BODY AND PRACTICE IN KANT

CONCLUSION 311
Kant's lack of a pregnant notion of second nature explains why the
right conception of experience cannot find a firm position in his
thinking. 11
Kant’s insight would have acquired a satisfactory shape only if he could
have accommodated the fact that a thinking and intending agent is a
living animal, McDowell contends. But with his firm conviction that
conceptual powers are non-natural and with his lack of a notion of
second nature, Kant was shut off from this idea. 12 McDowell therefore
suggests that we equip Kant with this idea of a second nature, in the
sense that we add to his philosophy something that was not originally
there. This would not only free Kant’s insight from the distorting effect of
the framework he tries to express it in, but it would also give Kant’s
theory of rationality a potentially revolutionary effect in modern
philosophy:
This is a framework for reflection that really stands a chance of
making traditional philosophy obsolete... […] I have described a
philosophical project: to stand on the shoulders of the giant, Kant,
and see our way to the supersession of traditional philosophy that he
almost managed, though not quite. 13
As should be clear from my argument throughout this work, I think that
McDowell is wrong in claiming that Kant ignored the embodied aspects
of human existence. If I have nevertheless included this rather lengthy
argument of McDowell’s, it is because I see him as yet another
representative of an almost unequivocal trend in Kant research, which
not only fails to see that the Critique may be read as a reflection on
human embodiment, but also ignores the texts in which Kant actually
and explicitly stands out as a philosopher preoccupied with the body. In
these texts he even explicitly expresses the idea of a second
anthropological nature that McDowell calls for. 14 I will not now reopen
the discussion concerning what the reason for this long-lasting neglect of
11
Ibid., 98.
12
Ibid., 104.
13 Ibid., 111.
14 Cf. the passage from On pedagogy quoted at the beginning of this chapter.