BODY AND PRACTICE IN KANT

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SPATIAL EXPERIENCE AND THE BODY IN THE CRITIQUE
to see the term ‘synthesis’ as referring to embodied activity in one way or
another. 19 In the next chapter I shall argue that this is not just a possible
interpretation. There are theoretical considerations belonging to the very
center of the critical discourse that require the notion of synthesis is
interpreted in this way, at least to some extent. This point will be put
forward along with an examination of Kant’s theory of schematism.
5.13 Summary
In this chapter I have compared what I take to be two theories of space
discernible in Kant’s writings, his theory of the embodied constitution of
spatial experience and his critical theory of space. I have argued that at a
basic level and in a basic sense they are versions of the same theory in the
way that the latter may be read as giving, in part, an abstract account of
the former.
Before concluding this chapter, let me remind the reader once again
that when I say that Kant’s critical theory of space may be read, in part,
as an abstract version of his embodied theory of space, I do not claim
that the former is nothing but an abstract replica of the latter, that is, a
replica from which the body has been abstracted away. It is partly this
(and that is the point I have stressed in this chapter), but it is also more.
The theory of space found in the Critique is both more complex and
more sophisticated than the reflections Kant presents on this topic
elsewhere. Nowhere is the cognitive process analyzed in more detail than
here. And nowhere is the transcendental perspective more fully
developed. This complexity and sophistication does not imply, however,
that the cognitive processes referred to by the theory should no longer be
interpreted as embodied, or so I argue. What the critical theory does, I
think, is to give us an idea of the conditions required of an embodied self
whose mind is to have sensations in time and space. Very briefly,
according to the Critique, such a mind has to be endowed with senses,
imagination and apperception and the capacity to synthesize its
representations in the way specified above. 20 However, it also has to have
a body, and in most of its cognitive operations, the movements of this
body are involved.
19
That the term synthesis in the Critique may sometimes refer to embodied acts
is an idea also espoused by Kaulbach (1968), 285.
20
In addition to this, the Critique is also concerned with the validity of our
knowledge of time and space.