BODY AND PRACTICE IN KANT

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dating back to the 1770s. It is interesting to see that in all of these texts
covering this long period of time there is one aspect of Kant’s theory of
space that seems to remain unchanged; our representation of space
presupposes the body and our capacity for embodied action along with
the awareness accompanying this action. I will call this ‘Kant’s theory of
the embodied constitution of spatial representations’, or, more briefly,
‘Kant’s embodied theory of space’. The claim just made is not meant to
imply that Kant did not develop or revise his theory of space in other
ways, because he certainly did. However my main emphasis will be on
what I claim did not change, which is the basic idea that the body is a
condition of spatial experience. I believe that exploring this part of
Kant’s philosophy is valuable in its own right as it is not too often
discussed. However, I will also use the conclusions of this chapter in the
second part of my work where I argue that his theory of space in the
Critique may be seen as an abstract version of his embodied theory of
space.
If we look for the origins of Kant’s embodied theory of space, I think
that they may in part be found in his own philosophy in that it follows as
the logical consequence of some basic ideas he put forward. One such
idea is that the spatiality of the mind derives from its association with its
body, as he claims for instance in Dreams of a spirit-seer and in the
Inaugural dissertation. 3
BODY AND SPACE
From this it follows that there would be no
awareness of space, and consequently no representation of space, without
the body. Or at least this representation would then be hard to explain.
Moreover, if we maintain that the domain of the activity of the mind is
congruent with the space inhabited by its body, and that our immediate
awareness is therefore restricted to this domain, as is implied by Kant’s
embodied empiricism, it follows that experience or knowledge of the
spatial form of other objects can only be achieved by means of the body. 4
There is no way in which the mind can go outside its body to explore the
spatial properties of things. It has to take its body with it and use this
body as its tool, for instance by using its fingertips to explore the
3
Ak II: 325 and Ak II: 419.
4
Kaulbach (1960), 97 argues along a similar path when he contends that Kant’s
embodied empiricism, found for instance in Dreams of a spirit-seer, makes
embodied movement accompanied by self-awareness a condition of spatial
experience.