BODY AND PRACTICE IN KANT

124
according to which a concept is defined by its marks. These marks,
moreover, may be understood as referring to the common properties of a
class of objects.
This notion of a concept, along with Kant’s suggestions that concepts
may be analyzed through acts of introspection, seems to point to a
mentalist conception of concepts according to which concepts exist and
are handled on the mental level. And perhaps Kant at some point or at
some level does espouse such a conception. However, the idea that this is
his general theory of concepts is challenged not only by the passages
discussed earlier in this chapter, but also by a number of passages in
which conceptual thinking is claimed to presuppose linguistic behavior.
In the Anthropology, he contends that spoken language is the best
medium for communicating thoughts:
Hearing is one of the senses of merely mediate perception. Through
and by means of the air that surrounds us, we can know far distant
objects. And it is by this medium, when it is put in motion by the
vocal organ, the mouth, that we can most readily and fully share in
one another’s thoughts and sensations, especially when the sounds we
make to others are articulated and, being combined by understanding
according to laws, form a language. 109
He then continues by claiming that a person who is born deaf and unable
to learn to speak will arrive at something only imperfectly similar to
reason [Vernunft].
So a man who, because he was deaf from birth, must also remain
dumb (without speech) can never achieve more than an analogue of
reason. 110
Later in the same text, this idea is expressed even more pointedly:
109 Ak VII: 155.
110 Ak VII: 155.
RATIONALITY AND EMBODIED PRACTICE