BODY AND PRACTICE IN KANT

7. THE BODY AND THE TRANSCENDENTAL
The difference between the transcendental and
the empirical therefore belongs only to the
critique of cognitions [Erkenntnisse] and does not
concern their relation to their object.
From the Critique 1
I have argued that Kant’s theory of cognition in the Critique may be
read, at least in part, as referring to embodied acts and events. For
instance, I have argued that when he says that the empirical content of
our intuitions originates in the affection of the mind, then the mind in
question has to be conceived of as an embodied mind, and what Kant
refers to by the term ‘affection’ should be understood as the affection of
the physical senses of the body. I have also argued that when Kant says
that space and time qua forms of intuition are produced by the mind's
activity, this is the embodied activity of an embodied mind. I have even
argued that his theory of subsumption under concepts in the schematism
chapter may be read as a theory referring to embodied practices. In the
following I will refer to all this as ‘Kant’s theory of embodied cognition’.
When claims like this are put forward, two objections are typically
raised, both having to do with the distinction between the empirical and
the transcendental. The first objection relates to the epistemic project of
the Critique and involves the claim that our knowledge of the body is
empirical, and that empirical observation cannot support the a priori
claims of transcendental philosophy. I shall discuss this objection in a
later chapter. In this chapter I shall discuss another potential objection to
the above interpretation. It may be stated like this. In the Critique Kant
establishes a transcendental philosophy, and along with this a
transcendental perspective. This perspective is to be kept sharply distinct
from an empirical perspective, the perspective we use to describe the
empirical world. And even if the task of transcendental philosophy is to
answer how it is possible to have objective knowledge of the empirical
world, transcendental philosophy itself is not about this world. This,
again, means that we cannot take the concepts of transcendental
1
A 55/B 81.