If at the previous stage consciousness merely abstracted emptier and emptier concepts from its perceptions and representations, now, according to Fichte, it is meant to connect these abstractions to something more concrete, like when we say that a concrete rose we perceive is or falls under the abstraction of colour red. In a manner first suggested by Hegel, Fichte goes through a progression of different forms of judgement, which outwardly resemble parts in Kantian 3 times 4 -classification of judgements: only outwardly, since the Kantian classification is meant to be read as every judgement having four dimensions with three possible characteristics, while with Hegel and Fichte the twelve forms are all distinct from one another.
Although Fichte appears to follow the same route as Hegel, there is the clear difference that Hegel relates the different modes of judgement to ontological categories, which is something that Fichte cannot do, since he hasn’t yet developed these categories. This creates some differences in their accounts, the most obvious being that Fichte picks different titles for his groups of judgements. More subtle difference is that the development of Fichtean judgement, unlike Hegel’s, does not involve more and more complex properties of things, but instead, more and more delicate knowledge that we have of things.
Judgements, Fichte begins, like everything else in consciousness, start developing from what is immediately given. In other words, the first type of judgement starts from some immediately given and contingent individual or subject and points out an equally contingent given property or predicate of it: fruit is ripe. Such judgement, which Fichte calls positive, has an air of contingency: fruit might not be ripe tomorrow. Thus, like everything contingent, positive judgement is variable and changes into its opposite: a contingent individual has a contingent property, but might as well have a different one. Fiche also notes that a positive judgement has a particular predicate, which cancels others. In conclusion, positive judgement is always bound to some negative judgement.
Negative judgement as a mere inversion of positive judgement, Fichte suggests, makes even more poignantly explicit the contingency of affirmative predicating: fruit was ripe, but now is not. Just like positive judgement implicitly contains negative judgement, similarly negative judgement always contains implicitly a positive judgement. In other word, when negative judgement negates a determined predicate, it still presupposes a sphere of possible determinations of which the subject has one: rose is not red means that it does not have this specific colour, but must have the more general concept of being coloured.
The notions of positive and negative judgements are thus separated just contextually, since a positive judgement implies a negative judgement and vice versa. Fichte points out that we could try to form negative judgements that did not imply anything positive: examples of such infinite judgements include statements like “stone is not happy”, where the predicate has no discernible relation to the subject: saying that stone is not happy says really nothing, since stones are not things that even could be happy. Similarly, Fichte says, we could make a very abstract affirmation that e.g. a stone is – a stone – in other words, an identical judgement, which doesn't deny anything. Neither of these types of judgements, according to Fichte, are real judgements, because they do not literally say anything.
The result Fichte wants us to learn is that finding a mere contingent predicate of an individual subject is not that satisfying. The next task is then to find a predicate that belongs to more than one individual. The former positive and negative judgements, Fichte says, can now be called singular judgements, meaning just that we are conscious of the need to find more than this individual having the predicate in question.
We should then find several individuals having a certain property, which brings us to what is called a particular judgement. Such a judgement, Fichte insists, cannot refer to a completely contingent property any more, but approaches a universal judgement, where all individuals of a certain kind share some predicate: “all bodies are heavy” designates a property based on the essence of the concept of body. Yet, Fichte notes, we have the problem that we can never really go through all individuals, since there is at least a potential infinity of individuals and all of them can never be accounted for.
If we are then to have true universal judgements, Fichte suggests, we cannot base them on empirical collecting of all individuals, but on internal universality of concept: all bodies are heavy, only if it lies in the nature of the body to be heavy. Making this change, the subject is not anymore an individual or even a collection of individuals, but a determined genus, and the predicate expresses a property belonging to subject as this concept, while the connecting “is” or copula expresses an internal link and unity of the subject and the predicate or their a priori synthesis.This is categorical judgement, where thinking of concept A posits thinking of concept B.
The conceptual connection is still left implicit in categorical judgement, Fichte remarks, since the statement is expressed in the same form as in previous judgements. The dependence of the two concepts is highlighted in a hypothetical judgement: if A is, B is also (or if A is not, B is not; if A is, B is not etc.). A hypothetical judgement does not indicate whether A or B is, just the absolute combination or synthesis in thought that existence or non-existence of B follows from the (hypothetical) existence or non-existence of A. Here thinking has vindicated the power to posit being of something from being of another or deduce immediately one from the other, Fichte thinks: because A and B are internally one in thought, they are posited as one in being so that certainty of the being of one makes the being of the other immediately certain, which Fichte indicates as the principle of all a priori synthesis.
In Fichte’s opinion, both categorical and hypothetical judgement highlight only one predicate or consequence of the subject, although it should contain more possible predicates. This richness of connections is expressed in a disjunctive judgement: A is either B or C, where the form “either-or” presupposes that all connections contained in A are expressed and no alternative is left out. Disjunctive judgement presents then exclusive opposites that are united in completing the whole subject: in other words, they exclude not just one another, but also any other option.
Fichte notes that the disjunction can be expressed in the “either-or” form, but also in the “both-and” form. He means that the extension of the subject of disjunctive judgement comprehends the extension of both alternative predicates. In this sense, the subject is a unity behind the opposites, although it is determined as neither of them: in Schellingian and Hegelian terms, it is the indifference or identity of opposites. Yet, Fichte adds, saying “A is both B and C”, is not literally true, since the subject could not be determined as both sides of the disjunction. The indifference or unity that the subject is, Fichte concludes, is then just the possibility that A could be B as well as C. We have thus arrived at a problematic judgement.
In a problematic judgement “A can be B or C”, we are left with an abstract possibility, where the subject and therefore also the predicate is left undetermined. The next step, Fichte thinks, is then to determine the subject, leading us to an assertoric judgement: A as determined in this manner is B. Here the differentiating characteristic, in comparison with e.g. categorical judgement is that the judgement is based on the very constitution of the subject. Furthermore, an assertoric judgement expresses also a progression of thought from mere possibility and indeterminateness to determinateness. In other words, Fichte suggests, true assertoric judgement is always related to a previous problemitisation.
Fichte admits that an assertoric judgement contains something more than what the form of the judgement shows, because its predicate is not just contingently actual, but necessitated by the constitution of the subject. On basis of an assertoric judgement is then always an apodictic truth: A as x is necessarily B. In other words, the very character of A to be x is the very ground of its being B. This form of judgement is, according to Fichte, the goal of the whole development of judgements, since in apodictic judgement to a determined concept because of its determinacy is linked another concept as absolute and universally valid. Here individual and concrete, Fichte says, has lost its independent and contingent existence and is now understood as an expression of universal: an apodictic judgement “person or action of certain nature is necessarily virtuous” shows that virtue is embodied by individual persons and actions of certain kind.
At the same time, Fichte adds, an apodictic judgement is already something more than just a judgement. While a judgement in general relates something concrete to a universal concept, in apodictic judgement the concrete side of the equation has been divided into a concrete individual (e.g. action) and its determined characteristic (the nature of the action), which then connects the individual to a higher universal (virtuous). Such a three-membered relation, Fichte continues, is deduction, the topic of the next post.
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