment it is concerned with the object

1 Reicke: Lose Blätter aus Kant's Nachlass (1889).

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of a concept, because the predicate is not contained in the concept’¹.

Riehl paraphrases this as follows: ‘Synthetical judgments are cognitive judgments, judgments about objects’². Of course, he means that ‘synthetical judgments’ are judgments about ‘Gegenstände’, but analytical judgments are not.

In his Logik Pfänder has elaborated this famous Kantian thesis in a way deserving our attention.

Kant ignored the real modal-logical subject-object relation. Pfänder, whose conception is phenomenologically oriented, has given it prominence in favour of Kant's distinction. This is, however, not the logical subject-object relation in the sense of our analysis, but in the well-known scholastic sense of the relation between the intentio (the subjective intention in the concept) and the intended or supposed ‘Gegenstand’ to which the concept refers. The ‘Gegenstand’ intended in the concept is sharply distinguished by Pfänder as a ‘formal object’ from the ‘Gegenstand an sich’, which he calls a ‘material object’.

It is possible that the ‘Gegenstand’, intentionally related to a certain concept, as ‘material object’ has more determinations than those attributed to it in the concept. But these determinations do not belong to the ‘Gegenstand’ insofar as it is only the intentional correlate of the concept. Let us say, e.g., that the concept ‘triangle’ does not intend anything else but a plane figure bounded by three intersecting straight lines. Then the intentional object of the concept ‘triangle’ does not imply, e.g., that this figure has three interior angles. In Pfänder's own words:

‘In the concept triangle, so determined, there is no angle intended at all. It is, consequently, not at all possible to infer from the concept “triangle”, mentioned above, that a triangle has three interior angles, because this fact is not at all implied in the concept of a triangle. Rather it is necessary to pass on to the intended object “triangle” as such in order to obtain the knowledge independent of this concept that a triangle, so defined, has three interior angles. Everything else knowable about the intentional object does not belong to it, insofar as it has not been intended in the concept of it’³.

1 ‘Im analytischen Urteil geht das Prädikat eigentlich auf den Begriff, im synthetischen auf das Objekt des Begriffs, weil das Prädikat im Begriffe nicht enthalten ist.’

2 Der philosophische Kritizismus (3th ed. 1924), p. 416.

3 Logik (Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenol. Forschung, Bnd IV (1931) p. 273/4): ‘Im so bestimmten Begriff des Dreiecks liegt durchaus keine Intention auf Winkel. Man kann also durchaus nicht aus dem angeführten Begriff des Dreiecks erkennen, dasz das Dreieck drei Innenwinkel hat, weil dies gar nicht “im Begriffe des Dreiecks liegt.” Man musz vielmehr zu dem gemeinten Gegenstand Dreieck, wie er an sich ist, übergehen, um die von dem Begriffe des Dreiecks unabhängige Erkenntnis zu gewinnen, dasz das so definierte Dreieck drei Innenwinkel hat. Alles, was man über den intentionalen Gegenstand noch weiter erkennen kann, gehört nicht zu ihm, soweit es nicht in dem Begriff von ihm schon gemeint ist.’

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Pfänder sharply distinguishes the intentional object of a concept (the intended ‘Gegenstand’ and its properties) from the content of this concept, and also from the separate elements of this conceptual content. He calls it a very serious logical error if a ‘Gegenstand an sich’ is confounded with the merely intentional object of the concept of a ‘Gegenstand’, and the content of this concept with the sum of the characteristics of the ‘Gegenstand’. By means of the distinction made in this manner between subjective concept, intentional object (formal object) and ‘Gegenstand an sich’ (material object), it does not seem difficult any longer to find a tenable sense in Kant's distinction between analytical and synthetical judgments. Kant's judgment: ‘All bodies are extended’, is an analytical judgment insofar as in the concept ‘body’ an extended ‘Gegenstand’ is intended.

Pfänder terms this an Attributionsurteil, viz. insofar as in the concept of the subject ‘body’ extension has been implied as an attribute. The concept ‘extended’ is then partly identical with the concept ‘body’. Then, of course, all judgments not implying the predicate in the concept of their subject, are synthetical propositions.

To this Pfänder adds another interesting distinction. He says that there are synthetical judgments in a purely logical sense which must be regarded as analytical from the point of view of ontology. And by the side of these there are judgments which both logically and ontologically must be qualified as synthetical.

The first class of judgments do not intentionally imply their predicative concept in the concept of their subject, but the predicate can be immediately found by an analysis of the essence of the ‘Gegenstand an sich’: ‘So what leads to the judgment here, is not the analysis of the concept of the subject, but that of the Gegenstand of the latter, and of all that belongs to its essence’¹.

1 op. cit., p. 339: ‘Nicht also die Analyse des Subjekts begriffs, wohl aber die des Subjekts gegenstandes und dessen was zu seinem Wesen gehört, führt hier zu dem Urteil.’

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In other words, the ontological analytical judgments which are logically synthetical, are founded in the analysis of the ‘Gegenstand’ itself, and not in that of the concept.

Pfänder gives an example of such a judgment: ‘The plane triangle has three interior angles.’

These judgments are said not be subjected to the principium identitatis, because their predicative concept is neither wholly nor partly identical with the concept of the subject of the judgment. The judgments which are synthetical both in a logical and an ontological sense, coalesce with Kant's ‘empirical judgments’, which are all a posteriori.

Criticism of PfäNder's theory about analytical and synthetical judgments.

Has Pfänder succeeded in making the Kantian distinction between analytical and synthetical judgments plausible?

It is obvious that his argument stands and falls with his conception of the modal logical subject-object relation. The distinction between subjective concept, logical object and ‘Gegenstand’ is doubtless correct in itself. But the fundamental error in Pfänder's theory lies in his subjectivizing of the logical object (the so-called formal object) into something that is entirely formed by the subjective concept in the intentio, something that is ‘entirely left to the mercy of the subjective concept’, to use Pfänder's own words.

This subjectivizing is equal to denying the logical object-side of reality. It results in denying all logical objectivity in its proper sense. Our distinction between ‘Gegenstand’ and logical object is not affected by Pfänder's criticism of the mixing up of the concept with the ‘Gegenstand’ itself. A correctly formed subjective concept of the ‘Gegenstand’ must in its logical aspect necessarily intend the full logical objectification of the ‘Gegenstand’

The logical object cannot depend on the mercy of the subjective theoretical ‘intentio’. An incomplete subjective concept is an incorrect concept since it does not correspond to the objective logical state of affairs. For this reason Pfänder's thesis to the effect that in a logical sense, a judgment may be synthetical,

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whereas in an ontological respect, (in relation to the full ‘essence’ of the ‘Gegenstand’) it must be regarded as analytical, is untenable. The objective logical properties of a ‘Gegenstand’ are as such of an analytical character. But they are never ‘purely analytical’, no more than the property ‘extension’ is in the concept ‘triangle’.

