must be placed not at the beginning, but at the end of cognitive life.
To place it at the beginning, as mere sensibility, and to derive from
it the concepts, either as the effect of psychological mechanism,
or by an arbitrary act of will, is the error of sensationalists and
empiricists. To conceive it as judgment, and nevertheless to place
it at the beginning, and to deduce from it the concepts by further
elaboration, is the error of rationalists and intellectualists. Against
these, it must be firmly maintained that the first moment of knowledge
is _intuitive_ and not perceptive; and that the concepts do _not
originate_ from the intellectual act of perception, but enter the act
itself as _constituents._ To begin with perception, understood as
perceptive judgment, is to begin at the end, that is to say, with the
most highly complex. Perception is thus the sole problem of gnoseology;
but only because it is the whole problem, which contains in itself
all the others. And it also is, if you like, the _first_ form of the
cognitive spirit, but not because it is the most simple, but precisely
because it is the _last_; and the last, being also the whole, can also
in an absolute sense be called first.
[Sidenote: _Origin of this error._]
Certainly, the misunderstanding of the sensationalists and the
opposing error of the rationalists contain an element of truth, since
both are really concepts, which are developed from perception and
presuppose it. But, on the other hand, they are not true and proper
concepts, but pseudoconcepts, as we have already defined them, and
these, being developed from perception, give rise, in their turn,
to pseudojudgments. We shall treat of this further on; and thereby
explain the genesis of the misunderstanding, that is to say, the
erroneous theory will be overcome as misunderstanding and determined as
truth. In this difference between individual judgments and individual
pseudojudgments, between perceptions and pseudoperceptions, will
also clearly be found another of the motives (and perhaps the most
profound), which have divided judgments into judgments of fact and
judgments of value.
[Sidenote: _Individual syllogisms._]
It is also easy to understand that, as there are individual judgments,
so there are also individual syllogisms; or rather, that since it
is not possible to distinguish between judgments and syllogisms in
philosophical Logic, for they constitute one indivisible whole, so it
is not possible to distinguish individual syllogisms from individual
judgments, or it is only possible to do so verbally. "Caius is dead,"
is indeed the conclusion of a syllogism; since it is not possible to
affirm that he is mortal without some reason: for example, because he
is a man, an animal, or a finite being. Thus, the syllogism: "Men are
mortal, Caius is a man; therefore, Caius is mortal," is only verbally
different from "Caius is mortal." We do not say that the difference of
words is nothing; there is always a spiritual difference, even when,
instead of saying, "Caius is mortal," we say, "He, whom I call Caius,
is mortal," or when the same thought is expressed in Latin or German.
But being here occupied with Logic, we declare that there is none,
because, indeed, there is none, _in point of difference of logical
act,_ both forms being the realization of logical reasoning alone.
[Footnote 1: See above, Section I. Chap. VI.]
V
THE INDIVIDUAL JUDGMENT AND THE PREDICATE OF EXISTENCE
[Sidenote: _The copula: its verbal and logical significance._]
Subject and predicate are indistinguishable in the judgment of
definition, and distinguishable and distinct in the individual
judgment; but the act of distinction (which is also union) between
subject and predicate, representation and concept, is again, in the
individual judgment, the same as the act of distinction and union, by
means of which, in the judgment of definition, the concept is defined.
In both cases thought makes essential what it thinks. In this respect
there is no difference between the two forms of judgment, which we have
analysed and have hitherto kept distinct for reasons of analysis. One
identical act of thought distinguishes both from mere representation,
in which there is wanting the "is" (logical and not verbal)--that "is,"
which belongs to the judgment of definition and to the individual
judgment, and which in the second of these more properly assumes the
name of _coptila,_ because it unites two distinct elements, the one
representative, the other logical. Here, too, of course, we must not
allow ourselves to be deceived by verbalism. The essentialization, the
copula, thought, cannot be made to consist of a word, which, abstracted
from the whole, becomes a simple sound, and as sound can assume any
other signification. In mere representation there can also be found the
"is," or what, verbally and grammatically, is called copula, but there
it has no value whatever as act of thought.
_Nunc est bibendum, nunc pede libero_
_Pulsanda tellus_
is a proposition which possesses the "is," but in this case it has
merely the value of a sign, not of an act of thought, for that phrase
of old Horace is nothing but the expression of a hortatory motion.
The word, too, can be suppressed, but we do not thereby suppress the
act of thought. The exclamation "beautiful!" uttered before a picture
may be an individual judgment, having as subject the representation
of the picture, and as predicate the æsthetic universal, which is
called beautiful, in which the copula (and here, also, the subject) is
verbally understood, but logically existent, and therefore always also
capable of verbal reintegration. On the other hand, this reintegration
cannot be effected when it is a case of a mere representation or an
expression of a state of the soul; because, in that case, there would
be, not a reintegration, but an integration, that is to say, it would
carry out that act of thought, and produce that individual judgment
which was not present before.
