BODY AND PRACTICE IN KANT

SPATIAL EXPERIENCE AND THE BODY IN THE CRITIQUE 175
typically both passive and active. This similarity in structure, I argue,
may be used as an argument in support of the idea that the two theories
are, roughly speaking, versions of the same theory, or more precisely,
that the critical theory of space may be read in part as giving an abstract
account of his embodied theory of space.
The fact that Kant describes the subject as being typically both
passive and active in both theories, is of course, not conclusive evidence
for this. However, if we look at the details of each theory, the
resemblances are remarkable. Notice, for instance how our basic
representation of space within both theories is claimed to be produced by
the activity of the subject. Notice also how the active and passive aspects
of this process are typically described as occurring together. However.
while this passivity and activity are explicitly said in the one theory to
involve the body, no explicit references to the body are found in the
other, at least not in the same way. For instance, while in the first theory
Kant describes a human agent that is obviously a unity of mind and
body, the subject of his critical theory is typically referred to by the term
‘mind’ [Gemüt] only. Moreover, when Kant is describing the activity of
this subject he employs a psychological terminology, suggesting that, far
from referring to outer, embodied acts like grasping, walking, running
etc, the theory refers to acts carried out deep down in the mind of the
subject, at an inner or mental level. Whatever these acts are, they are not
identical with the overt acts we perform with our bodies. Similarly at first
glance it seems unlikely that the syntheses of apprehension and
reproduction have anything to do with embodied activity given the way
he describes them.
This apparent dilemma persists only as long as we insist that the mind
of the Critique works independently of the body, but we have seen that
throughout his career Kant vigorously advanced another view according
to which the mind is thoroughly embodied. In Dreams of a spirit-seer
and the Inaugural dissertation the mind is said to be virtually present
wherever the body is. As I have argued, this opens up for the idea that
even the simplest movement of the body may also be seen as the
movement of the mind, and vice versa. The mind is not positioned
somewhere else, directing the movement from afar. The mind is the
origin of the movement, but it is also in the movement. Within this
perspective it is no longer obvious that the acts that according to the
Critique are carried out by the understanding, the imagination or other
faculties of the mind have necessarily to be interpreted exclusively as
inner mental acts. On the contrary, within this context it is even possible