Pfänder's thesis that the so-called ‘ontological-analytical judgments’ are not subjected to the principium identitatis, is doomed to fall with his erroneous subjectification of the ‘logical object’ The principium identitatis is deprived of its logical meaning, when it is eliminated from the temporal meaning-coherence which alone makes logical thought possible.

In whatever way we look at the matter, it cannot be reasonably contested that every judgment must have a logical (i.e. analytical) aspect. In accordance with this analytical aspect it is per sē subjected to the basic principles of logical thought.

According to the intentional meaning of the judgment: ‘all bodies are heavy’, the logical characteristic of ‘weight’ refers in the logical aspect-structure of the sentence to the pre-logical aspects of a thing, and the judgment expresses a universally valid law-conformity. If this is so - and it appears from the formula signifying the judgment - then it follows that the concept of the body is itself also related to the pre-logical aspects of that thing.

It is logically untenable to say that in a true so-called synthetical judgment the concept of the property of a thing functioning as the grammatical predicate does not belong to the concept of that thing. The subjective intentio in such a judgment should never be separated from the really logical objectivity, if we are unwilling to substitute logical arbitrariness for logical law-conformity in our concept-formation.

Sigwart's and Schleiermacher's interpretations of Kant's distinction.

From an angle, quite different from Pfänder's, Sigwart had already tried to subjectify the distinction between analytical and synthetical judgments. Sigwart thinks that in speaking of the concept of the subject (in a judgment) Kant does not mean the objective concept containing all the logical properties, but a purely subjective preliminary concept. From causes that are accidental with regard to the essence of a thing, only a part of the logical characteristics really inherent in that class of things

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have been summarized in such a subjective concept and employed for signifying this class. Only on the ground of the subjective meaning of the word ‘body’ (which meaning is only universally valid in a factual respect, or presupposed to be universally valid) we can say, that the judgment ‘all bodies are extended’ is analytical, and the judgment ‘all bodies are heavy’ is synthetical¹.

Schleiermacher, starting from the same subjective interpretation of Kant's distinction, also declared the difference between analytical and synthetical judgments to be purely relative, because a concept in a subjective sense is always in the state of becoming. The same judgment, e.g., ‘Ice melts’, may be an analytical judgment and a synthetical one. It is analytical, when the formation of the ice and its disappearance caused by changes in temperature, have been included in the concept ‘ice’. It is synthetical, when this is not the case. The difference lies in the various phases of the subjective process of concept-formation².

Although Kant's own exposition of the synthetical character of all experiential judgments might occasion such a purely subjective interpretation, this explanation is untenable with respect to his a priori synthetical judgments. The distinction between analytical propositions and synthetical judgments a priori forms the basis of Kant's entire critique of knowledge. This critique does not deal with subjective individual knowledge, but with its universally valid pre-requisites. What Kant really meant by his ‘synthetical judgments’ can only be inferred from his transcendental conception of synthesis a priori which will be examined in greater detail below.

The distinction between analytical and synthetical judgments becomes more and more problematic in Kant's own line of argument. Repeatedly the great philosopher conceived of the ‘transcendental synthesis’ expounded in his theory, as the pre-requisite of logic itself. By transcendental synthesis he meant the a priori reference of the logical unity of thought to time as a form of sensory intuition. According to Kant synthesis generally precedes analysis, insofar as only the former makes the latter possible. This view, essentially based on an absolutization of theoretical meaning-synthesis, seems to knock the bottom out of the contrast between analytical and synthetical judgments.

1 Logik I, 106.

2 Dial. 308, p. 264.

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Kant's dualistic cosmonomic Idea as the background to the distinction.

It is only due to the metaphysical fundamentals of the Kritik der reinen Vernunft that Kant keeps up this distinction. His dualistic cosmonomic Idea demands the ascription of independence to the super-sensory noumenon for practical metaphysical reasons. This noumenon is independent of the cognitive ‘synthesis’, which he restricts to sensory experience. It must remain possible to form analytical judgments from concepts alone, if in Kant's line of thought the formal basis for the a priori rational faith in the reality of the noumenon is not to be undermined. For the form of the autonomous moral law itself, (the categorical imperative), depends on the possibility of an analytical judgment which is independent of theoretical ‘synthesis’, because the latter has been restricted to sensibility.

Sigwart confounds the linguistic and the logical structure of a judgment.

When viewed linguistically, it can indeed be said that the predicate adds, or does not add, a new symbolical signification to the ‘grammatical subject’ of a judgment. Everything in this case depends on the verbal meaning of subject and predicate. But the epithets ‘analytical’ or ‘synthetical’ do not at all apply to the linguistic aspect of a judgment.

This fact is overlooked by Sigwart when he writes: ‘If a judgment as such, and in itself, is to be considered as analytical, there should be no subjective differences between the concepts which by different persons can be connected with the same word. So there can be undubitable analytical judgments only on the condition that the meaning of the words is perfectly fixed and circumscribed. These judgments are given with the recognized meaning of the word in this case. The Kantian example is exactly correct, if it is pre-supposed, that at all times everybody connects the property ‘extended’ with the word ‘body’ and nobody does so with the property ‘heavy’¹.

1 Logik I, p. 107: ‘Sollte ein Urtheil an und für sich als analytisch betrachtet werden müssen: so wäre offenbar vorausgesetzt, dasz keine subjectiven Differenzen zwischen den Begriffen wären, welche Verschiedene mit demselben Worte verbinden können; unter der Voraussetzung also vollkommen fester und abgeschlossener Bedeutung der Wörter kann es Urtheile geben, die sicher analytisch sind; sie sind in diesem Fall mit der anerkannten Bedeutung des Wortes gegeben. Das Kantische Beispiel ist streng richtig, wenn vorausgesetzt ist, das mit dem Worte Körper immer Jedermann das Merkmal ausgedehnt, niemand je das Merkmal Schwer verbindet.’

[p. 445]

This shows how everything is made into a muddle owing to the lack of a proper analysis of the modal aspects. And from the outset Kant has favoured this confusion.

Can Aristotle's theory of the categories have influenced Kant's distinction?

In this connection it is worth while to consider the possibility of Aristotle's theory of categories having influenced the Kantian distinction between analytical and synthetical judgments. The Aristotelian theory of categories¹ was influenced both by metaphysical and linguistic considerations. The categories are basic forms of predication about the existent. At the same time they are qualified as the highest concepts under which the existent can be subsumed.

