BODY AND PRACTICE IN KANT

107
This is made explicit in what follows immediately after the above
passage when Kant discusses whether it is better to have students first
learn concepts abstractly, and then later have them learn the practice
[Gebrauch] corresponding to these concepts, or whether it is better to
combine the two. According to Kant, the latter is better.
The question is: should the abstract rules come first... […] or should
the rule and its application go along with each other? Only the latter
is advisable. 72
So far, nothing has been said about the actual practices to which the text
is referring. What kind of practices are they? A few pages later, Kant
discloses that the practices he has in mind involve, for instance, the
practice of speaking a language or making a map. The capacities of the
mind [Gemütskräfte] are best cultivated when the student does for
himself what is to be learned, he advises. For instance, when he learns a
rule of grammar, he should immediately also use it in speaking. And for a
student to understand what a map is, it is best for him to learn how to
make one.
The capacities of the mind are better cultivated when one does for
oneself what one wants to achieve, for instance, when one
immediately applies the rules of grammar that have been taught. One
understands a map better when one is capable of producing it oneself.
Production is the best aid of the understanding. One learns most
thoroughly and remembers best that which one learns by oneself. 73
At first sight it may, perhaps, not be evident that these passages are
relevant to Kant’s theory of rationality. However, if we try to identify
some of the assumptions on which the above didactic advice is founded,
we arrive, I think, at ideas similar to the one we found to be implied by
the passage from Logic considered earlier.
First, let us notice that in the above text, as in the Logic, Kant seems
to be giving a sort of priority to practice. However, while he gives a
number of reasons why it is profitable for students to learn to know
concepts in abstracto he also more than suggests that a topic cannot
really be learned if the students do not learn to master the practices
corresponding to the concepts. The capacities of the mind are best
cultivated when the student does for himself what is to be learned, he
72
Ak IX: 475, a.t.
73
Ak IX: 477, a.t.
RATIONALITY AND EMBODIED PRACTICE