negatively, as a non-sensible faculty of knowledge. Now since
without sensibility we cannot have any intuition, understand-
ing cannot be a faculty of intuition. But besides intuition there
is no other mode of knowledge except by means of concepts.
The knowledge yielded by understanding, or at least by the
human understanding, must therefore be by means of concepts,
and so is not intuitive, but discursive. Whereas all intuitions,
as sensible, rest on affections, concepts rest on functions. By
‘function’ I mean the unity of the act of bringing various repre-
sentations under one common representation. Concepts are
based on the spontaneity of thought, sensible intuitions on the
receptivity of impressions. Now the only use which the under-
standing can make of these concepts is to judge by means of
them. Since no representation, save when it is an intuition,
is in immediate relation to an object, no concept is ever
related to an object immediately, but to some other representa-
tion of it, be that other representation an intuition, or itself
a concept. Judgment is therefore the mediate knowledge of an
object, that is, the representation of a representation of it. In
every judgment there is a concept which holds of many repre-
sentations, and among them of a given representation that is
immediately related to an object. Thus in the judgment, ‘all
bodies are divisible’, the concept of the divisible applies to
various other concepts, but is here applied in particular to
the concept of body, and this concept again to certain appear-
ances that present themselves to us. These objects, therefore,
are mediately represented through the concept of divisibility.
Accordingly, all judgments are functions of unity among our
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representations; instead of an immediate representation, a
higher
representation, which comprises the immediate repre-
sentation and various others, is used in knowing the object,
and thereby much possible knowledge is collected into one.
Now we can reduce all acts of the understanding to judg-
ments, and the
understanding
may therefore be represented
as a
faculty of judgment
. For, as stated above, the under-
standing is a faculty of thought. Thought is knowledge by
means of concepts. But concepts, as predicates of possible
judgments, relate to some representation of a not
yet
deter-
mined object. Thus the concept of body means something, for
instance, metal, which can be known by means of that con-
cept. It is therefore a concept solely in virtue of its com-
prehending other representations, by means of which it can
relate to objects. It is therefore the predicate of a possible
judgment, for instance, ‘every metal is a body’. The functions
of the understanding can, therefore, be discovered if we can
give an exhaustive statement of the functions of unity in
judgments. That this can quite easily be done will be shown
in the next section.