Among these categories that of substance (οὐσία) is given a special position. As the concept of the ὑποϰείμενον (subjectum) it is the highest; it denotes that which cannot be predicated of anything else. It can be only the grammatical subject in a judgment. Compared with the substance all other categories are συμβεβηϰότα (accidentia). In his Met. IV, 30, 1025 a 14 Aristotle, for instance, calls ‘being white’ an accidental quality of ‘man’.

Kant adopted the distinction between substance and accidentia in a modified form. ‘Substance’ he considers theoretically to be a transcendental category, related only to sensory experience. The ‘accidentia’ he defines as ‘the determinations of substance which are nothing but its special modes of existence’².

It is not unlikely that Kant's conception of ‘empirical’ synthetical judgments was influenced by this. For he remarks: ‘So it is experience which is the foundation of the possibility to perform a synthesis between the predicate “weight” and the concept “body”. For both concepts, although the one is not contained in the other, still belong together (only contingently, however), as parts of a whole, namely, of an experience which itself is a synthetic combination of intuitions’³. (Italics are mine).

1 ϰατηγοϱίαι, γένη τῶν ϰατηγοϱιῶν.

2 ‘Bestimmungen einer Substanz, die nichts anderes sind als die besonderen Arten derselben zu existieren.’

3 Kr. d.r. V., Einleitung IV: ‘Es ist also die Erfahrung, worauf sich die Möglichkeit der Synthesis des Prädikats der Schwere mit dem Begriffe des Körpers gründet, weil beide Begriffe, obzwar einer nicht in dem andern enthalten ist, dennoch als Teile eines Ganzen, nämlich der Erfahrung, die selbst eine synthetische Verbindung der Anschauungen ist, zu einander, wiewohl nur zufälliger Weise, gehören.’

[p. 446]

In this connection Kant does not answer the question: What entitles us to attribute the property of weight to all material bodies? He does seem to suggest that he seeks the ground for attributing weight to all bodies in the sensory aspect of experience. For he writes: ‘From the start I can apprehend the concept of “body” analytically through the characteristics of extension, impenetrability, shape etc. all of which are thought in this concept. But now I extend my knowledge, and looking back on experience from which I had abstracted this concept of body, I find weight invariably to be connected with the above characteristics.’ (Italics in the last sentence are mine)¹.

But it is a priori hardly believable that Kant should make the gross mistake of calling a series of sensory perceptions - apart from their inter-modal coherence with the original energy-aspect of experience - the logical foundation of the absolute universality of a judgment. In his own opinion the senses furnish us only with ‘contingent’, individual impressions. The logical concept ‘all’ implies super-individual necessity in the sense of logical law-conformity. In the above judgment this law-conformity can be no other than that of the logical implication of the objective concept ‘weight’ in the objective concept ‘body’ qua talis, an analytical law-conformity only given in the cosmic inter-modal systasis, and therefore not ‘purely analytical’.

In the Transzendentale Logik Kant seems to revert to the question regarding the objective validity of the judgment ‘all bodies are heavy’. This is, however, only seemingly so, because in the formula the crucial word ‘all’ has been omitted.

In the Deduction of the Pure Concepts of the Understanding, § 19, Kant writes: ‘But if I investigate more closely the relation of the given modes of knowledge in any judgment, and distinguish it, as belonging to the understanding, from the relation produced according to the laws of the reproductive imagination

1 ‘Ich kann den Begriff des Körpers vorher analytisch durch die Merkmale der Ausdehnung, der Undurchdringlichkeit, der Gestalt usw., die alle in diesem Begriffe gedacht werden, erkennen. Nun erweitere ich aber meine Erkenntnis, und indem ich auf die Erfahrung zurücksehe, von welcher ich diesen Begriff des Körpers abgezogen hatte, so finde ich mit obigen Merkmalen auch die Schwere jederzeit verknüpft.’

[p. 447]

(which has only subjective validity), I find that a judgment is nothing but the manner of bringing given modes of knowledge to the objective unity of apperception. This is denoted by the relational word “is” in judgments, used to distinguish the objective unity of given representations from the subjective. For this term indicates their relation to the original apperception, and its necessary unity. It holds good even though the judgment itself is empirical, therefore contingent, as for instance in the judgment “bodies are heavy” (italics are mine). By this I do not assert that these representations necessarily belong to each other in the empirical intuition, but that in virtue of the necessary unity of apperception in the synthesis of intuitions they belong to each other, i.e., they belong to each other according to principles of the objective determination of all representations, insofar as knowledge can be acquired by means of these representations. These principles have all been deduced from the fundamental principle of the transcendental unity of apperception. In this way alone can a judgment arise from this relation, that is, a relation which has objective validity. It can be adequately distinguished from a relation of the very same representations which would have only subjective validity - e.g., when they are connected according to laws of association. According to the latter I could only say: When I carry a body, I feel an impression of weight; but I could not say: “It [the body] is heavy”; for this latter statement would be equal to saying that both these representations are combined in the object, no matter what the condition of the subject may be, and have not merely been conjoined in my perception, (however often the perceptive act may be repeated)’¹.

1 ib., p. 130/1: ‘Wenn ich aber die Beziehung gegebener Erkenntnisse in jedem Urteile genauer untersuche und sie als dem Verstande angehörige von dem Verhältnisse nach Gesetzen der reproduktiven Einbildungskraft (welches nur subjektive Gültigkeit hat) unterscheide, so finde ich, dasz ein Urteil nichts andres sei, als die Art, gegebene Erkenntnisse zur objektiven Einheit der Apperzeption zu bringen. Darauf zielt das Verhältniswörtchen ist in denselben, um die objektive Einheit gegebener Vorstellungen von der subjektiven zu unterscheiden. Denn dieses bezeichnet die Beziehung derselben auf die ursprüngliche Apperzeption und die notwendige Einheit derselben, wenngleich das Urteil selbst empirisch, mithin zufällig ist, z.B. die Körper sind schwer. Damit ich zwar nicht sagen will, diese Vorstellungen gehören in der empirischen Anschauung notwendig zu einander, sondern sie gehören vermöge der notwendigen Einheit der Apperzeption in der Synthesis der Anschauungen zu einander, d.i. nach Prinzipien der objektiven Bestimmung aller Vorstellungen, so fern daraus Erkenntnis werden kann, welche Prinzipien alle aus dem Grundsatz der transszendentalen Einheit der Apperzeption abgeleitet sind. Dadurch allein wird aus diesem Verhältnisse ein Urteil, d.h. ein Verhältnis, das objektiv gültig ist und sich von dem Verhältnisse eben derselben Vorstellungen, worin blosz subjektive Gültigkeit wäre, z.B. nach Gesetzen der Assoziation, hinreichend unterscheidet. Nach den letzteren würde ich nur sagen können: wenn ich einen Körper trage, so fühle ich einen Druck der Schwere; aber nicht: er, der Körper, ist schwer, welches so viel sagen will, als: diese beiden Vorstellungen sind im Objekt, d.i. ohne Unterschied des Zustandes des Subjekts, verbunden und nicht blosz in der Wahrnehmung (so oft sie auch wiederholt sein mag) beisammen.’