[Sidenote: _Questions concerning propositions without subject.
Verbalism._]
Thus, in asking a last question concerning the individual judgment,
that is to say, whether it be always _existential,_ we must, as always,
transfer the enquiry from verbal to logical analysis, and not waste
time with speculations as to words or fragments of propositions,
arbitrarily torn from their context, and therefore insignificant and
equivocal. The dispute has been most keen in relation to what are
called propositions without a subject, such as "It rains" and the
like. But, although we do not intend to negate the results, obtained
or obtainable from these disputes, we cannot accept the position which
they imply and which renders it possible to agitate and to discuss the
problem to infinity and therefore makes it insoluble. "It is raining"
said with a smile of satisfaction means: "Thank heaven, it is raining";
with a feeling of disappointment: "Bother the rain for preventing my
taking a walk"; in reply to some one asking what is the noise audible
on the window-panes: "The audible sound is the sound of rain"; to
contradict some one who says the weather is fine: "You are stating a
falsehood and have not given yourself the trouble of observing; it is
raining"; or it is the correction of an historical error. And so on.
It is therefore waste of breath to dispute as to the logical nature of
that proposition if its precise signification be not determined; and
when it is truly determined (for the propositions we have substituted,
taken abstractly, can also appear to have many senses and give rise
to misunderstandings), we have quite abandoned the materiality of
verbalism and passed to the thinking of spiritual acts, taken in
themselves.
[Sidenote: _Confusion between different forms of judgments with
relation to existentiality._]
The question of existentiality in the act of judgment has been
strangely confused, owing both to this verbalism and to the failure
to keep distinct the judgment of definition and the individual
judgment, and even the concept and the pseudoconcept. The question
as to existence has been asked, as if it were the same in the case
of a judgment of definition, like: "The Idea is," and in the case of
an individual judgment like "Peter is." But in the first case, as we
already know, existence coincides with essence, and that judgment
only says that the Idea is thought, and therefore is; whereas the
second not only says that Peter is representable, and therefore is,
but that he exists; Peter might be representable and not exist; the
griffin is representable and does not exist. Pseudoconcepts have
also been incorrectly adduced as examples of judgment of definition
in such statements as: "The triangle is thinkable, but does not
possess existence," or: "The genus mammifer is thinkable, but does
not exist as single animals"; for in this case it should have been
said that "triangle" and "mammifer" are not thought at all, but are
constructed, and therefore have neither essence nor existence. For
us, then, the question of existentiality cannot arise, either for the
pure judgment of definition, which is a concept and has existence as
a concept, that is to say, essence; nor for the definitive judgment
of the pseudoconcepts, which is not even thought; but arises only for
the individual judgment, into which there enters as a constituent
a representative element, that is to say, something individual and
finite. Essence does not coincide with existence in the individual and
finite; indeed its definition is just this: the inadequacy of existence
to essence. Therefore the individual changes at every instant, and
although being at every instant the universal, yet it is adequate to it
only at infinity.
[Sidenote: _Determination and subdivision of the question of existence
in individual judgments._]
Having limited the question to the individual judgment, for which alone
it has meaning, we can opportunely divide it into three particular
questions: (i.) Does the individual judgment always imply that the
subject of the judgment is existent? (ii.) What is the character of
existentiality? (iii.) Does this character suffice to construct that
judgment?
[Sidenote: _Necessity of the existential character in these judgments._]
Beginning with the first, we believe that without doubt the answer
is affirmative and that adherence should be given to those who have
discovered and persistently defended the necessity of the existential
character, thus contributing in no small degree to the progress of
logical science. Whether what is represented exist or not, is doubtless
indifferent to the intuitive man, to the poet or artist, simply
because he does not leave the circle of representation. But it is not
indifferent to the logical man, since he forms an individual judgment.
He cannot _judge of what does not exist._
It has been incorrectly objected that the logical judgment always
remains the same, whether I have a hundred dollars in my pocket or
only in my imagination; that a mountain of gold is a subject of
judgment, although hitherto at least no one has found one in any part
of the earth; that Pamela is a virtuous woman (whatever Barretti may
have written to the contrary), although she has never lived elsewhere
than in the imagination of Richardson and of Goldoni. No predicate
whatsoever can be attributed to a hundred dollars, to a mountain of
gold, and to a Pamela which do not exist; and if it be said that
those hundred dollars are exactly divisible by two or by five; or
that that mountain of gold, imagined as of a certain base and height,
is measurable in terms of cubic metres, and has a value of so many
millions or milliards on the market; or that Pamela is worthy of esteem
and of reward; it must be noted that neither the hundred imagined
dollars, nor the imagined mountain, nor the imagined Pamela are
judged with these judgments, but that the judgments define simply the
arithmetical concepts of number, prime number and divisibility, or the
geometrical concepts of the cube, and the economic concepts of gold
as merchandise, or the moral concepts of virtue, esteem and reward.
