BODY AND PRACTICE IN KANT

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and his refutation of the three traditional proofs of God. There is a
similarity in structure between the arguments raised against these ideas in
those early texts and the ones found in the Transcendental Dialectic of
the Critique, he argues. He also notes that at an early stage Kant was
putting forward the idea that mathematics is a synthetic discipline.
Hartmut und Gernot Böhme, pointing at the fact that Kant’s critical
perspective involves a reflection on the relation between our cognitive
powers and the objects of our experience, maintain that such a
perspective is present already in 1766 in Dreams of a spirit-seer. 7
Kaulbach recognizes a critical attitude as early as 1747 in Kant’s first
publication. Kant here critically distinguishes between Erkenntniszielen,
Kaulbach claims, and by doing this anticipates the critical examinations
of the Critique. 8 As we have seen in an earlier chapter, Rossvær also
contends that Kant’s Copernican perspective is first advanced in
Directions in space from 1768. 9
Such examples all serve to undermine the idea of an absolute dividing
line between the critical project of the 1770s and 1780s and the
preceding period. On a general level this point has also been put forward
by Schönfeld who contends that there is more continuity in Kant’s
philosophizing than appears at first sight. Contrary to what Kant himself
claims in the Critique, 10 Schönfeld argues, the inception of the critical
philosophy was not an abrupt conceptual breakthrough, but rather a
series of incremental steps that began with Kant’s growing
disenchantment with the pre-critical project in the 1760s. 11 Scott-Taggart
denounces the contrast between Kant’s pre-critical and critical views as
‘an exegetical fiction’. 12
Even if I shall not evaluate these various claims about continuity in
detail here, I am generally sympathetic towards the idea that there is a
continuity in Kant’s intellectual development in the way that ideas and
perspectives central to the Critique are found in texts published both
before and after it. I am also sympathetic towards those who argue that
our understanding of the Critique is enhanced by interpreting it in the
context of these other writings. Trying to understand a text in its context
is, I think, always a profitable interpretative strategy, and where the
7
Böhme and Böhme (1983), 253.
8
Kaulbach (1960), 68.
9
Rossvær (1974), 43.
10 Cf. B xvi and B xxii.
11
Schönfeld (2000), 7.
12
Scott-Taggart (1969), 3.
THE BODY IN THE CRITIQUE