BODY AND PRACTICE IN KANT

146
Gerhardt dates the tradition among Kant interpreters comparing Kant’s
critical perspective with the astronomical accomplishment of Copernicus
back to Kuno Fisher in the 1880s. 62 From the beginning, however, there
was confusion about how this comparison should best be understood.
Fisher himself saw the comparison as constituting a rather loose analogy.
Just as the Copernican transition from a geocentric to a heliocentric
perspective involved a transition to a more advanced scientific stance, so
Kant’s transcendental perspective is more advanced than the position he
superseded. 63 Gerhardt himself denies that Kant’s Copernican
perspective has anything to do with Copernicus’ transition from a
geocentric to a heliocentric perspective as such. The analogy concerns
rather the relation between the moving objects of the skies to the
observer, he claims. Instead of assuming these objects to be revolving
around an unmoving observer, Copernicus based his theory on the
assumption that it was the observer who was moving. 64
The point of the moving observer is also emphasized by Hanson. 65
When we observe the universe, we constantly move in this universe along
with the earth we inhabit, and we have to take into account this
movement in our interpretation of what we observe. In presenting his
new theory of the universe, Copernicus emphasized the novelty of this
idea and explained how essential it was to the development of his theory.
The idea of the moving observer is also essential to what we may call
Kant’s Copernican perspective in philosophy, Hanson argues. Like
Copernicus, Kant sought to explain the properties of observed
phenomena by postulating activity in the subject.
I agree with this. So far, however, the question of what or who this
observer is, and in what way she moves or is active, has not been raised.
Some possible answers to this have already been discussed in connection
with Kant’s transcendental psychology. My position is clear. The
observer is an embodied human being, and her movements or acts are
likewise embodied. Kant’s Copernican perspective thus involves the idea
that attention should be directed away from the world and its objects to
the embodied observer and her way of exploring these objects, and that
this way of exploring has to be taken into account when we reflect upon
the epistemic status and validity of our experience. As I have argued
62
Gerhardt (1987).
63
For a further discussion of the meaning ascribed to the notion of a Copernican
perspective in Kant, see Gerhardt (1987).
64
Ibid., 135.
65 Hanson (1992), 36ff.
THE BODY IN THE CRITIQUE