No judgment whatever has been given as to those non-existent facts,
because where there is nothing the king (in this case, thought) loses
his rights.
[Sidenote: _The absolute and the relative non-existent._]
It will be replied that we talk at every moment about these
non-existent things, and consequently judge them. But here care must
be taken not to confuse absolute with relative non-existence, which
latter is non-existent only in name. The absolutely non-existent is
what is excluded from the judgment, implicitly in the affirmative
formula, explicitly in the negative formula. To him who speaks of the
mountain of gold, of the possession of a hundred dollars, and of Pamela
as existing realities, we reply by denying these existences, that is
to say, by denying them in an absolute manner; and of those negated
existences it is not possible to judge, or even to talk, precisely
because they are altogether negated. Here, in fact, we are speaking of
the individual judgment, which excludes its contradictory from itself,
as, for that matter, is also the case with the judgment of definition.
But in that absolute affirmation and negation there is also made,
explicitly or implicitly, a relative affirmation or negation; as when
we say, in the examples given: "The mountain of gold, the hundred
dollars, Pamela, do not exist," we say at the same time: "There do
exist phantasms, products of the fancy or of the imagination, of a
mountain of gold, of a hundred dollars, and of a virtuous Pamela." Now
the mountain, the dollars, and Pamela are, as such, not the absolutely
non-existent, but certain facts, _subjects_ of judgment, of which the
predicate is expressed by the word "non-existent," which in this case
is equivalent to "existing as phantasms." The absolutely non-existent
is the contradictory, true and proper nothingness; the relatively
non-existent (which is precisely that of the individual judgment) is
an existence, _different_ from that which the same individual judgment
affirms.
Certainly relative non-existence, and the whole content of the
concept of existence in general, would require more minute analysis;
from which it would perhaps be seen that the so-called non-existent
resolves itself into certain categories of practical facts; and thus
designates sometimes _arbitrary constructions,_ made by combining
images for amusement or with some other intention; sometimes, on the
contrary, the _desires,_ which accompany every volitional act and are
the infinite _possibilities_ of the real. And it would also be seen
that non-existence in the second sense, or the desires, which have been
represented by art, are not in its circle in any way distinguished
from effective volitions and actions; since, in order to distinguish
them, it would be necessary that art should possess a philosophy of
the will, however summary, whereas art is without any philosophy. This
examination would lead us, however, not only outside the problem now
before us, but also outside Logic, to another part of Philosophy,[1]
which, although closely related to Logic (as Logic to it), must be
the object of special treatment if we do not wish to produce mental
confusion by offering everything at once. This was the defect, for
example, of G. B. Vico, who put all books into one book, the whole book
into a chapter, and frequently his whole philosophy and history into a
page or a period. The present writer, though proud to call himself a
Vichian, does not propose to imitate the didactic obtuseness of that
man of genius.
Suffice it to have made clear, as concerns the problem which now
occupies us, that every individual judgment implies the existence of
what is spoken of, or of the fact given in the representation, even
when this fact consists of an act of imagination, that this act may be
recognized as such and as such existentialized. It assumes a concept of
reality, which divides into effective reality and possible reality,
into existence and non-existence, or mere representability. Some modern
investigators of what is called the _theory of values_ (students who
fluctuate between psychology and philosophy, and between an antiquated
philosophy and one that has the future before it) have maintained that
a judgment of value cannot be pronounced when we are not dealing with
an existing thing. Since for us a judgment of value is equivalent to
any individual judgment, we must accept their thesis; freeing it from
the embarrassment in which it finds itself in regard to _unreal images_
(which yet give rise, as they themselves confess, to such judgments
of value as the æsthetic) by observing that in that case there is the
_effectuality,_ the _reality,_ or, in short, the _existence_ of images,
which have the _ineffectual_ or _non-existent_ as their content.
[Sidenote: _The character of existence as predicate._]
We have in this way opened a path for the solution of the second
question enunciated, which concerns the character to be assigned to
the existentializing act of the judgment. Does this consist of an act
of thought, that is to say, of the application of a predicate to a
subject; or is it an original act of an altogether peculiar nature,
which does not find its parallel in the other acts of thought? In
short, is existence a predicate, or is it not? The answer, already
implicitly contained in the foregoing explanations, affirms that
_existence_ in the individual judgment is a _predicate._ And we say "in
the individual judgment" because in the judgment of definition it is
not predicate, for the reason already expounded, that in that judgment
there is no distinction between subject and predicate, and that in it
existence coincides with essence.