[p. 448]

In the passage quoted it is again repeated that the judgment regarding the weight of material bodies has an empirical, contingent character. Kant now cancels the word ‘all’ in the formulation of the judgment. In the context of the ‘transcendental logic’ Kant's main concern is to find the logical (supposedly transcendental) form of all judgments, concrete empirical ones included. This logical form is the ‘objective unity of self-consciousness’, which is also called the ‘transcendental unity of apperception’.

In its relation to the transcendental form of sensory intuition ‘time’, Kant ascribes to this logical form of self-consciousness the function of uniting in the concept of an object all multiplicity given in an intuition.

In the Kantian system, however, the objectivity of a judgment is only guaranteed by an a priori theoretical synthesis between logical forms of thought and the transcendental forms of intuition ‘time’ and ‘space’, originating from the transcendental unity of apperception. It is identified with ‘Gegenständlichkeit’. Therefore in Kant's line of thought I may say: ‘all bodies are extended’, because extension is an a priori form of sensibility. But I may not say: ‘all (material) bodies are heavy’, because weight cannot be inferred from the synthesis of the forms of thought and of intuition¹. But then it follows from the Kantian principles that also the objectivity of the weight of a body is not really guaranteed. For according to these principles objectivity and universal validity are identical. The transcendental unity of apperception which must guarantee the objectivity of the judgment can never make a merely ‘empirical’ (and therefore, according to Kant, contingent) property of the body to a universally valid quality inherent in all bodies. In other words,

1 In Kant's line of thought an appeal to Pfänder's ‘material object’ is impossible, because the ‘Gegenstand an sich’ is unknowable.

[p. 449]

it can only guarantee objectivity to the transcendental form, not to the empirical content of the natural laws. Maimon must have considered this when in his later critical phase he denied the possibility of applying the Kantian synthetical judgments a priori to the contingent ‘matter’ of experience.

Throughout his view of objectivity Kant's lack of insight into the analytical subject-object relation is fatal to him. If he had seen the logical object-side of the full temporal reality, he could never have entertained such confused notions about the concept ‘body’. But if, as Kant assumes, nothing is given to us of the empirical reality of a thing but chaotic sensory impressions, there is no room left for the objective analytical systasis of the conceptual characteristics in its structural relation to subjective analysis.

The rationalistic conception of the analytical is in an impasse with regard to the criterion of the truth of concrete experiential judgments.

The Kantian conception of the analytical (which is essentially Aristotelian) gets entangled in an aporia¹ with regard to the concrete experiential judgments. When pronouncing the pre-theoretical judgment ‘This rose is red’, this judgment claims universal validity. This is only possible if it has an analytical aspect, so that I can truthfully say that the quality of being red belongs to the individual objective logical systasis of this rose, which at this moment I perceive in its full individual reality. Should this judgment not have a concrete analytical aspect, it would not be subjected, as a concrete judgment, to the logical principium identitatis and contradictionis. It cannot be objected that the logical structure of the judgment is a merely ‘formal’ one: ‘S = P’ and that on account of this abstract structure it is certainly subjected to the fundamental logical norms (S is P and S is not P excluding one another logically). For - apart from the fact that the judgment S is P is not purely analytical - the issue is exactly the concrete structure of a judgment of reality, which in its formalization given above can in no case be the same proposition. If there is no concrete logical structure of a judgment, there can be no concrete truth, for every truth referring to the temporal horizon neces-

1 i.e., insoluble difficulty; this Greek term has acquired a philosophical meaning since Aristotle.

[p. 450]

sarily has a logical aspect. In our view of empirical reality the full concrete reality does have its concrete logical object-side. That is why we accept meaning-individuality even in the logical law-sphere.

There must be an objective individual logical systasis in the full concrete reality of ‘this rose at present in front of me’. Otherwise it can never be decided if, according to their logical aspect, two conflicting judgments like ‘this rose is white’ and ‘this rose is red’ really refer to the same rose. It is quite true that the individual analytical implication of the quality ‘redness’ in the concept ‘this rose’, is given only in the inter-modal meaning-systasis of its concrete structural reality. To the latter also belongs the objective sensorily perceptual image related to the subjective sensory aspect of our perception. But in the modal sensory impression as such there is no logical identity. This impression cannot furnish a logical foundation for the application of the fundamental logical norms to the judgments formulated above.

That is why every conception which, in the rationalistic line of thought, only acknowledges concepts that lack individuality¹, lands in an insoluble impasse where concrete existential judgments are concerned. In Kant's opinion individuality only belongs to the non-ordered, chaotic sensory matter of experience. The impasse resulting from this view is that the ‘universal validity’ of a judgment can only be founded in the a priori synthesis of abstract categories of thought and abstract forms of sensory intuition. For the concrete truth of an experiential judgment there is consequently no criterion left.

1 Kant observes in his Logik (Ein Handbuch zu Vorlesungen, hrg. v. G.B. Jäsche WW. (Cassirer) VIII § 1 Anm. 2 p. 399: ‘Es ist eine blosze Tautologie, von allgemeinen oder gemeinsamen Begriffe zu reden.’ [It is a mere tautology to speak of universal or common concepts].

§ 4 - The distinction between analytical and synthetical judgments and the limits of meaning of logical formalization

Husserl's conception of analytical judgments as completely formalized propositions.

The distinction between analytical and synthetical judgments in the forms up to now examined proved to be untenable. But in his Logische Untersuchungen Husserl has tried to distinguish

[p. 451]

between analytical and synthetical judgments according to a better criterion than Kant's. Husserl denies that the Kantian criterion is to be considered as ‘classical’ and sufficient.

By ‘analytically necessary judgments’ Husserl understands those propositions (or rather ‘necessities in the form of a proposition’) that possess a truth perfectly independent of the actual, material peculiarity of the ‘Gegenstand’ intended in it, as well as of the factuality of the case, i.e. the validity of the possible natural view of the ‘Gegenstand’ as actually existing; such propositions are consequently ‘judgments that may be completely formalized’¹.

It is supposed that it would be possible to substitute every factual content by the logically empty form ‘something’ and to eliminate everything ‘accidental’ by a change of the factual form into the propositional form of unconditional universality².

An example of such an analytic judgment is: ‘The existence of this house includes that of its roof, walls and other parts.’ For according to Husserl, this judgment may immediately be transformed into a purely analytical proposition, by saying that the existence of a whole G (α, β, γ...) in a universally valid sense, implies that of its parts (α, β, γ...). The latter judgment is supposed to be the formulation of a purely analytical law-conformity, abstracting from every factual content of the proposition.

