BODY AND PRACTICE IN KANT

RATIONALITY AND EMBODIED PRACTICE
105
The exercise of our own powers also takes place according to certain
rules which we first follow without being conscious of them, until we
gradually come to cognize them through experiments and long use of
our powers, and finally make them so familiar to us that it costs us
great effort to think them in abstraction Thus, for example, general
grammar is the form of a language as such. One also speaks,
however, without knowing grammar, and he who speaks without
knowing it actually does have a grammar and speaks according to
rules, even though he is not conscious of them. 68
Let us take a closer look at the passage and what it implies. The example
chosen is grammar [allgemeine Grammatik] which is, according to Kant,
the set of rules according to which we speak when we master a language.
Now, he stresses, a person may very well master a language without
being conscious of the rules according to which he speaks. However, he
still has a grammar. As a grammar is a set of rules, this is equivalent to
saying that the person possesses a set of rules even if not conscious of
having them.
What general theory may be derived from this example? First, we
may notice that speaking a language is an activity taking place according
to a set of rules, i.e. the rules of grammar. Thus, it counts as an example
of what Kant defines as a practice. 69
As speaking a language is something
we perform as embodied agents, it may also be used as an example of an
embodied practice. The general theory derived from this example may
therefore be stated like this: a person may possess a rule solely through
the successful performance of a certain embodied practice. The person
does not have to be conscious of the fact that she acts according to a rule.
She still possesses it. Above I argued that ‘rule’ and ‘concept’ are
convergent or even equivalent terms in Kant’s terminology. Thus, the
point just made may also be expressed by saying that a person may
possess a concept solely through the successful performance of an
embodied practice.
We may also notice that in the above passage Kant seems to be
operating at two levels. First we have the level where a person possesses a
rule/concept solely through the performance of a certain embodied
practice. Then we have the second level where the person has also
learned to think of these rules/concepts abstractly [in abstracto zu
denken]. Kant does not specify the process taking us from the first to the
second level, except that it requires experiments [Versuche] and hard
68
Ak IX: 503.
69
It also has an end, i.e. communication.