BODY AND PRACTICE IN KANT

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THE BODY AND THE TRANSCENDENTAL
philosophy to refer to phenomena known from the empirical world.
When, for instance, in his transcendental philosophy Kant talks about
the affection of the cognitive agent, this cannot be interpreted as a theory
of physical affection. Neither can Kant’s transcendental theory of
cognitive activity be interpreted as referring to embodied acts. To do this
would involve what may be termed a ‘transcendental transgression’ and
would mean that we gave up the distinction between the transcendental
and empirical that Kant demands we uphold.
A version of this position is represented by Strawson. According to
Strawson, Kant tries to discover the limits of human knowledge from a
position outside these limits, or, as Strawson puts it, Kant ‘seeks to draw
the bounds of sense from a point outside them’. 2 From this he concludes
that the syntheses described in the Critique belong to a theory of a mind
that cannot be empirically observed. Kant’s theory of these syntheses,
therefore, cannot be interpreted as referring to anything we know from
the empirical world. A similar point is made by Bennett. 3 As we have
seen, not all agree with Strawson and Bennett on these points. So for
instance, Falkenstein argues that Kant’s critical theory of space in the
Transcendental aesthetic implies that the mind of the Critique is
embodied, and, consequently that parts of the cognitive process
described in Kant’s transcendental psychology also involve the body. 4
Starting out from Kant’s theory of schematism, Shaper argues it implies
that the mind described in the Critique has to be conceived of as existing
in time and so not fully outside the spatio-temporal domain. 5 Even if I
agree with both Falkenstein, Shaper and others on the point that the
mind described in the Critique both can and must be conceived of as
embodied, I also take the position defended by Strawson, Bennett and
others seriously. I think that Kant’s way of presenting his transcendental
philosophy may very easily be misread in a way that may seem to make
such a position unavoidable.
In promoting his transcendental idealism, Kant argues that all our
experience is representational and that time and space are nothing but
subjective forms of intuition. Moreover, he claims that there is an aspect
of reality (the world as it is independently of our way of experiencing it)
2
Strawson (1973), 12.
3
Discussing Kant’s theory of sensibility, Bennett argues that what Kant in the
Critique calls the outer sense cannot be identified with our biological senseorgans
(Bennett (1966), 18).
4
Falkenstein (1995).
5
Shaper (1992).