BODY AND PRACTICE IN KANT

SPATIAL EXPERIENCE AND THE BODY IN THE CRITIQUE 157
interpreted as referring to a mind that is thoroughly embodied, meaning,
amongst other things, that both its domain of activity and its domain of
immediate awareness are congruent with that of the body. Secondly, I
claim that what in the Critique is abstractly described as ‘affection’ (the
term is not further defined) is to be understood as the affection of the
body, or better, the embodied self. Kant’s theory of affection is relevant
to the present discussion because it is part of his critical theory of
sensibility, forming the context within which his critical notion of space is
first explored. Finally, I claim that Kant’s critical theory of space, in
which space is defined as the form of intuition and the claim is advanced
that this form originates in the activity of the mind, should be read as a
theory of how our experience of space is constituted through embodied
acts and practices.
Even if I stress the similarities between Kant’s two theories of space
here, I do not claim that they are similar in all respects. Kant’s theory of
space, as found in the Critique, is both more complex and more
sophisticated than the theory of space found in or implied by other
Kantian texts. In the Critique we find highly sophisticated arguments,
ideas and perspectives that are found nowhere outside it, or if they are
found, only as fragments or suggestions. Nowhere except in the Critique
are these arguments, ideas and perspectives presented as part of a unified
and comprehensive theory. But when we turn our attention to some
essential features of the basic structure of his critical theory of space,
these are the same as those we find in his embodied theory of space. In
this sense the former theory may be regarded as the abstract version of
the latter. This is what I am going to argue below.
The idea that Kant’s critical theory of space contains implicit
references to the body in some of the ways suggested above has also been
put forward by others. 2
In an argument similar to mine, Kaulbach points
to the connection between Kant’s theory of space in Directions in space
and Orientation, where our experience of space is claimed to be
grounded in the awareness of embodied movement, and Kant’s critical
theory of space. Even if Kant does not explicitly say so, we have to
conceive of the human self of the Critique as an embodied self, Kaulbach
contends, and as such, as inhabiting the same spatio-temporal world as
the things of its experience. 3 Moreover, as a spatial being it has no means
of experiencing the spatiality of this world other than by moving around
2 Cf. e.g. Falkenstein (1995), Kaulbach (1960, 1965 and 1968), Rossvær (1974),
Melnick (1989), Saugstad (1992) and Wyller (2000), cf. especially p. 162.
3 Kaulbach (1965), 150.