BODY AND PRACTICE IN KANT

THE EMBODIED MIND
seem to have attracted Kant’s attention early on, the influence of Hume,
Crusius and others may have sharpened his awareness of the limits of
human knowledge and made him adopt the idea of the primacy of
experiential knowledge. The influence of Crusius is emphasized by,
among others, Tonelli, 78 pointing to the fact that Crusius, distancing
himself from Leibniz, maintained that the domain of human knowledge
was more limited than the rationalists had assumed. Even if Kant never
became an orthodox follower of Crusius, Tonelli argues, his early
philosophy was clearly influenced by him. I also think that even if Hume
did not influence Kant as much as is often supposed, he may nevertheless
also have contributed to the empiricism of 1766. 79
Looking forward, Dreams of a spirit-seer is sometimes heralded as a
sign of a new critical outlook which will find its full expression in the
Critique. For instance, Nierhaus argues that at this time Kant was
already concerned with what was later to form the centre of his critical
project, establishing the limits of human knowledge through a critical
examination of our cognitive capacities. 80 I think this is largely true. Of
course, as Shell points out, this does not mean that in Dreams of a spiritseer
Kant presents anything like the full scale critical theory found in the
Critique. 81 However, like Nierhaus, Shell sees in the boundary-setting
activity of Dreams of a spirit-seer an anticipation of Kant’s more
developed critical stance. I also think there are other ways in which
Dreams of a spirit-seer points forward to the Critique, as will become
apparent later.
Before that it may be worth noting that Kant’s criticism of ontology
in Dreams of a spirit-seer also has a moral and pragmatic dimension.
Ontology should be avoided because it is a waste of time, taking energy
away from more useful occupations. Neither does it seem to have any
positive effect on public morality, Kant argues. Even people who are
convinced that there is an afterlife, as ontology claims there is, continue
to do wrong. Consequently, rather than waste our time on ontology, we
should focus our energies on doing things that may improve our lives on
earth. This point is dramatically expressed in the last lines of the text:
borrowing words from Voltaire’s Candide, Kant advises the reader to
leave all ontological speculations behind and seek his happiness working
in the garden:
78
Tonelli (1969).
79
Cf. e.g. Borowski’s testimony in Gross (1993), 69.
80
Nierhaus (1962), 116.
81
Shell (1996), 127ff.
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