For the individual reality referred to by means of the word ‘this’ in the example given has been eliminated by the change of the proposition into the ‘purely analytical form of the law’. ‘And this is indeed an analytical law; it is composed exclusively of formal-logical categories and categorical forms.’

In contrast to these, all judgments containing factual concepts that salva veritate cannot be formalized, and which are founded in a synthetical law a priori, are supposed to be of a synthetic character. The example: ‘this red is different from that green’ contains an empirical specialization of a ‘synthetical law a priori’.

1 ‘Sätze, die sich vollständig ‘formalisieren’.

2 Log. Unters. (2nd Edit. 1913) II, p. 254 ff.

The supposed purely analytical character of modern symbolical logic.

The formalizing spoken of by Husserl at once confronts us with the mental sphere of modern symbolic logic, which also

[p. 452]

pretends it can operate with purely formal analytical basic concepts and axioms. We have seen in an earlier context that Russell and Whitehead even assume that it is possible to deduce the whole of mathematics in this purely analytical way. Husserl is of the same opinion¹.

Some of the fundamental relational concepts of the axiomatical-analytical system of symbolic logic are, e.g., that of the propositional function, in connection with the concepts judgment, variable, true, one, more, all; ‘negation’ (not...); ‘disjunction’ (either... or...), whereas the concept of implication (if - then) can be inferred from that of negation and disjunction. Among the ‘purely analytical axioms’ we find, e.g., the judgments: ‘That which has been implied in a true proposition, is true’. ‘When p implies q, then q is implied in p.’ ‘When p implies q, and q implies q; then p is implied in pq’ etc.

The remarkable thing is that symbolic logic is capable of deducing all of modern arithmetic, and geometry with unerring certainty, and that it can do so, seemingly at least, without including any original arithmetical or geometrical meaning in its basic concepts and axioms.

Thus the whole of modern mathematics, however complicated it may be, appears to be a logicist creation. It seems to be nothing but the purely analytical discovery of the internal relations of the fundamental system of symbolic logic. This system only contains some basic concepts, such as ‘propositional function’, ‘negation’, etc. and some axioms of the above-mentioned kind. Its entire method consists in the deduction of new judgments and new concepts from the axioms and basic concepts.

In the Principia Mathematica by Whitehead and Russell the ancient idea that Leibniz developed in his conception of the ‘logical calculus’ seems to have been realized in a masterly way.

We have repeatedly given expression to our admiration of modern logistic. But this does not mean that we can accept it as a system of a purely analytical character. In its supposed purely analytical method of developing concepts and judgments, symbolic logic renders itself guilty of shifting the meaning of the modal aspects. And this seemingly enables it to accomplish the feat of deducing arithmetic and geometry in a rigidly analytical way. In the general theory of the modal spheres some-

1 cf. Ideen I, p. 135/6 where Husserl acknowledges the affinity of his conception of mathematics with that of Hilbert.

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thing has been said about this point. A more detailed discussion belongs to the special theory of the law-spheres.

A criticism of Husserl's conception of complete formalization. A cosmological meaning-analysis of the analytical relation of the whole and its parts.

The tenability of Husserl's criterion stands and falls with the purely analytical meaning of the basic forms qualified by him as ‘purely analytical’. He mentions: the whole and its parts; independence and dependence; necessity and law; property; relative nature; state of affairs; relation; identity; equality; set (collection); number, genus and species; and also the categories of signification (Bedeutungskategorien), i.e., the basic concepts inherent in the essential nature of a linguistic judgment (apophansis)¹.

Beforehand Husserl has tried to safeguard himself from an ‘empirical’ interpretation of these concepts. ‘It is easy to see,’ he remarks, ‘that the principal concepts treated by us in this paragraph, i.e. “whole” and “part”, “independence” and “dependence”, “necessity” and “law”, will undergo a real change of meaning if they are interpreted as empirical concepts, instead of as essentialia, consequently as pure concepts’².

The purely analytical categories have been conceived in an eidetical-logical way, as empty basic forms which as such have not been obtained by generalizing species³.

At this point we will submit the supposedly ‘purely analytical’ category ‘the whole and its parts’ to an analysis of its meaning. Husserl has devoted an elaborate exposition to it and has developed a theory of its purely analytical forms and laws programmatically.

In Husserl there can be no question of such a meaning-analysis, if it were only on account of the exceptional ‘unconditional’ position he assigns to the ‘purely analytical’ essential forms as a consequence of the commitment to his Archimedean point.

1 Ideen I, p. 22.

2 Logische Unters. II, 1, p. 256 note 2: ‘Man sieht leicht dasz die hauptsächlichen der von uns in diesen Paragraphen behandelten Begriffe: Ganzes und Teil, Selbständigkeit und Unselbständigkeit, Notwendigkeit und Gesetz, eine wesentliche Sinnesänderung erfähren, wenn sie nicht im Sinne von Wesens vorkommnissen, also nicht als reine Begriffe verstanden, sondern als empirische interpretiert werden.’

3 Ideen I, Part I, p. 13.

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To the formal region of the purely analytical essential forms he subordinates all material ‘regions’¹. As a consequence, he knows nothing about the cosmic-temporal foundation of the modal analytical meaning. When we accept this foundational relation the idea of ‘pure logic’ must be adandoned. As Husserl does not know of a cosmic temporal order, he cannot grasp the modal aspects in the structure of their meaning. His material ‘regions of being’ delimited by material ‘synthetical categories’, are even devoid of an elementary meaning-analysis.

For instance, he calls ‘material thing’ and ‘soul’ different ‘regions of being’². But the general concept ‘material thing’ lacks any delimitation of its meaning. It is the result of an arbitrary method of conceptualization which eliminates both the modal structures and the typical structures of individuality to which every meaningful generic and specific concept is bound. How then could it correspond to a real ‘region of being’? No more can the undefined current concept of the ‘soul’ correspond to any real meaning-structure within the horizon of our temporal experience.

The whole of Husserl's line of argument is governed by the contrast between the super-temporal ‘essence’ (εἶδος) with its absolute essential law-conformity and ‘essential necessity’, on the one hand, and the ‘purely accidental’, ‘empirical fact’, on the other. This makes it a priori impossible for him to get an insight into the temporal inter-modal coherence between the logical aspect and the other modal spheres. If the relation ‘the whole and its parts’ is to be conceived in its modal analytical meaning, it cannot belong to the meaning-nucleus of the analytical law-sphere. It rather presupposes a subjective analytical synthesis and an objective analytical systasis respectively; for it is a logical unity in a logical multiplicity.

