The Cardinal Differences Within the Field of Meaning>

Abstract

Up until now I have aimed at a systematic combination of simple and compound judgment-configurations, whose differences were purely determined by matter, namely, in such a way that any drawing in of concepts through contrasting matter and quality and the different modifications that the quality can undergo within each genus (such as judgment, presumption) was still to be avoided. Only once have I of necessity violated this principle, namely, in order not to have to separate existential judgments as judgments of being from their equivalents in the domain of particular and universal judgments. Likewise, I have also barred all complications and modifications that arise when concepts are drawn in that have arisen in reflecting upon the matter or upon the whole configurations and such, therefore, concepts such as “proposition”, “presentation”, and so all purely logical concepts. The first transformations, however, are especially of great importance and to some extent hard to clarify. And they are those that can be called modal distinctions in the concise sense. Historical logic presents a heading “modality”, and it is handled so unclearly that it includes the forms interesting us here. Kant arbitrarily grouped judgments into four groups from the standpoint of quality, quantity, relation, and modality, something which again gives rise to a false idea of equivalent treatment that is in no way present.