BODY AND PRACTICE IN KANT

SPATIAL SCHEMATISM 189
Einbildungskraft]. The example is a mathematician drawing a circle in
the sand with a stick. Now, why does he use this particular example? If
he took the term ‘construction in the imagination’ to refer exclusively to
inner mental constructions, then the example seems badly chosen. One
possible way of solving this problem, is to explain away what Kant has
just said as slip of the pen: but I will not do that. Rather, I think that this
passage opens up a more comprehensive understanding of the Kantian
term ‘imagination’. I suggest that we take it to refer to the general
capacity of a human agent to create images. The term ‘image’ is used in
a highly general sense here, so all these can be seen as examples of image
making: a person drawing a circle on a piece of paper; a person drawing
a circle in the sand, and a person drawing a circle in the air by making a
circular movement with is hand. Even if in the last case no material
image is produced, I will include this as an example of image making
because an alert observer would be able to see the image of an
(imaginary) circle being produced (in the air). 28 I will shortly explain why
I regard this interpretation as preferable.
First, however, I want to draw attention to the last part of the
passage. Here Kant seems to be contrasting a priori constructions in the
imagination and constructions involving material elements [an irgend
einer Materie ausgeübt]. The latter are also called empirical. This seems
to jeopardize my interpretation, at least if the contrasted alternatives are
conceived as mutually exclusive. If this is so, however, why does Kant use
a person drawing a circle in the sand as an example of an a priori
construction in the imagination? I readily admit that the passage taken as
a whole now seems rather confusing. Let us, therefore, take a fresh look
at it. There are two points relating to what Kant calls an a priori
construction in the imagination that we have so far not discussed. The
first point relates to the construction of concepts in general, and Kant’s
emphasis that such constructions originate in the agent. Kant uses the
German term selbsttätig to make this point. 29 The second point is a
remark concerning the example of the person drawing a circle in the
sand. The circle may be very irregular but it may still be used to prove
the qualities of a circle. Notice also that the second kind of construction
discussed above is also called technical and is claimed to be not a
construction in the same sense as the first kind. In German Kant says
28
I am here close to the interpretation offered by Rudisill (1996), 135. Discussing
not the schema, but the concept of a circle, he argues that this concept is the rule
for the production of, for instance, a circle in the air by moving the hand.
29 Ak VIII: 191.