Book II - Analytic of principles

Summary

General logic is constructed on a plan that corresponds quite precisely with the division of the higher faculties of cognition. These are: understanding, the power of judgment, and reason. In its analytic that doctrine accordingly deals with concepts, judgments, and inferences, corresponding exactly to the functions and the order of those powers of mind, which are comprehended under the broad designation of understanding in general.

Since merely formal logic, so conceived, abstracts from all content of cognition (whether it be pure or empirical), and concerns itself merely with the form of thinking (of discursive cognition) in general, it can also include in its analytical part the canon for reason, the form of which has its secure precept, into which there can be apriori insight through mere analysis of the actions of reason into their moments, without taking into consideration the particular nature of the cognition about which it is employed.

Transcendental logic, since it is limited to a determinate content, namely that of pure a priori cognitions alone, cannot imitate general logic in this division. For it turns out that the transcendental use of reason is not objectively valid at all, thus does not belong to the logic of truth, i.e., the analytic, but rather, as a logic of illusion, requires a special part of the scholastic edifice, under the name of the transcendental dialectic.