Chapter IV: The Individual Judgment and Perception

[Sidenote: _Reaction of the concept upon the representation._]

Problems of a widely different nature from these formalist playthings await exploration in the depths of the Science of Logic. And resuming what we have called the descent of the universal into the individual, it is of importance, after having established the relation between concept and form of expression, to examine in what way the concept reacts upon the representation, from which it appears to be at a stroke and altogether separated.

In more precise terms: Beyond doubt the concept is thought only in so far as it becomes concrete in an expressive form and itself also becomes, from this point of view, representative. Thus, a logical affirmation, or one that presents itself as logical, can be viewed under a twofold aspect, as logical and as æsthetic. It can be regarded as well thought-out, and so also very well expressed, perfectly æsthetic because perfectly logical; or as very well expressed but ill thought, or not truly thought, and so not logical, and yet sentimental, passionate and imaginative. But this expression-representation, in which the concept lives (and which is, for example, the tone, the accent, the personal form, the style, which I am employing in this book to expound Logic), is a _new_ representation, conditioned by the concept. We now ask, not indeed the character of this representation (which is sufficiently clear), but of what kind are those representations, about and upon which, the thought of the concept has been kindled. Do they remain apart, excluded from the light of the concept, obscure as before, that is, logically obscure? Does the concept illuminate only itself in a sort of egoistic satisfaction, without irradiating with its light the representations upon which it has arisen?

[Sidenote: _Logicization of the representations._]

That would be inconceivable and contrary to the unity of the spirit; and indeed, such separation and indifference do not exist. The appearance of the concept transfigures the representations upon which it arises, making them _other_ than they formerly were; from being indiscriminate it makes them discriminate; from fantastic, logical; from clear but indistinct (as used to be said), clear and distinct. I am, for example, in such a condition of soul as prompts me to sing or to versify, and thus to make myself objective and known to myself; but I am objective and known only to fancy, so much so, that at the moment of poetical or musical expression I should not be able to say what was really happening in me: whether I wake or dream, whether I see clearly, or catch glimpses, or see wrongly. When from the variety of the multitude of representations, which have preceded and which follow it, I pass on to enquire as to the truth of them all (that is to say, the reality, which does not pass), and rise to the concept, those representations themselves must be revised in the light of the concept that has been attained, but no longer with the same eyes as formerly,--they must not be _looked at,_ but henceforth, _thought._ My state of soul then becomes determinate; and I shall say, for example: "What I have experienced (and sung and made poetry of), was an absurd desire; it was a clash of different tendencies that needed to be overcome and arranged; it was a remorse, a pious desire," and so on. Thus by means of the concept is formed a _judgment_ of that representation.

[Sidenote: _The individual judgment and its difference from the definitive judgment._]

We have already studied the judgment, which is proper to the concept, and called it definitive judgment or judgment of definition. We have shown how in it there is no distinction of subject and predicate, so much so that it may be said, with regard to it, that there is neither subject nor predicate, but the complete identity of the two: a predicate or universal, which is subject to itself. However, the judgment which is now being discussed is not a simple definition and does not coincide with the first. It certainly has as its base a concept and therefore a definition; but it contains something more, a representative or individual element, which is transformed into logical fact, but does not lose individuality on that account; indeed it reaffirms its individuality with more precise distinction. This judgment is connected with the first, but it represents a further stage of thought. If the first form be a conceptual or _definitive_ judgment, the second may be called an _individual_ judgment.

[Sidenote: _Distinction of subject and predicate in the individual judgment_]

Owing to this new element, which the individual judgment contains, and the judgment of definition does not contain, we eventually find fully justified in the former that distinction between subject and predicate which verbal Logic in vain claims to discover in all judgments, including those of universal character (and even in simple propositions); so that it ends by attributing to that distinction, of which later we shall perceive the capital philosophical importance, a purely grammatical or verbal significance. Subject and predicate can be distinguished only in so far as the one is not and the other is universal, in so far as the one is not and the other is concept, that is to say, only in so far as the one is representation and the other concept. A particular or singular concept (for example, the will) is always also a universal concept; and therefore not adapted to function as a subject to which a predicate is applied; because that predicate, that universal, is already explicitly in the pretended subject itself which is net thinkable, save by means of that predicate. Only the _representation_ can be truly _subject;_ and only the _concept_ can be _predicate._ This takes place plainly in the individual judgment, where the two elements are connected. "Peter is good," an individual judgment, implies the subject "Peter" and the predicate "good," the one not to be confounded with the other; whereas, in the definition "the will is the practical form of the spirit," "practical form" and "will" are identical.

