BODY AND PRACTICE IN KANT

101
corresponding to this new model, ‘understanding’ is used in a more
limited sense than before, referring to the lowest level of the threefold
hierarchy only. Reason [Vernunft] is the term associated with the highest
level, while at the intermediate level we find what he calls the power of
judgment [Urteilskraft].
But we also take the word ‘understanding’ in a particular sense,
namely, when we subordinate it to understanding in the general
sense, as one member of a division that has two other members. In
this case the higher cognitive power (considered materially - that is,
not merely in itself but with respect to knowledge of objects) consists
in understanding, judgment [Urteilskraft] and reason [Vernunft]. 61
Now, how are we to characterize the understanding, considered in this
new and more limited sense? In an explanatory passage Kant defines this
understanding as ‘the faculty of rules’ [Vermögen der Regeln]. 62 The
power of judgment is defined as the capacity to identify the particular
insofar as it falls under a rule. Reason, finally, is defined as the capacity
to deduce the particular from the general so that it is seen as conforming
to a principle, and necessarily so.
Now if understanding is the power of rules [Vermögen der Regeln],
and judgment the power of discovering the particular insofar as it is
an instance of these rules, reason is the power of deriving the
particular from the universal and so representing it according to
principles and as necessary. 63
This passage may be criticized for not being too clear in explaining what
distinguishes the three higher cognitive faculties. To say that the
understanding is a capacity for rules may not seem very illuminating.
What is meant here by rules, and in what way is the understanding their
capacity? And what is the distinction between the power of judgment and
reason? Here they are both associated with a movement from the general
to the particular. So what is the difference between them? We need,
obviously, to inquire further into the text.
61
Ak VII: 196-7.
62
Ak VII: 199.
63
Ak VII: 199.
RATIONALITY AND EMBODIED PRACTICE