Synthesis, Judgment and the Categories of Quantity

An interpretative question Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason raises, is how we should understand the relationship between the categories and the socalled ‘logical forms of judgment’ Kant deduces them from. In her Kant and the Capacity to Judge, Béatrice Longuenesse provides an answer to this question. In this thesis, I evaluate Longuenesse’s account by considering its application to a specific group of categories: the categories of Quantity. I argue that for these categories, Longuenesse’s account is problematic. The same, however, holds for a possible alternative analysis of the categories of Quantity: Manley Thompson’s (1989) analysis. I show that Longuenesse and Thompson have both built their analyses on an untenable conception of the role of the categories of Quantity. The relationship between the categories and the logical forms of Quantity seems to be more arbitrary than Longuenesse, Thompson and others have argued.