BODY AND PRACTICE IN KANT

KANT’S TRANSCENDENTAL EPISTEMOLOGY
253
may criticize Kant for not being loyal to his own distinction, and try to
reformulate his philosophy according to our idea of how the distinction
ought to be understood. Or we may see the two sides of the distinctions
as being two aspects of a common, unified project. As the second option
conforms to the Critique better than the first, I think this is to be
preferred, so within Kant’s transcendental epistemic project we are
allowed to talk about the origin of knowledge, for instance by
investigating its origin in our cognitive capacities. Actually, I think Kant’s
point is that we must do this: we cannot critically examine our knowledge
without also examining the origin of this knowledge, that is, our way of
attaining this knowledge. 15
In doing this, however, and this I think is Kant’s main point, we
should not be content with merely telling the story of the genesis of our
knowledge. In telling this story, we should take care to identify the
elements or aspects that may also tell us something about the validity of
this knowledge. This I take to be his point in the following criticism of
Locke.
15 This also conforms to the original meaning of the term ‘deduction’ in the
German juridical tradition. If Dieter Henrich is right, Kant’s notion of a
transcendental deduction is modelled on the juridical Deduktionsschriften of his
time, cf. Henrich (1989), 32ff. Such deductions were also typically preoccupied
with origin. In order to decide the rightfulness of a juridical claim to a property,
for instance, it was standard to trace the origin of this claim. Was the property
lawfully purchased, or acquired in any other lawful way (such as inheritance)? An
essential point, however, is that such a ‘deduction’ was also concerned with more
than just origin, i.e., the question of right.