BODY AND PRACTICE IN KANT

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the same function in the constitution of experience (the term is used here
in its strong Kantian sense meaning ordered or determined experience 3 )
as the categories are said to have in the Critique. The logic of this
argument is simple: because such practices exist, it is also possible to
think of the categories as such practices. I shall also give an example of
such a practice. First, however, I shall discuss some possible objections to
the idea just stated, and suggest how these objections may be met. In
subsequent chapters I shall examine Kant’s theory of the categories in
more detail, with an emphasis on the category of quantity and the
relational categories.
8.1 The necessary structure of the world
Kant’s theory of the categories forms the core of what may be called his
transcendental epistemology. The aim of this section is to give a
preliminary outline of this epistemology, which I see as having more than
one aim. One is to draw a limit between what can be known and what
can only be the subject of religious belief or metaphysical speculation. In
Kantian terminology this roughly corresponds to the distinction between
the empirical world and the things in themselves. Just as important,
however, is the epistemic project dealing with our knowledge of the
empirical world. Here Kant is preoccupied with the question of objective
knowledge: how is it possible for us to attain objective knowledge of the
empirical world?
This question is far from trivial. As we have seen, Kant sees our
experience as having a subjective origin. Our sensations are nothing but
modifications of our minds. 4 Time and space are subjective forms of
intuition. Even the categories are subjective in the sense that they are acts
or functions carried out by ourselves. They are not Platonic ideas or
eternal patterns of which the structure of the world is merely a reflection.
The notion of a category refers to an aspect of how we, as human beings,
approach the world. Given this subjective origin, how is objective
knowledge possible? How do we arrive at the experience of a world
ordered in time and space, a world of spatio-temporal objects interacting
according to universal laws of nature?
At first sight, these questions seem to demand a cognitive theory, a
theory explaining how experience is constituted by means of the
3
KANT’S TRANSCENDENTAL EPISTEMOLOGY
In Kantian terms, and according to Kant, to determine the undetermined
manifold of an intuition, the categories are required.
4 Cf. A 378.