Kant on Quantitative and Qualitative Judgments

Abstract

Kant, while speaking on his ‘Table of Judgments’ in his Critique of Pure Reason, is concerned with classifying only the forms of judgment and not judgments. Kant says that if we attend only to the forms of judgment without considering their contents, we find that forms can be classified under the four heads of quantity, quality, relation and modality, each with three subdivisions. In this paper our primary objective is to explain Kant’s quantitative and qualitative judgments and examine some related objections put forward by his critics. We also intend to provide an answer to the question as to why Kant has departed from the formal logic of his period while classifying judgments, in the context of objections raised by H.W. Cassirer and P.F. Strawson. Keywords: judgments, form, content, quantitative, qualitative