Adolf Reinach On the Theory of the Negative Judgment *

It is of the utmost importance to uncover an equivocation bearing on the term 'judgment', one which, as it seems to me, makes itself felt in the form of confusions in very many logical contexts. On the one hand one understands by 'judgment' what one tends otherwise to characterise as 'conviction', 'certainty', 'belief, also as 'consciousness of validity'. On the other hand one means by this term also 'affirmation' or 'assertion'. Now certainly conviction and assertion stand in close relation to each other, but they are by no means identical. And whilst there is no doubt that one may well use' judgment' to designate both, for this very reason one must then emphasise much more carefully the fact that the two delineate in quite different ways two wholly heterogeneous logical spheres, and that they thereby divide the total field of the theory of judgment into two neighbouring but absolutely separate sub-fields. This must now be shown in more detail. We must separate the two just-mentioned concepts of judgment and at the same time distinguish them from other related formations with which they may be, and indeed have been in the past, confused.