BODY AND PRACTICE IN KANT

QUANTITY 275
is another example frequently used by him to illustrate the production of
such knowledge. As I argued in chapter 6, he also saw geometry as an
embodied practice (cf. e.g. A 239ff./B299ff.). Thus, I conclude that it is
possible to interpret Kant’s theory of quantity as referring to an
embodied practice (the practice of counting) and that there is textual
evidence in the Critique supporting the view that this was how Kant
conceived of the matter.
One last question that may need to be discussed is whether we are
entitled to interpret the category of quantity as such as an embodied
practice, or whether we should adopt the more modest claim, that it is
only when we apply this category that we are involved in the practice
defined above. Expressed in Kantian terminology, is the category an
embodied practice, or is it only the schematized category which is such a
practice?
As long as we distinguish between a category and its schema, the
latter option must be preferred, I think. However, it is not obvious that
we are justified in upholding such a distinction. Even if Kant is not
unambiguous on this point, a number of interpreters have argued that
there is no room in his theory for the notion of an unschematized
category. By defining a category as an act [Handlung] or a function
performed with regard to the empirical manifold of our intuitions, Kant
by definition seems to say that the category has no existence in
abstraction from its employment. Gardner comments:
... the notion of an unschematized category disappears, or becomes a
dubious abstraction from the conditions of empirical knowledge... 6
If so, then we are entitled to adopt the stronger of the two options
suggested above, that the category of quantity as such may be interpreted
as an embodied practice. This will also be my position. This means,
however, that whenever the claim is made that a category is an embodied
practice, the term ‘category’ is used in the sense of a schematized
category.
6
Gardner (1999), 169f. Cf. also Kambartel (1976), 127.