BODY AND PRACTICE IN KANT

10. THE RELATIONAL CATEGORIES
... [we] can ... perceive all time-determination
only through the change in outer relation
(motion) relative to that which persists in space
(e.g., the motion of the sun with regard to the
objects on the earth)...
From the Critique 1
The task of this chapter is to answer the question of whether Kant’s
theory of the relational categories as found in the Critique may be
interpreted as referring to embodied practices in a way analogous to
what we found in the previous chapter concerning the category of
quantity. The approach of the chapter will be as follows. First, I examine
what Kant has to say about these categories in the Analogies of
experience, which is the part of the Analytic of principles dealing with
these categories and their function relative to time. A central idea put
forward here is that objective time determination is only possible given
these categories. However, Kant also contends that such determination
presupposes the existence of external objects. Moreover, in the above
passage from the Refutation of idealism, following closely on the
Analogies of experience, he uses the sun and its movement across the sky
as an example of a process [Wechsel] in the outer conditions [äußere
Verhältnisse] that make the determination of time possible. From this, I
will argue, it is possible to infer that there is a level at which the relational
categories may be conceived of as embodied practices, and that this is
implied by the Critique. These are the practices involved whenever we
use the movements of the sun or another object to determine time.
I end this chapter somewhat hesitantly, however. Kant’s general
theory of the categories seems to demand that the relational categories,
whatever they are, are virtually present at every moment of our lives, at
least as long as we are awake and in a normal state of consciousness. If
there is a level at which these categories exist as embodied practices, we
have to search for practices that are similarly entertained at every
moment of our lives. It is not obvious that the practices involved when
1 B 277-278.