BODY AND PRACTICE IN KANT

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RATIONALITY AND EMBODIED PRACTICE
analyzed at the level of the behavior of this agent. The new theory of
rationality resulting from this change in perspective is found in texts such
as On the common saying from 1793, Anthropology from 1798, Logic
from 1800 and On pedagogy from 1803. I will refer to these texts as
Kant’s writings on anthropology, pedagogy and logic. This way of
referring to them is also meant to indicate that each text covers more
than its title suggests and that they overlap thematically. For instance, he
approaches pedagogical topics not only in On pedagogy, but also in
Anthropology, and his published writings on both pedagogy and logic
include passages relevant to our understanding of his anthropology.
In Kant’s writings on anthropology, pedagogy and logic, human
rationality is discussed with reference to human acts and behavior, or
more specifically, to the human capacity for handling rules and to act
according to rules. Acts that take place according to rules, or sets of rules,
he calls ‘practice’. So if we are going to give a rough initial
characterization of Kant’s new theoretical outlook, we may say that it
associates the concept of rationality with that of practice. In the above
mentioned texts he gives a number of examples of practices associated
with rationality. In all of these practices, the human agent is evidently an
embodied agent, and the practices may consequently be qualified as
embodied practices. So we can also say that Kant now promotes the idea
of an association between the concepts of embodied practice and human
rationality. Embodied practices, moreover, are not seen merely as
expressions of underlying rational processes taking place, for instance, in
the brain or on a mental level. They are seen as the medium in which
human beings realize themselves in a very basic sense as rational beings.
The term ‘rationality’ is here used in a broad sense and includes all the
skills and capacities through which man appears as a rational animal in
the Aristotelian sense of the term. I will say more about this later.
Kant takes a practice to be a set of acts having a goal. When we
participate in a practice, we do it for a purpose, because we want to
achieve something. This means there is also a pragmatic aspect to Kant’s
definition of a practice. This pragmatic aspect is also transferred to his
theory of rationality, or so I shall argue. I will refer to this theory as
Kant’s ‘pragmatic theory of embodied rationality’. I do not claim that
this pragmatic theory of embodied rationality exhausts all Kant has to
say about human rationality but I think that it occupies a central position
within his general theory of rationality. I shall return to this in due
course.
Exactly when Kant’s pragmatic theory of embodied rationality
emerged is hard to say. Even if the above-mentioned texts were
published towards the end of his life, they are based for the most part on