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How did Kant distinguish analytic judgments from synthetic judgments?
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Immanuel Kant
German philosopher Immanuel Kant surrounded by Ouroboros, an emblematic serpent of ancient Egypt and Greece, engraving by John Chapman, published in London, 1812.
In his work The Critique of Pure Reason, Immanuel Kant distinguished between analytic and synthetic judgments based on the relationship between the subject and the predicate of a statement.1
- Analytic judgments: These are statements in which the predicate is already contained within the concept of the subject. For example, in the statement "All bachelors are unmarried," the concept of being unmarried is inherent in the definition of a bachelor. Their truth is determined by the meaning of the terms involved, and their denial would be self-contradictory.1234
- Synthetic judgments: These are statements in which the predicate is not contained within the essence or connotation of the subject. Instead, the predicate adds information to the subject that is not already implied by it. The truth of these statements generally depends on how they conform to the world rather than just the definitions of the words used.541
Kant further categorized these into types, including the notable "synthetic a priori" judgment, which provides new information about the world while remaining independent of experience.34