BODY AND PRACTICE IN KANT

KANT’S TRANSCENDENTAL EPISTEMOLOGY
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(i.e. non-empirical representations) have a place within this
transcendental epistemology, seems to exclude the notion of embodied
practices from epistemological reflection because the notion of an
embodied practice seems to carry with it too much of the empirical.
Another problem in claiming that the categories may be conceived of as
embodied practices is that Kant classifies these categories as concepts,
and according to our traditional understanding of what a concept is, it is
not an embodied practice. Finally, his distinction between an empirical
and transcendental deduction raises a problem of its own that will be
considered later. I will deal with these problems in the order in which
they appear here. First, then, we must discuss Kant’s requirement that
the representations involved in transcendental philosophy should include
only pure a priori concepts.
8.3 The a priori
The term ‘a priori’ occurs in several contexts within the Critique. A
central one is Kant’s theory of a priori concepts. Concepts are a priori
when they have to be presupposed as necessary for having experience (B
XVIII-XIX). Kant also uses ‘a priori’ to denote a certain kind of
knowledge [Erkenntnis]. The essential feature of such knowledge is that it
is independent of the impressions of the senses (B 2). As such, it is
contrasted with empirical knowledge derived ‘a posteriori’ (B3). 7
Other
essential features of a priori knowledge are necessity and universality (B
3). Finally, as we have seen, Kant sees the a priori conditions of our
experience as subjective in the sense that they have their origin in the
subject rather than the object of experience.
In the light of this, Kant’s notion of the a priori may be characterized
in terms of three points:
Something is a priori when:
1) it is a condition of having experience
2) it produces knowledge that is necessarily true and universal,
and
3) it originates in the activity of the agent 8 .
As we have seen, the a priori is defined in opposition to the empirical, so
getting a clear idea of what Kant means by ‘empirical’ may also help us
7
For a short survey of the story of the notions of a priori and a posteriori in
German philosophy prior to Kant, see Oberhausen (1997), 46ff.
8
As I will argue below, this last point also implies that the a priori has a structure
which is independent of contingent empirical facts.