Abstract

In both editions of the Critique of Pure Reason, and in the Prolegomena, the table of the logical functions of the understanding in judgments lists under “quantity of judgments”: universal, particular, and singular; and the table of categories lists under “categories of quantity”: unity, plurality, and totality. As Kant regarded the forms of judgments as giving “the clue” to the derivation of categories and held that the two lists are “in complete agreement”, one would conclude from the tables that the category of unity is derived from the universal form of judgment and the category of totality from the singular form. But this view of the derivations seems wrong. As a universal judgment pertains to all objects of a given sort and a singular judgment pertains to but one object, one would expect unity to be derived from the singular and totality from the universal form of judgment. That this second view of the derivations is what Kant really intended seems confirmed by the fact that at several places in his writings, including a passage in the Critique and one in the Prolegomena, when he is speaking of quantitative determinations, he explicitly associates the singular judgment with unity. But if this second view is what he intended, one wonders why he failed to correct the order in the tables in the Prolegomena and in the second edition of the Critique. Is this failure merely, as Jonathan Bennett has suggested, “a slip”?