BODY AND PRACTICE IN KANT

THE EMBODIED MIND
ontologically considered, is extended, that it has a certain shape, or that it
has other properties in common with a material object. All we can say is
that its domain of activity is congruent with the space of the body.
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Immediate presence in the totality of a space only proves a sphere of
external activity; it does not prove a multiplicity of internal parts, nor,
therefore, any extension or shape. 73
Instead of delving deeper into the highly fascinating text of Dreams of a
spirit-seer, let us return to the question put forward above. To what
extent does Dreams of a spirit-seer involve a criticism of Kant’s previous
position? And to what extent does Dreams of a spirit-seer represent a
new critical or even skeptical trend in Kant’s way of thinking about mind
and body?
1.9 A crisis?
Both Laywine and Schönfeld claim that Dreams of a spirit-seer
represents a crisis in Kant’s intellectual development, and that its real
target was his own previously held ideas on the mind-body relation. Both
base their argument on the claim that in his pre-critical phase Kant
subscribed to an ontology of a Leibnizian kind. 74 This ontology
committed him to the idea that the mind was an independent monad
present in space in the same way as other monads, Laywine argues, that
is, by exerting attractive and repulsive forces. Actually, he had to
presuppose this, Laywine argues, for only a mind endowed with such
forces would be able to interact with the body. Still, this view also
entailed a serious problem, or even contradiction for if the mind had
repulsive forces, how could it be present in all parts of the body, or
inhabit the same space as the body, as Kant assumed? Would it not
rather produce an irresolvable conflict between its own repulsive forces
and those of the body?
The possibility cannot be absolutely ruled out that in his early years
Kant subscribed to an ontology of a kind that made him face such a
problem, and that this led him into a crisis as the one here suggested.
However, when one examines his explicit remarks on the topic, it is far
from obvious that he did. As I have already pointed out, in the two texts
where he discusses at a general level how it is possible for mind and body
73
Ak II: 325.
74
Cf. Laywine (1993), 1ff. and Schönfeld (2000), 243ff.