BODY AND PRACTICE IN KANT

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KANT’S TRANSCENDENTAL EPISTEMOLOGY
Such a tracing of the first endeavors of our power of cognition to
ascend from individual perceptions to general concepts is without
doubt of great utility, and the famous Locke is to be thanked for
having first opened the way for this. Yet a deduction of the pure a
priori concepts can never be achieved in this way; it does not lie
down this path at all, for in regard to their future use, which should
be entirely independent of experience, an entirely different birth
certificate than that of an ancestry from experiences must be
produced. I will therefore call this attempted physiological derivation,
which cannot properly be called a deduction at all because it
concerns a quaestio facti, the explanation of the possession of a pure
cognition. It is therefore clear that only a transcendental and never an
empirical deduction of them can be given, and that in regard to pure
a priori concepts empirical deductions are nothing but idle attempts,
which can occupy only those who have not grasped the entirely
distinctive nature of these cognitions. (A 86-87/B 118-119)
The reason why Kant criticizes Locke is that he merely describes the
genesis of our knowledge. Kant does not thereby deny that our
knowledge has a genesis. What he says is that this genesis is not presently
his interest, because its story cannot justify our knowledge. 16
Even if we have now modified our concept of the distinction between
an empirical and transcendental deduction, our basic problem still
remains. Have we proved that the practice just described may function as
a condition of experience in a Kantian sense? Have we not merely given
an empirical account of the origin of the concept of size, i.e. the concept
of the size of the table? It depends on how we interpret the example. It is
possible to interpret it as a story of origin in the way suggested. But
another interpretation is also possible, and this interpretation emphasizes
not origin but something else. Through the practice the undetermined
intuition of the table (undetermined in the sense that we do not know
what its size is) becomes determined. In this sense the practice constitutes
an aspect of our experience for us, an aspect that would not have been
16 This is also the point I see implied by the much discussed reflection R 4900
where Kant discusses Tetens’ theory of concepts, declaring that he himself
concerns himself neither with the evolution of concepts nor with their genesis
through action. I think his point is not that he is indifferent to the genesis of
concepts, only that this is not his main concern. This interpretation is supported
by Carl (1989), 120. He claims that Kant was sympathetic to Tetens’ theory of
concepts, but that he also maintains that examining concepts qua acts performed
by the cognitive subject was not enough. One had to deal with their objective
validity as well.