The Canonical Form of Judgment

A Commentary on the Phenomenology of Spirit

Introduction

1. The Canonical Form of judgment is S is F.

e.g. "The sky is blue", "The cube is red", etc.

Wittgenstein calls this a Fact (Tatsache). "Die Welt ist die Gesamtheit der Tatsachen, nicht der Dinge."

2. Theoretical Philosophy is the analysis of the Canonical Form. Practical Philosophy is the employment of the Canonical Form.

The Canonical Form consists of the combination of a subject (S) and predicate (F).

Frege calls the subject the "object", the predicate the "concept".

e.g. "The apple is red". We predicate the concept "red" of the object, the "apple".

e.g. "This is red". The object is a "This", Hegel's "Thing."

We employ the Canonical Form when we expand S is F to say "I think (S is F)", "She thinks (S is F)", "We think (S is F)". This is practical philosophy. Practical philosophy is self-conscious and inter-subjective.

3. The distinction between Theoretical Philosophy and Practical Philosophy is only a heuristic.

The logical connectives & ("AND") and ¬ ("NOT") demonstrate the unity of practical and theoretical philosophy.

Kimhi says: "logically compound assertions such as p → q are acts of identifying our consciousness as agreeing or disagreeing with the combination (and their negations) displayed by the subordinate judgments."

The canonical form of judgment S is F can be expressed in its employment as p.

Kimhi calls ¬p an "operation" on the "subdordinate judgment" p. In the judgment ¬p, p is "displayed", while ¬p is what is asserted.

¬p says "I disagree with p". p says "I agree with p".

Kimhi says: "The judgment p & q is an identification of consciousness as containing both p and q, and so as disagreeing with any combination of judgments that contains ­either not-­p or not-­q."

The logical expansion of the simple judgment p into I think p and I disagree with ¬p demonstrates that Theoretical Philosophy and Practical Philosophy unite in the canonical form of judgment. Theoretical philosophy is concerned with the parts and unity of p, the parts and unity of S is F. Practical philosophy is concerned with the expansion of p.

Theoretical Philosophy

The first three chapters of the Phenomenology of Spirit are devoted to theoretical philosophy.

Hegel constructs the Canonical Form of Judgment S is F as follows:

  1. Sense Certainty: We are introduced to F.
  2. Perception: We are introduced to S.
  3. Force and Understanding: We are introduced to S is F = p.

Sense Certainty

We begin in the here and now, "Itzt" and "Hier", hic et nunc.

We begin with a name, "night", "Nacht": "Das Itzt ist die Nacht".

We name the here and now "night".

Frege would say: we employ the "concept" "night."

Kant calls this the "Subsumtionen eines Gegenstandes unter einen Begriff".

The "object" is the "now", the concept is "night".

"Das Itzt ist die Nacht" follows the canonical form S is F.

Naming is an employment of language. Hegel calls language "das Allgemeine" (the universal).

In naming that which is here and now, we connect language to that which is given in intuition, to that which is sensuously present.

This is an example of what Kimhi calls "the logical-sensible unity of language".

Hegel says of naming: "Als ein Allgemeines sprechen wir auch das Sinnliche aus..."

I find myself in the here and now. That which is here and now is "das Sinnliche".

It is nighttime where I find myself. I name the here and now "night". I employ language, "the universal" to name my sensuous reality.

Walter Benjamin says of naming: "Gottes Schöpfung vollendet sich, indem die Dinge ihren Namen vom Menschen erhalten, aus dem im Namen die Sprache allein spricht." In this first act of naming, everything else in language is also given. Language, in humams, (already) speaks in the name.

Perception

In naming that which is present before us, we have not yet exhaustively described, in language, our experience.

"It is night", but it is also many other things.

"Die unmittelbare Gewißheit nimmt sich nicht das Wahre, denn ihre Wahrheit ist das Allgemeine, sie aber will das Diese nehmen."

My thruth is the universal. My truth is "night", "It is night." But "It", this is also many other things.

S is night. Is S only night? Of course not! S is many other things.

As long as S is the here and now, S is the sum total of my sensuous experience, that which Kant calls the "manifold of intuition".

Let us narrow down the here and now. Let us chose a simpler S, a single grain of salt: "Dies Salz ist einfaches Hier".

Let us now see if we can capture, in langauge, the this, the here and now on which I train my focus. As before, we are strictly here to canonical judgments of the form S is F:

  • Here is a grain of salt.
  • The salt is white.
  • The salt is sharp.
  • The salt is cubic.
  • etc.

Have we exhaustively captured the this, the grain of salt I see before me?

  • "Here is a grain of salt". True, by I am not refering to any grain of salt. I am referring to this grain of salt, here.
  • "This salt is white". True, but it more than simply white. It is this particular white. It is these manifold hues of white that dance before my eyes.
  • etc.

The grain of salt is "der Punkt der Einzelheit in dem Medium des Bestehens in die Vielheit ausstrahlend."

  • "The point of singularity". The grain of salt is one, it is unity, a single point of reference, which we can designate as S.

  • "in dem Medium des Bestehens": The grain of salt is a sensuous unity. It holds countless attributes: that white there, this white here, that cubic shape, that sharp edge. "white", "sharp", "cubic" are exist "in the grain of salt". The grain of salt is a "medium" in which many different attributes coexhist.

  • "in die Vielheit ausstrahlend": From the single grain of salt, the S of S is F, the many attributes emanate out, like rays of the sun. The sun is the S in S of F, the "point of singularity". The rays are the propositions:

    • S is F1
    • S is F2
    • S is F3
    • etc.

S is an object. It is the bearer of properties.

The properties F1, F2 are conditional. They are conditional upon the sensuous experience which they name. An F is a "mit einem Gegensatze affizierte Allgemeinheit." The sensuous presense of white is the guarantor of our name white. The sensuous presence of white "handles", "treats" (afficere) the correct employment of its name. It honors the name "white" as the linguistic truth of its sensuous presence.

S of S is F is not conditional upon any single property Fn. S, as the bearer of any one of the many F's, stands above any particular F, any particlar sensuous experience we could name.

S is "die unbedingte absolute Allgemeinheit".

  • S is unconditional because not conditioned by sensibility.
  • S is absolute, because it exists in itself (an sich). It is the invisible point from which emanate the many jugments S is Fn.
    • S, the This, only makes itself known through its attributes, Fn.
    • The F is the mask, the appearance, the S is the thing behind the mask, the Ding an sich. S is the invisible bearer of the visible Fn
  • S is universality (Allgemeinheit) because it is linguistic. It is the grammatical subject of the canonical form of judgment S is F.

Force and Understanding

[To be continued...]