This dependent meaning-moment in the analytical aspect appeared to be a retrocipation originally founded in the modus of number. As soon as this inter-modal relation is broken, the logical ‘unity in multiplicity’ loses every sense and becomes a ‘pure nihility’.

But the foundation of the logical relation between a ‘whole and its parts’ is much more complicated than appears from the arithmetical analogy alone. In the metaphysical deduction of

1 Ideen I, ch. I, § 10.

2 Ideen I, p. 32.

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space as ‘a transcendental form of intuition’ Kant lays great emphasis on the difference between the relation of a ‘discursive’ specific concept to its specimens and space as ‘the whole of its parts’¹.

Kant did not in the least mean to recognize a numerical analogy in the spatial modality, let alone a spatial retrocipation in the analytical relation ‘whole and parts’. But the analysis of the modal structure of this logical relation makes it indispensable to pay attention to the spatial retrocipation necessarily implied in it. For this analytical relation is only possible in an analytical spatial analogy in which continuous analytical extent is attributed to the whole whose ‘parts’ are analytically juxtaposed and ‘extended’ in the logical ‘space of thought’. No logical distinction is possible without the analytical juxtaposition of ‘the elements’ that are to be distinguished. Even the analysis of the meaning of number requires a logical spatializing of the latter in the juxtaposition of the quantitative differences in the series.

The analytical juxtaposition of the parts can only be accomplished in the analytical movement of thought, in accordance with the modal logical temporal order of the analytical prius et posterius.

Our earlier analysis of the modal structure of the logical aspect has shown that the analytical movement of thought is not a movement in the original sense of the kinematic aspect but a kinematic analogy. As such it refers back to the original aspect of motion. The logical space of thought in which all conceptual moments function, is not static, but dynamic, and has both analytical subject- and object-functions.

For the present this brief and summary analysis will do. It would have to be developed further in order to give some insight into the merely primary and restrictive analytical meaning of the relation ‘the whole and its parts’. Besides, it has appeared that the anticipatory meaning of a law-sphere can only be grasped from the point of view of the Idea of that sphere in the transcendental direction of time. For the modal analytical aspect would posses no ‘sovereignty and universality within its own sphere’, if it were not included with the modal structures of all the other law-spheres in a temporal meaning-coherence.

If with Husserl the attempt is made to elevate the relation

1 Kritik d.r. V. (Edition quoted) Chapter I, § 3.

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‘the whole and its parts’ as a ‘purely analytical’ essential form above the intermodal meaning-coherence, the ‘formal analytical region’ itself loses all determinateness of meaning. A multiplicity of ‘purely analytical categories’ cannot guarantee this ‘region’ its internal unity.

If the modal unity is sought in a relation, this can only be a qualified relation, and this fact necessitates the search for the original meaning-kernel of the logical modus. The moment of ‘the analytical whole and its parts’ depends for its modal determination on this modal nucleus and its context with all the other analogical moments of the logical modus. But it cannot have an original or pure analytical meaning, if at least the analytical is itself an original modal nucleus. The analytical ‘unity in the parts’ must therefore point to an intermodal meaning-coherence founded in the cosmic-temporal order which leaves no room for an ‘analytical purity’ of this relation.

Husserl's formalization implies an intermodal synthesis of meaning of which he is not aware.

The chief point is that the analytical meaning of the relation ‘the whole and its parts’ can only be established in an intermodal synthesis of meaning. For I can only grasp the modal analytical meaning of this relation in its opposition to the other aspects in which the relation between ‘the whole and its parts’ occurs.

The judgments in which I bring about this really cosmological distinction of meaning, and at the same time grasp the intermodal meaning-coherence, are necessarily of a synthetical character. That which Husserl calls formalizing a judgment consequently implies an intermodal synthesis of meaning. As a consequence of his absolutization of the analytical meaning in his ‘pure logic’, Husserl is unable to see the modal boundaries of the former. This renders him repeatedly guilty of shiftings of modal meaning. Alien modal meaning-moments are introduced into the supposedly ‘purely analytical essential forms’. These moments are derived from a meaning-synthesis of the analytical aspect with the numerical, the spatial, the lingual aspects, etc. This synthesis has not been understood in its cosmological structure.

By the same method of modal shiftings of meaning Russell performed the trick of a supposedly ‘purely analytical deduc-

[p. 457]

tion’ of the whole of modern mathematics. Husserl tries to define the concept ‘whole’ in a purely analytical way with the aid of the concept of ‘foundation’ which is also supposed to be ‘purely analytical’.

By a ‘whole’ he understands a ‘set of formal kinds of content’ which are ‘encompassed’ by a uniform foundation, and that ‘without the support of any further kinds of content.’ A content of the class α is then founded in one of the class β, when according to its essence (i.e. in conformity to the law of its specific nature) there can be no α without the existence of a β, inclusive of the possible co-existence of some further kinds of content, viz. γ, δ, etc., all the same pre-supposed in α¹.

Then he presumes he can give a purely analytical division of the concept ‘part’ viz. into pieces or parts in the strictest sense, and moments or abstract parts of the whole. Every part which is independent with reference to a ‘whole G’ is called ‘piece’, every part which is dependent on the same ‘whole’ is a ‘moment’.

When some whole can be divided into pieces in such a way that ‘essentially’ the pieces are of the same lowest kind as the one determined by the undivided whole, Husserl calls it an extensive whole, and its pieces extensive parts².

All these supposedly ‘purely analytical definitions’ clearly betray the intermodal meaning-synthesis with the modalities of number and space contained in them. And Husserl is guilty of undoubted modal shiftings of meaning when he includes original modal relations of the numerical and the spatial aspects in the analytical modus itself.

He admits that all the concepts and axioms formulated with regard to the analytical relation of ‘the whole and its parts’ have been obtained from arithmetical, spatial and even sensorily perceptible relations. After this synthetical cognitive process Husserl proceeds to his ‘logical formalizing’ in which he thinks he has eliminated every meaning-coherence with the non-logical aspects of experience. And then his ‘pure logic’ is sadly led astray, because he ignores the modal structure of the analytical relations which is founded in the order of cosmic time.

He risks the statement that all totalities, except only the extensive ones which can be divided into pieces, lack ‘unifying

1 Log. Unters. II, 1, p. 275.

2 op. cit. p. 267.

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connective forms’ (i.e. structural principles guaranteeing unity) ‘and are only based on unilateral or mutual foundations of their parts’: ‘It is the relations of foundation that are only really unifying, we would like to say’¹.

As a supposed universal essential truth, this pronouncement, of course, also bears on the typical total structures of individuality (for instance the vegetable or animal structures, the structure of a work of art, of a social group, etc.), which as such can never be grasped with the mere concept of a modal function alone. Husserl thinks he can deduce his thesis in a ‘purely analytical’ way without any cosmological investigation of the different empirical types of totality-structures. This is no longer the firm ground of exact science², but it is the sphere of the a priori dictates of logicism, which draws its vital saps from the Humanistic science-ideal with its absolutized mathematical logic.

