BODY AND PRACTICE IN KANT

103
The basic question still remains, however. What are the
concepts/rules of the understanding? And what is the understanding
itself? In pursuing these questions further, I shall now turn to some
passages in which Kant discusses the understanding and its rules in the
context of the human life-world. The term ‘life-world’ is here used to
characterize everything in our lives as human beings that belongs to our
everyday existence as embodied agents taking part in the standard
practices of everyday life as well as the more specialized procedures of
various professions. The term will also be used to characterize a certain
perspective under which the world is observed when these aspects are
included. This life-world perspective may be contrasted with the more
abstract perspective of scientific and philosophical theories, in which
what is irrelevant to the theories has been abstracted away.
Characteristic of (parts of) the Anthropology, and also of the other texts
examined in this chapter, is the discussion of human rationality from
what I have here called the life-world perspective.
A somewhat exotic, but still, I think, illustrative example, is the
following, in which the three higher cognitive faculties are associated
with three social roles of a hierarchical society; reason with a general, the
power of judgment with an officer, and finally, the understanding with a
servant.
A domestic or civil servant who is under express orders needs only
understanding. An officer, who is given only the general rule for
discharging his duties and left to decide for himself what to do in
cases that come up, needs judgment. A general, who has to evaluate
all contingencies and think up the rule for them, must have reason. 67
It may be objected that this is simply an illustration and that the passage
does not contain any genuine theory. This is true, but I think the passage
can still be seen to contain some interesting suggestions on how to
understand Kant’s theory of the higher cognitive faculties. First, let us
note that the understanding is associated with the bottom of the social
hierarchy. It is placed at the ground level, where the manual labor is
done, labor carried out with the body, involving simple, but basic
practices essential to human life. Here, in the performance of these
embodied practices, is the place to look, so the passage suggests, if we are
to identify the defining characteristics of the understanding.
67 Ak VII: 198.
RATIONALITY AND EMBODIED PRACTICE