BODY AND PRACTICE IN KANT

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with actual problems. Even if the theory prescribed ways of handling the
problem, she would not be able to use these prescriptions in practice
If this is so, then the above passages may be seen as expressing views
very similar to the ones identified above, for instance in the didactic
advice given in On pedagogy, that there is no use in teaching students
abstract concepts if they do not also learn how to apply them; i.e.
students should do for themselves in practice what is to be learned. The
above passages may also be seen as implying the two-level model
suggested there, according to which conceptual knowledge may be
present in two ways. First we have the level where a person knows how to
apply a concept in practice, then we have the second level where the
person possesses the concept in abstracto. Finally, Kant may in the above
passages, as in On pedagogy, be seen to express the idea that the second
kind of concept possession is of no use if it is not also converted into
practice.
Seen in the context of this interpretation, however, there is one way
in which these passages are confusing. Above we identified the
understanding as the human capacity that makes it possible to partake in
embodied practices. Now, the understanding seems to be ascribed a
much more limited function. The understanding, so Kant suggests, is a
faculty that is only able to deal with concepts in a superficial way through
memorizing them. The capacity involved in the practical employment of
these concepts is the power of judgment. If this is so, then our previous
interpretation is challenged. How are we to meet this challenge?
The best way, I think, is by noting that Kant’s use of ‘understanding’
and ‘power of judgment’ is far from unambiguous. One possible source
of ambiguity is found in the fact that ‘understanding’ is used in two
senses. Sometimes it is used to denote the higher cognitive faculty in
general, but at other times it is used to denote only the lower member of
this faculty. 84 This, again, opens up an ambiguity in our description of the
relation between the understanding and the power of judgment. In one
respect they are distinct members of the general intellectual faculty, but
when ‘understanding’ is used in its general sense, then the power of
judgment is more properly described as a part or modus of the
understanding. If this lays the ground for a certain interpretative
confusion, then this is further increased by passages in which the two
terms seems to converge in meaning.
84
Ak VII: 196-7.
RATIONALITY AND EMBODIED PRACTICE