Chapter 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._]

But our theory concerning the indispensability of other predicates in constituting the judgment is not to be understood as an affirmation of the necessity that any _other_ predicate of any sort should be _added_ to the predicate of existence, nor even that _all the others possible_ should be added to it. In the first case, we shall always have an unjustifiable duality of predicates: that of existence and that necessary for essentializing and completing the judgment; in the second, duality would certainly be avoided, since to constitute the judgment all the predicates would be necessary, without their distinction into a double order, and all would be qualitative predicates; but there would remain the idea of a successive addition of predicates. Granted this idea, it is impossible ever to understand what those acts would be, by which the first, or also the second, or also the third predicate, and so on, should be attributed, without yet attaining in such attributions the full totality of truth. They are representations no longer; and not yet judgments: they are then something insufficient and one-sided, whose existence could not be admitted save arbitrarily (as in Psychology), and which, therefore, would be inadmissible in Philosophy. It therefore only remains to conclude that in the judgment, all possible predicates are _given in one act_ alone; that is, that the subject is predicated as existence, and for this very reason determined in a particular way; determined in a particular way, and for this very reason, as existence.

In other words, the concept which is predicated in the individual judgment is not and cannot be a fœtus or a sketch of a concept; but is the whole concept, in its indivisible unity, as universal, particular and singular. And if existence seem to be a first predicate, the reason lies perhaps in this, that the concept of existence as actuality and action, and in its distinction from mere possibility, is perhaps the fundamental concept of the real, although on the other hand it is not truly thinkable save as determined in the particular forms of reality; hence that first predicate is first only in so far as it contains the last, that is to say, is neither last nor first, but the whole. To explain these statements is in any case, as has been said, the task of the whole of Philosophy, not of Logic alone, which here, as elsewhere, must rest satisfied with demonstrating the point that most closely concerns it; that is to say, the impossibility of separating from one another in the judgment, the predicates necessary for the determination of the reality of the fact, the absence of any one of which renders the judgment itself impossible.

[Footnote 1: See the _Philosophy of the Practical,_ pt. i. sect. ii. ch. 6.]