BODY AND PRACTICE IN KANT

144
THE BODY IN THE CRITIQUE
time. Since the Renaissance, profiting from the technical advances of
artisans, scientists had gradually developed more sophisticated and more
complex instruments for the investigation of nature. These instruments,
they argue, significantly changed the production of knowledge inside the
new sciences. 57 From observing the work of artisans and scientists, Kant
learned that knowledge of nature is produced by active intervention, that
is, by actively using specific instruments, methods and procedures, and
also that the product of this, scientific knowledge, is constituted by such
methods and procedures. His theory of knowledge in the Critique, they
conclude, reflects this insight. 58
Even though I think Hartmut and Gernot Böhme are basically right
on these points, I am less sympathetic towards their claim that Kant’s
transcendental philosophy should be seen as a theory of scientific
knowledge only. 59 As will be further argued below, I read his
transcendental philosophy first and foremost as a theory of human
experience in general. I also think that the two authors are fundamentally
mistaken in their claim that Kant was alienated from his body and that
embodied experience is disparaged in his transcendental philosophy. 60 As
I will argue, I see the notion of the body as central in Kant’s
transcendental philosophy. A basic insight of this philosophy, and a basic
premise from which its reflections proceed, is that we are radically
dependent on our bodies in our everyday exploration of the world, and
that all experience and all knowledge is in an ultimate sense based on our
immediate awareness of our embodied interaction with this world.
Further, I will argue that Kant’s transcendental philosophy involves an
attempt to identify the basic structure of this interaction, i.e. the
interaction that makes experience possible. This is the idea that I see
abstractly expressed at A 11/B 25 when Kant states that transcendental
philosophy deals with our way of attaining knowledge of objects, as far as
this is a priori possible.
57
Ibid., 284.
58
This idea may also have been conveyed to him by Francis Bacon, to whom
Kant respectfully refers in the preface to the second edition of the Critique (B
XII). Kambartel (1976), 93 suggests strong parallels between Kant and Bacon in
the preface to the second edition of the Critique, even that Kant may have
copied some of Bacon’s expressions.
59
Böhme and Böhme (1983), 289.
60
According to the two authors, Kant reduces the body to a mere instrument,
which involves a radical disparagement of our immediate embodied awareness
(Böhme and Böhme (1983), 17).