BODY AND PRACTICE IN KANT

THE BODY AND THE TRANSCENDENTAL 225
different times. In Dreams of a spirit-seer Kant states that the mind is
present wherever the body is. At other times he argues that the mind is
virtually present in the body. In the Anthropology the idea is simply
assumed as an obvious fact. In the Critique the embodied nature of the
mind is not explicitly discussed. Still, I have argued that here too we need
to see the human mind as embodied.
Let us accept that the cognitive agent of the Critique is an embodied
human being. It is a being whose mind is virtually present in the body,
that is, it is present as the life of this embodied being. The term ‘life’ is
here to be understood in a wide sense, signifying awareness or
consciousness, biological processes as well as behavior. What follows if we
accept this idea of human embodiment and if we ask how this
embodiment affects our experience? One conclusion that follows is that,
qua embodied beings, we always find ourselves to be placed in a radical
manner in the position of the body. This means that in our search for
experience, or knowledge, of the world, we have to help ourselves with
whatever capacities and resources we are endowed with in virtue of being
embodied. One aspect of this is positive in that our embodied nature, or
to use a more Heideggerian expression, our being-in-the-world-as-body,
gives us certain capacities and powers that we would not have had if,
counterfactually, we were not embodied. However, our radical
embodiment also puts certain and absolute limits on what it is possible
for us to achieve.
Where awareness is concerned, for instance, it follows from the idea
of radical embodiment that immediate awareness can include nothing
but the body. I may in principle have an immediate awareness of all parts
of my body but there is no way in which I can have such an awareness of
things existing outside it. I can have an immediate awareness of my hand,
my leg and the beating of my heart but I cannot have this kind of
awareness of the table in front of me or the tree outside my window. In
this sense, my immediate awareness is confined within the space in which
I exist as an embodied being, that is, the space of my body. Where
immediate awareness is concerned, the boundary of this space is an
absolute limit. Inside it, immediate awareness is possible, outside it, it is
not.
What follows if we further reflect upon this limit? As already noticed,
it follows that we have no immediate or direct awareness of objects
existing outside the boundaries of our bodies. Let us accept that such
objects exist in the way specified above, that we exist as embodied beings
along with these objects, and that we physically interact with them, either
directly, for instance when we touch or grasp them, or indirectly, for
instance, when rays of light are reflected from an object and strike the