[Sidenote: _Erroneous distinction of individual judgments as of fact and of value._]
On the other hand, it would be erroneous to divide individual judgments, as has often been attempted, into judgments of _fact_ and judgments of _value,_ claiming that the judgment, "Peter is a man," is of a different nature from: "Peter is good." Every judgment of fact, in so far as it attributes a predicate to a subject, gives to it a value, declaring it to participate in the universal or in a determination of the universal. And conversely, every judgment of value, in so far as it attributes a value, cannot attribute other than the universal or a determination of the universal, since outside the universal there is no value. Even judgments of negative form, such as: "Peter is not good," or "is not-good," or: "Peter is bad," are attributes of universality and of value; because, as we know, theoretically they do not affirm anything other than that Peter has a spiritual determination different from goodness (for example, that he is utilitarian, not yet moral). Certainly, in judgments such as these which we have selected as examples, there is mingled (this too has been noted; and at this point it suffices to recall it) the expression of an _ought to be,_ which, in this case, is revealed in the negative formula adopted; but the expression of an ought to be or of a desire is not a judgment either of fact or of value; indeed, it is not a judgment at all; it is a mere proposition, a logos semanticos, not apophanticos, an optative or desiderative formula, a _lyricism_ of the spirit directed to the future.[1]
[Sidenote: _The individual judgment as ultimate and perfect form of knowledge._]
There is no other cognitive fact to know, beyond perception or individual judgment. In this, the ultimate and the most perfect of cognitive facts, the circle of knowledge is completed. Obscure sensibility, having become clear intuition, and then having made itself thought of the universal, in the individual judgment is logically thought, and is, henceforward, knowledge of fact or of event, that is, of effectual reality. The individual judgment, or perception, is fully adequate to reality.
[Sidenote: _Error of treating it as the first fact of knowledge._]