ABSTRACT
The judgment is the central core of all human thinking. What is a judgment? One traditional answer, which goes back to Aristotle, is that judgments are combinations of concepts. 1 That is about as correct and as valuable as saying ‘ a house ’ is a combination of stones. Any builder will answer that, first, there are houses which are not made of stone, and secondly, not all combinations of stones are houses. A more modern theory, which is still being worked out, is connected with the names Hume, Brentano, Stumpf, Meinong, Husserl and B. Erdmann. This seeks the explanation as to the nature of the judgment elsewhere. First, the difference between a judgment and a conception is that its object is a relation and not anything individual. Or, expressed differently, the subject matter of a judgment is formulated in language by a ‘ that ’-sentence: that twice two makes four, that God exists, that there is thunder, that there is historical justice, or, as we might say in general, ‘ that this or that is the case.’ It is always this kind of statement with which judgments are concerned.