The criterion of complete formalization is unable to make the possibility of purely analytical judgments plausible. What remains is: not a single judgment, and not a single concept can be ‘purely analytical’. There is only an analytical aspect of a concept and a judgment, which is present in every judgment and in every concept.

1 op. cit., p. 279: ‘Alles wahrhaft Einigende, so würden wir gerade sagen, sind die Verhältnisse der Fundierung.’

2 Husserl considers his ‘eidetical pure logic’ as an exact science, just as his phenomenology.

The cosmic limits of the possibility of formalizing in the formation of concepts.

Husserl's concept of logical formalization induces us to consider the cosmic limits of meaning of the possibility of formalizing concepts. For a moment I take over the questionable term ‘formalization’ from Husserl. It is dependent on the form-matter-schema of immanence-philosophy, so that it is necessary to delineate the meaning in which I accept it. I only understand by it the abstraction in the concepts from all meaning-individuality in the law-sphere concerned, including the generic and specific particularities. I agree thus with Husserl insofar as I sharply distinguish the abstracted modal basic concepts from all generic and specific notions. For the latter must derive all their modal determinateness from the former.

The concept ‘triangle’, for instance, is really a generic con-

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cept. But its meaning is limited by the original spatial modality whose structural meaning-moments are to be grasped in the modal basic concepts of geometry.

The cosmological limits of meaning set to the logical formalizing of concepts are found in the modal meaning-structure of the analytical law-sphere itself, in its indissoluble coherence with the modal structures of the other law-spheres.

The false formalism in the formation of concepts and the multivocality of formalistic notions.

When abstracting theoretical thought oversteps these boundaries, a false formalistic general concept arises. It is always characterized by the lack of any modal delimitation of its meaning and displays endless multivocality. This multivocality is then used by the theorist to obliterate the modal meaning-boundaries between the law-spheres.

Such false formalisms are e.g., the supposedly original basic concept ‘dimension in general’, serving to eradicate the limits between the analytical, arithmetical and spatial aspects; the concept ‘the whole and its parts’ in the modally indeterminate sense intended by Husserl. Other examples are the concept ‘point’ and the concept ‘continuum’ as supposedly purely analytical notions whose analogical character is disregarded; the supposedly purely logical concepts of ‘arrangement’, ‘aggregate’, ‘class’, ‘value’; the supposedly ‘purely analytical’ propositional form ‘there is’ (es gibt), all belonging to the arsenal of the logicistic world of thought, etc.

But also the so-called ‘transcendental-logical categories’ and forms of sensory intuition of Kantian epistemology lack a genuine delimitation of their modal meaning. The very lack of insight into their analogical character affects Kant's Critique of Pure Reason in its fundamentals¹.

1 Cf. my treatise De analogische grondbegrippen der vakwetenschappen en hun betrekking tot de menselijke ervaringshorizon (Mededelingen der Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, afd. Letterkunde, Nieuwe Reeks (1950).

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§ 5 - The problem concerning the possibility of a so-called formal logic as a science.

The distinction between analytical and synthetical judgments should be replaced by that between theoretical judgments of an implicit and those of an explicit synthetical structure of meaning.

We have had definitely to reject the distinction between ‘(purely) analytical’ and ‘synthetical’ judgments and come to the conclusion that without any exception all theoretical judgments bear a synthetical character, just as without any exception they all have an analytical aspect. Even the judgment S is S can only be conceived in its analytical aspect in an inter-modal synthesis of meaning. As soon as we wish to know its analytical aspect, we must grasp its modal structure in its intermodal coherence.

One can indeed distinguish between theoretical judgments of an implicit synthetical structure and those of an explicit synthetical structure of meaning. This distinction has an epistemological character.

When e.g., our theoretical attention is exclusively directed to the correct linguistic formulation of universal modal analytical relations in the judgment, with abstraction from any meaning-individuality, the truly synthetical meaning-structure of the judgment remains merely implicit for theoretical knowledge. The intermodal meaning-synthesis does not enter our theoretical consciousness explicitly. Our theoretical knowledge remains purely formal insofar as it comprises merely the formulation of the logical relations.

It will not do to speak in this case of logical judgments ‘an sich’ falling entirely outside of the gnoseological relation and having a self-sufficient ‘objective-logical meaning’. For the truth is that neither the linguistic formula nor the analytical relation signified by it have an objective character in an absolute sense. The logical meaning of the judgment has been (analogically) objectified in lingual symbols, which, however, only have a lingual sense in their in dissoluble relation to the symbolically signifying subject. In the same way objective analytical states of affairs can only exist in relation to the subjective analytical function of human thought. And if ‘logical objectivity’ is identified with ‘logical law-conformedness’ it should be remembered that the modal analytical laws of thought are not valid ‘in themselves’, i.e. in an absolute sense, but only in the indissoluble relation to the thinking subject that is subjected to it. The theoretical logical subject-object relation and its linguistic objectification in the formula are not independent of the gnoseological ‘Gegensland-relalion’. And this is why the real analytical

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meaning signified by an objective theoretical prepositional formula can only be grasped in a theoretical ‘explication’ of the structural meaning-synthesis perhaps only implicitly intended in it.
The meaning signified is never the formula itself, and the formula is nothing without the subjective intention of signifying. Formalism in logic (which is not the same as the formalization of judgments) is always based on the absolutization of the formula.

The formulation of the judgment will remain extremely abstract and formal in this formalization. In the judgment S is S e.g., nothing is signified but the analytical identity of the logical unity in the duality of the terms related. The two terms of the analytical relation function in the formula as the so-called grammatical subject in any meaning-synthesis whatever. All that has been objectively implied in this judgment, according to its analytical aspect, [e.g., that logical identity is correlated with logical diversity] can only enter our theoretical consciousness explicitly in a further theoretical analysis and synthesis of meaning.

In Plato's dialogue Parmenides the Eleatic conductor of the discourse renders all these implications explicit in order to show that the analytical relation of identity may not be absolutized.

In this process theoretical thought is expressly directed to the coherence of the modal structure of its analytical aspect with that of the retrocipated and anticipated modal structures. Our theoretical attention then may remain concentrated on the analytical states of affairs themselves.