[Sidenote: _Reasons for the variety of definitions of the judgment and of certain of its divisions._]

When the attempt was made to define the judgment as differing both from the concept and from the definition, what was aimed at was the individual judgment. But, if this be so, then the definitions which conceive the judgment either as relation of representations or as relation of concepts (the subsumption of one concept under another, etc.), must be termed false, since it is henceforth clear that, as individual judgment, it must be conceived as a _relation of representation and concept._ On the other hand, some celebrated divisions of the judgment find their origin in the distinction made by us (which, we again repeat, is given at this point provisionally with the intention of seeking the definite formula further on), between the judgment of the concept and the judgment of the representation, between definition and individual judgment. In this way the _analytic_ judgment, defined as that in which the concept of predicate was obtained from the subject, reveals itself as nothing but the definition, the identity of subject and predicate; the _synthetic_ judgment, which adds to the subject something which was not there previously, is the individual judgment, logical thinking of the intuition, at first only intuited and not thought. We shall examine further on the true meaning and the definite formula of this distinction also.

[Sidenote: _The individual judgment and intellectual intuition._]

To ignore the form of the individual judgment, and to recognize only that of the concept and of the definition, is an impossible position, though occasionally there appears a tendency in that direction. We perceive it, for instance, in those who seek for definitions of everything, and limit themselves to syllogizing, when there is certainly a case for thinking, but also one for looking, or for thinking while we look, and for looking while we think. This may be said truly to represent knowledge, that complete knowledge in which all anterior forms unite, and which is the result of all of them. To know is to know reality; and knowledge of reality is translated into representations, penetrated with thought. That famous _intellectual intuition,_ which has sometimes been described as the faculty to which man aspires, but does not possess, and sometimes as a prodigious faculty, superior to knowledge itself, should be declared, with the full rigour of letter and concept, to be nothing but the individual judgment; which is, in truth, intellectual intuition or intuited intellection.

[Sidenote: _Identity of the individual judgment with perception or perceptive judgment._]

But the individual judgment can take another name, much better known and more familiar: _perception_; and perception, in its turn, should be called, synonymously, individual judgment, or at least _perceptive judgment._ Perception does not consist of opening the eyes, of offering the ear, and of unlocking any of the other senses, which are wont to be enumerated, nor, in general, of abandoning oneself to sensation. The world does not enter our spirit by these wide gates; but has itself announced, in order to be received with due honours. That good folk (and among the best of folk are to be counted many philosophers) think otherwise is in truth to be explained by their wonted neglect or lack of analysis and reflection.

And further, perception is not intuition, _i.e.,_ an impression theoretically fashioned, or that stage or moment of the spirit which is represented in an eminent degree by the poet, who intuites and does not know what he intuites, indeed does not know that he does not know (because the pertinent question has not arisen, and cannot arise, in him, as poet). To perceive means to apprehend a given fact as having this or that nature; and so means to think and to judge it. Not even the lightest impression, the smallest fact, the most insignificant object, is perceived by us, save in so far as it is thought.

Hence the supreme importance of the individual judgment, which is that which embraces all knowledge produced by us at every moment, by means of which we _possess the world,_ by means of which a _world exists._

[Sidenote: _and with the commemorative or historical judgment._]

In perceptive judgments also, are comprised those judgments which are called by some _commemorative_ or _historical,_ that is to say, those by which it is recognized that a given fact has occurred in the past. This recognition can never be founded upon anything other than present intuitions, intuitions, that is to say, of our present life, which contains the past in it, and persuades us of the veracity of a given piece of evidence, as now apprehended by us. And conversely, all perceptive judgments are, in some way, commemorative and historical, because the present, in the very act by which we hold it before our spirit, becomes a past, that is to say an object of memory and of history.

[Sidenote: _Erroneous distinction of individual judgments as of fact and of value._]

On the other hand, it would be erroneous to divide individual judgments, as has often been attempted, into judgments of _fact_ and judgments of _value,_ claiming that the judgment, "Peter is a man," is of a different nature from: "Peter is good." Every judgment of fact, in so far as it attributes a predicate to a subject, gives to it a value, declaring it to participate in the universal or in a determination of the universal. And conversely, every judgment of value, in so far as it attributes a value, cannot attribute other than the universal or a determination of the universal, since outside the universal there is no value. Even judgments of negative form, such as: "Peter is not good," or "is not-good," or: "Peter is bad," are attributes of universality and of value; because, as we know, theoretically they do not affirm anything other than that Peter has a spiritual determination different from goodness (for example, that he is utilitarian, not yet moral). Certainly, in judgments such as these which we have selected as examples, there is mingled (this too has been noted; and at this point it suffices to recall it) the expression of an _ought to be,_ which, in this case, is revealed in the negative formula adopted; but the expression of an ought to be or of a desire is not a judgment either of fact or of value; indeed, it is not a judgment at all; it is a mere proposition, a logos semanticos, not apophanticos, an optative or desiderative formula, a _lyricism_ of the spirit directed to the future.[1]

[Sidenote: _The individual judgment as ultimate and perfect form of knowledge._]

There is no other cognitive fact to know, beyond perception or individual judgment. In this, the ultimate and the most perfect of cognitive facts, the circle of knowledge is completed. Obscure sensibility, having become clear intuition, and then having made itself thought of the universal, in the individual judgment is logically thought, and is, henceforward, knowledge of fact or of event, that is, of effectual reality. The individual judgment, or perception, is fully adequate to reality.

[Sidenote: _Error of treating it as the first fact of knowledge._]

But precisely because perception is the completion of knowledge, it 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.]