BODY AND PRACTICE IN KANT

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KANT’S TRANSCENDENTAL EPISTEMOLOGY
not empirical, he says (A 64/B 89). The notion of a pure concept may
very easily evoke the idea of an entity having some kind of independent
existence in some sort of Platonic world of ideas. This interpretation
might also be suggested when some lines later Kant extols the systematic
nature of the transcendental concepts and says that pure understanding
distinguishes itself not only from all the empirical, but from all sensibility
as well. It is a stable, self-contained unity (A 65/B 89-90).
No doubt Kant wants us to see the transcendental concepts as part of
some complete system, and that the structure of this system comes not
from what he calls sensibility, but from somewhere else. Yet, as we have
repeatedly emphasized, Kant also says that these pure concepts are the
product of a process of abstraction from a context originally far more
complex and richer in content, a content that also includes empirical
elements. In this context, the transcendental concepts exist as the actions
of the cognitive agent confronting the empirical world. Whatever this
agent is, and whatever its actions are, it is clear that the transcendental
concepts are far from being Platonic ideas with an independent existence,
as these ideas have traditionally been understood. They exist as the acts
of a cognitive agent as this agent confronts the empirical world.
Kant’s discussion of logic does not prove that the categories are
embodied practices, nor even that they may be conceived of as such
practices, but it serves as a useful background against which to further
explore the tenability of this idea.
8.11 The categories are acquired
A final Kantian point to be discussed in this chapter in support of the
idea that the categories may be conceived of as embodied practices is
Kant’s claim that the categories are acquired, found in a number of
passages from the period in which the different versions of the Critique
were published. 30 Let us start with the following passage from On a
discovery, published in 1790, the same year as the third edition of the
Critique:
The Critique admits absolutely no implanted or innate
representations. One and all, whether they belong to intuition or to
concepts of the understanding, it considers them as acquired. 31
30
For a further discussion on this point, see Oberhausen (1997).
31
Ak VIII: 221.