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I will not concern myself here with the question of whether Kant was influenced by the medieval distinction between formal and material consequence. Despite the virtual disap- pearance of medieval logic in the wake of the Humanists’ critiques (see Ashworth 1982, Normore 1993), Kant may have been familiar with some versions of the medieval distinc- tion. But he never discusses the medievals in connection with his delineation of logic, nor does he accord them much importance in any of the capsule histories of logic in the lectures (see section 4.3.3, below). This would be inexplicable if he took the idea that logic (or an important branch thereof) is distinctively formal from scholastic sources.

Indeed, it is a long way from the characterization of formal consequence one finds in, say, Buridan, to the Kantian notion of formality as abstraction from all content.47 Formal an object, and truth is, for Kant, agreement of knowledge with its object (A58/B82). Logic alone can never determine whether a concept determines an object. This is why Kant allows analytic propositions in mathematics “only because they can be exhibited in intuition” (B17). See Beck 1955 for a useful contrast of Kant’s views on analyticity with those of the Leibnizians.

consequences, as Buridan understands them, hold for all uniform substitutions ofcategore- matic terms, but they are not indifferent to changes in the syncategorematic terms. In appendix A, I suggest that an argument from the schematic formality of the syllogism to its 3-formality can be found in Abelard. But Abelard’s argument presupposes character- istically medieval views about ontology. Abelard can reject the view that the validity of syllogisms depends on “the nature of things” only because he does not think that facts of the form

A, B, and C stand in the relation Q, or

not both:{(all A are B and all B are C) and not (all A are C) }, or even for all A, B, and C: A, B, and C stand in the relation Q,

can be facts about “the nature of things.” Kant does not share this supposition: he takes seriously the fact that the laws of Newtonian physics cannot be forced into the mold of substance-attribute predications but essentially involve relations between multiple entities.48 The “nature of things (that is, of things as appearances)” (KrV:A228/B281) is a relational nexus. So Kant cannot use Abelard’s argument to show that syllogistic validity does not depend on facts about objects in the world.49 Even if (as seems unlikely) Kant got his hylomorphic terminology from the medievals, his motivation and articulation of the idea that logic is distinctively formal would have to be counted as wholly novel.

A more promising medieval antecedent for Kant’s logical hylomorphism would be the widely-held scholastic view that logic is distinguished from metaphysics by its concern with second intentions: that is, with “beings of reason”—e.g., genus, species, subject, predicate, syllogism—which are not found in “the nature of things” but contrived by reason

48_{See the Introduction to Friedman 1992 for an account of how Kant’s departures from Leib-}

nizianism were motivated by a desire to take Newtonian physics seriously. “For Leibniz and Wolff space is ideal because relations between substances are ideal. . . . For Kant, by contrast, relations of interaction between substances are in no way ideal: a universal principle of mutual interaction is a distinct reality over and above the mere existence of substances. . . ” (7-8).

49_{I suggest in appendix A that Abelard’s argument has the (perhaps unintended) consequence}

that a “relational syllogism” like “A is to the east of B; B is to the east of C; therefore, A is to the east of C” is, like categorical syllogisms, good in virtue of its structure or form. But Kant would certainly not regard this inference as formally valid, since its validity depends on the structure of space.

in considering things (Bochenski 1956:26.04-26.08, Schmidt 1966:53, 306-8). Sir William Hamilton found this view to be a mere “variant” on the view that logic is concerned with the form of thought, to the exclusion of its matter (1867:20; cf. Thomson 1860:24-5), and some modern Thomists have suggested that second intentions can be thought of as logical forms (Simmons 1961:63-4, Schmidt 1966:69-70). Flynn 1946 even suggests that “. . . Kant seems to have been quite confident that his own conception of Logic was the traditional one” (though he argues that in fact “it implies a notion of the nature of Logic which is contrary to Aristotelian and Thomistic teaching”).

However, there is no textual evidence that Kant’s delineation of logic was influenced by the scholastic view that logic concerns second intentions. If Kant were self-consciously returning to an earlier tradition, against the dominant current of modern philosophy, one would expect him to acknowledge this. Moreover, there are significant differences between the medieval second intentions and Kant’s forms of thought. As Schmidt 1966 argues,

. . . we must not conclude from the fact that logical intentions exist only in the mind that they are pure forms of the intellect without any content or that logic is “formal” in the sense that it takes no account of the things that are known. If the distinction were forced upon us we should have to say that for St. Thomas logic is rather “material” than “formal,” since it necessarily takes into account the natures of the things known. It is only because the nature of some thing is in the intellect that logical intentions of it are formed; and these, as accidents of the nature, can no more be considered without reference to their subject than a real accident can. (308)

While Kant’s logical forms are in some sense prior to real objects, Aquinas’s second inten- tions areposterior.50

50_{Cf. Flynn 1946: ”Second intentions are relations which are formed by the mind through com-}

parison of objects and which, therefore, have their foundations in first intentions—in known objects: ‘relationes quae attribuuntur ab intellectu rebus intellectis, prout sunt intellectae’, as St. Thomas explains. Since relations are known only through their foundations, it is impossible for any part of Logic to treat of forms which have no reference to what is now usually called the content of thought” (181).