The Table of Judgments: Critique of Pure Reason A 67-76; B 92-101.

Lee, Seung Kee

BRANDT, Reinhard. The Table of Judgments: Critique of Pure Reason A 6776; B 92-101. Translated and edited by Eric Watkins. North American Kant Society Studies in Philosophy, vol. 4. Atascadero, CA: Ridgeview Publishing Company, 1995. vii + 147 pp. n.p.--In this book, Brandt presents an interpretation of a fairly short but famous and important passage in the Critique of Pure Reason wherein Kant introduces "the table of judgments." Kant argues that the categories ("pure concepts of the understanding") can be derived from the table of the forms of judgment which presumably corresponds (with only minor divergences) to the division of judgments commonly studied by formal logicians (A 70).

Not a few commentators have questioned, however, the validity Of what Kant calls the metaphysical deduction of the categories. While many have judged the link between the table of judgments and the list of categories as artificial (Kant says they are in "complete agreement" [B 159]), such notable readers as Hegel and Heidegger (among others) have raised doubts about the alleged a priori unity and completeness of the table itself (A 66-7). Such criticisms have prompted various interpretations of Kant's table. Generally speaking, recent interpretations embrace either of two positions: while some deem it as incapable of proof, others (like Klans Reich, whose The Completeness of Kant's Table of Judgments [Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992, originally 1932] is by far the most celebrated defense of Kant) regard as demonstrable Kant's claim about the systematic unity and completeness of the table.

Brandt agrees with the latter position ("otherwise Kant would not have claimed this unity" [p.4]), but he finds it "startling" that the noted scholars who have looked for Kant's arguments for completeness have not done so in "the passage that introduces (A 67-9) and explains (A 706) the able of judgments" (p.3). According to Brandt, "the key" (p. 70) to the correct interpretation of the table can be found through "certain hints" (p. 120) given in this very passage.

The introductory chapter is followed by a critical survey (chap. 2) of the major interpretations and solutions proposed by recent commentators (some incisive criticisms are levelled at Reich's book, the analysis of which takes up two-thirds of the chapter). In the next two chapters, Brandt develops his own interpretation, which he first presents "systematically" (chap. 3) and then "historically" (chap. 4). He advances as "the systematic idea of the table" the "hypothesis" that "the triad of quantity, quality, and relation refers to the tres operationes of the understanding, [namely] the doctrines of concepts, judgments, and inferences, to which the doctrine of method is added as a fourth member" (p. 48); and that the latter refers to modality which has "a special status" (p. 56).

Brandt's hypothesis rests on the following considerations: In the Preface to the first edition of the Critique, Kant says, "Common logic itself supplies an example, how all the simple acts of reason can be enumerated completely and systematically" (A xiv). Brandt contends that the table of judgments is precisely "the place in the Critique" where "all simple acts of general logic [are] enumerated completely and systematically (A xiv)" (p. 121). Thus, as Brandt sees it, the "completeness" of the four headings of the table can be proven if one can "show that and how" (p. 121) the table "exhausts" (p. 7) "all acts of the understanding" (A 69). "Understanding" taken broadly means "the three mental powers" (p. 52), that is, "all parts of [Aristotelian] logic" (p. 63), namely, concepts, judgments, inferences, and method. Brandt carries out this task in the first half of the systematic chapter via a detailed analysis and interpretation of the introductory passage CA 67-70).

The second half of the chapter deals with the completeness of the three "moments" under each of the four headings. Brandt's exposition of the explanatory passage CA 71-6) leads him to conclude that, while the first two moments under each of the first three headings (quantity, quality, and relation) form "negations or reversals" (p. 78), each of the third moments under the same headings "places knowledge in relation to a sphere as a whole" and thus "completes the preceding moments and because it thematizes the whole, cannot be transcended by further moments ...." (p. 74). Finally, modality, which "occup[ies] the position of the fourth part of Aristotelian [logic] books, namely, method" (p. 82), locates an already determined judgment (with respect to the moments of quantity, quality, and relation) "in the context of the acquisition of knowledge" (p. 82) consisting of "three stages [represented by three moments of modality] in one epistemic process" (p. 83). The chapter ends with an evaluation of the table and remarks on the "architectonic." In the former, Brandt argues that Kant's table both lacks "systematic coherence" and is inefficient with respect to its epistemic function (p. 87).

In his historical presentation (chap. 4), Brandt develops the "genesis" of the table as construed by him in the preceding chapter by using sources taken from the works both of Kant (logic lectures, Reflexionen, and other minor works) and of his predecessors and contemporaries (Wolff, Meier, Lambert). In the concluding and final chapter, Brandt situates his own view within the history of the interpretation of the Critique.

Brandt notes that only an "indirect proof" can be given to support his "hypothesis" (p.48), and concedes that the latter can be maintained "even if some difficulties remain" (p. 121). Indeed, one difficulty is that it is not made entirely perspicuous how Brandt's "systematic idea" is to be reconciled with Kant's claim that ail acts of understanding can be reduced to judgments CA 69). In fact, Brandt himself expresses puzzlement as regards this claim, but to sustain his account, he interprets it to mean that "[i]t is not only ail the acts of the understanding in judgments, but all operationes mentis whatsoever, and these acts of the understanding can in turn be reduced to judgments" (p. 56). Yet, one might ask, if the four headings and the twelve moments of the table are already supposed to "contain" (p. 71) all parts of logic, why would Kant bother to reduce these "forms of thought" again to judgments? Brandt says that "the essence of the general doctrines of concepts and inferences lies in the doctrine of judgments ...." (p. 56). But precisely in what sense does this amount to a "reduction" to judgments? These questions, moreover, become more pressing when one takes into consideration Brandt's own remark that Kant's "table of judgments does not stand in the tradition of the doctrine of judgments of Aristotle's De Interpretatione, but rather in the tradition of Aristotle's Analytics, thus the doctrine of syllogisms" (p. 65). Brandt's presentation, nonetheless, is by and large clear, informative, original, and challenging.