Kant's Analytic Judgments and the Traditional Theory of Concepts

Kant's AnalyticJudgments and the Traditional Theory of Concepts WILLEM R. DEJONG 1. THE COMMON INTERPRETATION OF ANALYTICITY IN KANT HINTIKKA'S STUDIES ON KANT and the notion of analyticity are well known today. Kant was the first to apply the distinction between analytic and synthetic to judgments or propositions. This application marks the beginning of an important and still continuing philosophical discussion. In his "An Analysis of Analyticity" Hintikka argues that recent discussion on this topic is dominated by a rather broad sense of analyticity: "... a sentence is analytically true if and only if its truth can be established by the sole means of conceptual analysis, without recourse to experience."' Perhaps it is objected that most recent attempts to define the notion of analyticity do not refer to something like the analysis of concepts; instead one appeals, for instance, to the meaning or definition of the terms contained in a sentence. But according to Hintikka these are only modern (semantical) variants of the broad sense of analyticity as conceptual truth.' In the present context it is especially important to observe that many interpreters have claimed that Kant's notion of analytic judgment has to be interpreted or should be clarified in the light of this sense of analyticity. A fellowship of the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the humanities and social sciences(NIAS) in Wassenaar (The Netherlands) during the academic year 1992/93afforded me the very appreciated opportunity to complete thisarticle. ~J. Hintikka, Logic,Language-Gamesand Information:Kantian Themesin the Philosophyof Logic (henceforth: Logic)(Oxford, 1973), 126. "Cf. I. Hacking, Why DoesLanguage Matter to Philosophy?(Cambridge, 1975). In this study Hacking argues plausibly that the role of interface between the knowing subject and reality which in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century philosophy ("the heyday of ideas") belonged to ideas or concepts was superseded in the first half of the present century ("the heyday of meanings") by meanings. [613] 614 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 33:4 OCTOBER ~995 Frege's reading of Kant serves as a model for such an approach.3 In this century the interpretation of Kant's analytic judgments as conceptual truths has been accepted widely. It is found especially in philosophers of an analytic stamp. To substantiate this I have only to refer to a few major names: Ayer, Quine, and Putnam.4 The same line of interpretation is also found in the works of many Kant scholars; see for instance the studies of Bennett, Brittan, and Walker. Walker, for one, is very explicit in stating that "the familiar modern account of an analytic statement" is "a clarification of Kant's and not a departure from it. And it has the advantage of making clear that the truth of an analytic statement like 'All bachelors are unmarried' depends on two factors : the meanings of the words 'bachelor' and 'unmarried' on the one hand, and on the other hand the laws of logic."5 And indeed, one has to admit that there seem to be strong reasons pleading in favor of a reading of Kant according to this sense of analyticity. For Kant in commenting on his own notion of analyticity stresses two things in particular. First, the analyticity of a judgment depends on the relation of the concepts concerned (A 6-7/B 1o).6 And secG . Frege, Die Grundlagen der Arithmetik (Hildesheim, 196t [1884]), 3-5, 99-to x. According to Frege a truth is analytic if and only if it can be proved from (general) logical laws and definitions alone. 4 A.J. Ayer, Language, Truth andLogic, 2d ed. (London, 1967 [1943]), 77-79. W. V. Quine, "Two Dogmas of Empiricism," in From a Logical Point of View (New York, 1961 [1953]), 2O--2t. H. Putnam, " 'Two Dogmas' Revisited,"in Realism and Reason: PhilosophicalPapers, Vol. 3 (Cambridge, 1985), 87. 5R. C. S. Walker, Kant (London, 1978), 24. See also J. Bennett, Kant's Analytic (Cambridge, t966), 6; G. G. Brittan, Jr., Kant's Theory of Science (Princeton, 1978), t6. 6The Kritik der reinen Vernunft will be cited in the customary way with references to the pagination of the first (A) and/or second (B) printing. References to Kant's other works are...