[Sidenote: _Critique of existentiality as position and faith._]
The traditional reply is, on the other hand, that existence, in the
judgment of existence, is not a predicate, but a knowledge _sui
generis,_ sometimes called a knowledge of _position,_ sometimes an act
of belief, or _faith;_ two determinations, which are reducible to a
single one. Because, if being is conceived as external to the human
spirit, and knowledge as separable from its object, so much so that the
object could be without being known, it is evident that the existence
of the object becomes a position, or something placed before the
spirit, given to the spirit, extraneous to it, which the spirit would
never appropriate to itself unless it were courageously to swallow the
bitter mouthful with an irrational act of faith. But all the philosophy
which we are now developing demonstrates that there is nothing external
to the spirit, and therefore there are no positions opposed to it.
These very conceptions of something external, mechanical, natural, have
shown themselves to be conceptions, not of external positions, but of
positions of the spirit itself, which creates the so-called external,
because it suits it to do so, as it suits it to annul this creation,
when it is no longer of use. On the other hand, it has never been
possible to discover in the circle of the spirit that mysterious and
unqualifiable faculty called _faith,_ which is said to be an intuition
that intuites the universal, or a thinking of the universal, without
the logical process of thought. All that has been called faith has
revealed itself step by step as an act of knowledge or of will, as a
theoretic or as a practical form of the spirit.
There is therefore no doubt that existence, if it be something that
is affirmed or denied, cannot be anything but a predicate; it can
only be asked what sort of predicate it is, that is to say, what is
the precise content or concept of existence, and this has already
been indicated or at least sketched in the preceding explications.
Objections have been made to the conceptual and predicative character
of existence, such as that which maintains that if it were a predicate
it would be necessary in the judgment "A is" to be able to think the
two terms--A and existence--separately, whereas in the thought of A, A
is already existentialized. But these objections show themselves to be
sophistical; because outside the judgment A is not thinkable, but only
representable, and therefore without existentiality, which predicate it
only acquires in the act of judgment.
[Sidenote: _Absurd consequences of those doctrines._]
For the rest, the difficulties that befall those who conceive
existentiality in the individual judgment as something _sui generis,_
are illustrated by the theory to which they find themselves led, of a
double kind of judgment, the existential and the categorical, without
their being able to justify this duality. This is at bottom the most
apparent manifestation of their more or less unconscious _metaphysical
dualism,_ which assumes an object external to the spirit, and makes
the spirit apprehend it with an _act of faith_ and afterwards reason
about it with an act of _thought._ Why not always continue with an act
of faith? Or why not also extend the act of thought to the initial
judgment? We have either to continue upon the same path, or to change
it altogether--this is the dilemma which imposes itself here.
[Sidenote: _The predicate of existence as not sufficing to constitute a
judgment._]
But in rejecting the double form of the individual judgment, the one
existential, the other categorical, and in resolving both into the
single form, which is the categorical by making existence a predicate
among predicates, we must also explain for what reason (in reply to
the third of the questions into which we have divided the treatment
of existentiality) we now say that the predicate of existence does
not suffice to constitute the judgment. How can it fail to suffice?
If I say that "Peter is," or that "The Ægean is," have I not before
me a perfect judgment? and is it not simply a judgment of existence?
But here, too, we must repeat: _cave_; beware of the deceptions of
verbalism; think of things, not of words. The judgments adduced as an
example are so little judgments of existence that in them we speak of
the "Ægean" and of "Peter," and since we speak of them, it is clear
that we know that the Ægean, for example, is a sea, and what a sea
is, and so on; that Peter is a man, and a man made in this or that
way, an Italian and not a Bushman, thirty years old and not a month,
and so on. The merely representative element cannot be found in the
judgment by fixing it in a word, which, in so far as it forms part of
the judgment, is, like all the rest, penetrated with logical character;
and when we say that "Peter" is the subject and is representation,
and "existing" is the predicate, we speak in a general sort of way and
almost symbolically. If we are looking for the formula of the merely
existential judgment in relation to a representation, that is, of a
judgment which leaves the representation free from all other predicate
save that of existence, such a formula could only be _"Something
is."_ But upon mature consideration this formula would no longer be
an individual judgment, since every logical transfiguration of the
individual and every individual determination of the universal would
not have been excluded: it would correspond neither more nor less than
to a judgment of definition which asserts that "something" (something
in general, indeterminate) "is" or that "reality is."
[Sidenote: _The predicate of judgment as the totality of the concept._]