BODY AND PRACTICE IN KANT

74
BODY AND SPACE
dissertation lies only two years ahead, this interpretation is, I think, not
improbable. If this is so, it may be worth noting that the first hint of a
Copernican perspective in the Kantian corpus is found in a theoretical
context in which the body has also a prominent position. Exactly what
this means is perhaps not fully evident at this stage but should become
clearer later.
2.5 Orientation
The small text Orientation was published in 1786, five years after the
publication of the first edition of the Critique in 1781, and a year before
the publication of its second edition. 31 Here Kant returns to the question
of space and again the body is said to have an essential significance in
much the same way as in Directions in space. In order to orient ourselves
in space, he argues, it is necessary to have a body and to be able to feel its
parts.
In the proper meaning of the word, to orient oneself means to use a
given direction (when we divide the horizon into four of them) in
order to find the others – literally, to find the sunrise. Now, if I see the
sun in the sky and know it is midday, then I know how to find south,
west, north, and east. For this, however, I also need the feeling of a
difference in my own subject, namely, the difference between my
right and left hands. 32
Even if the passage is brief, it seems to represent more or less the same
theory of space as the one put forward in Directions in space. My body
and its parts, along with my awareness of them, are claimed to be
necessary conditions of my capacity to orient myself in space. It is
interesting to see that in this text written after the Critique, Kant presents
roughly the same ideas about the embodied basis of spatial orientation as
he did in one written before it. It is as if this perspective has been with
him all the time.
The capacity to distinguish between different parts of the body is also
essential when I need to find my way through a dark room or a dark
street:
31 It belongs to the group of small texts published by Kant in the Berlinische
Monatschrift. In it he adresses the so-called pantheism controversy of the time.
However, in the first few pages he also addresses the question of spatial
orientation, and it is this first part to which I refer in the following.
32 Ak VIII: 134.