BODY AND PRACTICE IN KANT

THE EMBODIED MIND
This first chapter is dedicated to an investigation of Kant’s general
ideas about mind and body as put forward in the above-mentioned texts,
including some general remarks on cognition. It teaches us that
throughout his life, when he discussed the mind and body, he almost
exclusively emphasized how deeply the mind as we know it is ingrained
in the body. This I will call Kant’s idea of the embodied mind, or
perhaps better, his idea of the embodied self. It is the idea that in man as
we know him, that is, man as a biological being in a world of physical
objects, mind and body form a whole in the sense that all the operations
of the mind, understood in a broad sense, depend on, and are
conditioned by the body. This also means that human cognition,
according to Kant, is embodied: the constitution and functioning of the
human body determine, in ways that will be specified below, how we
represent the world.
While this first chapter deals with the embodiment of cognition at a
more general level, the second chapter explores in more detail Kant’s
theory of spatial experience, that is, his account of how it is possible for
us to experience objects in space. As we shall see, the body is central to
this theory as well. Finally, in the third chapter I investigate some of
Kant’s remarks on human rationality found in some of the abovementioned
texts, especially those dealing with pedagogy, logic and
anthropology. Here he also demonstrates a remarkable interest in the
body, an interest reflected both in the general framework and the details
of his theory of rationality.
This first chapter is also divided into several parts. First come some
brief remarks on the general intellectual background against which Kant
unfolded his reflections on mind, body and cognition. Special emphasis is
placed on the existing tradition of metaphysics, and the emergence of the
new study of anthropology in eighteenth-century Germany. Then follow
some remarks on the phases into which his intellectual career is often
divided, and on the nature of the young Kant’s philosophical enterprise.
Then, finally, we will approach the texts to be investigated in this
chapter, one by one, to see what they reveal about his ideas about mind
and body and the embodied nature of cognition in general. As the aim of
this chapter is to give a general overview of how these ideas developed, I
even if we assume that the students were accurate in their notes: To what extent
do the lectures represent Kant’s own views, and to what extent do they represent
ideas that Kant for some reason chose to present as part of his official role and
duty as a public servant?
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