In other words, in the explicitly accomplished theoretical synthesis of meaning between the analytical function and those of number, space, motion, etc., the important thing for theoretical logic is not primarily the knowledge of the modal meaning-structures opposed to the analytical modus, but rather the explicit knowledge of the analytical states of affairs as such. This alone can be meant, without any internal contradiction, by the statement that in the ‘formalized judgments’ resulting from a synthesis of meaning, we make abstraction from any ‘Gegenstand’. Such a theoretical abstraction is indeed only possible in a theoretical analysis and intermodal synthesis of meaning. In these theoretical acts we oppose the analytical aspect to all that is non-analytical, e.g., in order to grasp the modal difference between logical and arithmetical multiplicity, logical and original extensiveness etc.

In other words, the theoretical abstraction of the analytical

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from the non-analytical states of affairs should be the product of an intermodal synthesis of meaning in which we have grasped the limits of the modal analytical aspect in opposition to all the others. We shall presently return to this state of affairs.

The systatic structure of the non-theoretical judgments of experience.

The structure of the pre-theoretical judgments is systatic. It remains fundamentally different from the meaning-synthesis implied in the structure of all theoretical judgments. It is immaterial in this respect whether or not the latter are formalized.

A truly naïve, pre-theoretical judgment of experience in principle lacks the abstraction proper to the intermodal theoretical synthesis of meaning. Thought in this case remains systatically integrated into the temporal meaning-coherence and has no ‘Gegenstand’.

Is a theoretic logic possible as an independent science?

Our enquiry is now confronted with a fundamental problem which cannot be posed without ambiguity, unless it is recognized that the structure of a modal aspect can only be grasped in an intermodal synthesis of meaning pre-supposing a ‘Gegenstand’. This problem reads as follows: Is logic possible as an independent science? If so, by means of what synthesis can the modal meaning of the logical law-sphere be opposed to subjective logical thought? We came across this problem already in the previous paragraph, when demonstrating the hidden intermodal theoretical synthesis of meanings in Husserl's ‘formalization’ of the judgments. It appeared then that the analytical aspect itself can only be grasped in an inter-modal synthesis by opposing it to the non-logical modal structures of the other law-spheres. But this statement cannot solve the problem. Intermodal synthesis and theoretical analysis of meaning mutually pre-suppose one another. In theoretical knowledge the modal analytical aspect is connected with the modal meaning of the law-sphere opposed to it in a way not yet explained.

The seeming paradox of the analysis of the analytical aspect.

It is, however, not yet clear how it is possible to subject the analytical aspect itself to theoretical analysis. At first sight

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the following argument seems to be irrefutable: Every theoretical analysis of the analytical modality pre-supposes that which it wants to analyse, viz. the analytical aspect. It is also evident that the analytical aspect cannot be the ‘Gegenstand’ of the analytical aspect itself. Consequently, an analysis of the modal analytical aspect is impossible.

We are now face to face with a paradox whose origin may be traced very accurately, even before we have embarked upon a more detailed inquiry into the character of the intermodal synthesis.

This origin lies in the resolution of the structure of theoretical synthesis into two isolated modal functions made independent of one another; and in the supposition that the (already abstracted) modal analytical aspect would have to analyse itself if we are to obtain theoretical knowledge of things analytical. This intrinsically antinomic supposition can only occur if one does not see that every theoretical analysis pre-supposes a cosmic systasis of meaning.

The theoretically grasped modal analytical aspect which can only be analysed in a synthesis of meaning, is not, and cannot be the actual analysis. In the actual analysis it is I who am operating theoretically. As a ‘Gegenstand’ of theoretical analysis the modal structure of the logical aspect is itself theoretically abstracted from the cosmic continuity of the cosmic temporal order. This structure as such is no more purely analytical than that of the other modal aspects. Even in its abstraction as a ‘Gegenstand’ of theoretical analysis it retains its cosmological character as a modal expression of the cosmic order of time. Not as an abstracted ‘Gegenstand’ of analysis, but in its actual inherence in this cosmic order, it is a transcendental condition of our analytical function of thought. Nevertheless we cannot acquire theoretical insight into this modal structure except by making it into the ‘Gegenstand’ of our analysis. This is the very reason why the distinction between transcendental reflexive thought and objectifying thought (identified with the attitude of natural science) is of no avail here, so long as the paradoxical basic thesis of transcendental immanence-philosophy is adhered to.

This philosophy assumes that the theoretical-logical function of thought in its abstract isolation can be actual, whereas the isolation is in reality the product of theoretical abstraction. The epistemological problem of the possibility of analyzing the analytical aspect itself cannot be satisfactorily solved before we have

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obtained an insight into the fundamental problem of epistemology, viz. the inter-modal synthesis of meaning.

For the present only one thing can be accepted as an established truth: a true analysis of the modal analytical meaning can never have a ‘purely analytical’ character, because such a conception leads to the obvious antinomy that has been discussed.

Is ‘formal logic’ possible? What is to be understood by a Christian logic?

Is there any room left in our line of thought for ‘formal logic’? In the previous investigation it has been established that the conception of ‘formal logic’ in the sense of a ‘pure analytics’ destroys itself in internal antinomy. It is meaningless to speak of ‘purely analytical’ when one has obtained an insight into the complex structure of the analytical modality in the cosmic meaning-coherence.

Every meaningful theoretical concept, every meaningful theoretical judgment, however highly ‘formalized’, pre-supposes the intermodal synthesis and the cosmic systasis of meaning. A ‘formal logic’ can only be a ‘formalized’ logic in intermodal meaning-synthesis. It particularly examines the analytical aspect in this ‘formalization’ whose limits are determined by the modal structure in its universal intermodal meaning-coherence. As remarked, all analytical modal individuality and all total structures of individuality are eliminated in this case. Such a formal logic belongs to the special theory of the law-spheres. It will be distinguished from the mathematical, physical, biological, psychological, etc., fields of research. In these latter our theoretical attention is not directed to the analytical aspect itself, but to the opposed non-logical aspects analysed in the theoretical synthesis, which are only analytically encompassed by the logical categories.

Even formal logic remains bound to the cosmological fundamental principles of modal sphere-sovereignty and sphere-universality. At this point a truly Christian logic¹ differs essentially from the current logical theories rooted in the immanence-standpoint. This difference does not lie in unimportant corrections of traditional logic or of modern ‘formal’ logic. And a

1 Cf. D.H. Th. Vollenhoven, De Noodzakelijkheid eener Christelijke logica (pub. by Paris, Amsterdam, 1932).

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fortiori it has nothing to do with the meaningless supposition that Christian thought should be subject to other logical laws than that of non-Christians.

It can only mean that formal logic ought to come under the control of our Christian cosmonomic Idea and ought to be made fruitful by the transcendental Idea of the ‘logica universalis’ which does not find a rest in time but is irresistibly directed to Christ and in Him to the Creator of all things. A truly universal formal logic ought to be oriented to the philosophic basic Idea of the Origin, the meaning-totality, and the universal cosmic meaning-coherence, when it sets out to investigate the logical relations as such.