BODY AND PRACTICE IN KANT

RATIONALITY AND EMBODIED PRACTICE
or tacit standards or rules. Moreover, if we examine these standards or
rules, they typically relate to the achievement of an end. Walking is a
practice, according to this, as walking is typically done for a purpose (in a
minimal sense the purpose is to move from one place to another) and as
there are tacit rules or standards by which we may evaluate the quality of
the walking taking place. When we do not generally make these rules
explicit, it may be because we (or most of us) are skilled walkers for whom
these rules are tacitly understood. This does not exclude the fact that we
may sometimes make them explicit, for instance when comparing and
evaluating the walking of two children who are learning to walk for the
first time.
Let me now specify what I mean by an ‘embodied practice’. In using
this expression I do not mean to imply that the participants of an
embodied practice participate only with their bodies. They participate
with the whole of themselves, body and mind. It is the fact that both are
involved that gives the practice status as embodied. The examples given
by MacIntyre are all examples of what I shall call embodied practices. So
are Kant’s examples, which will be further considered below. In some
cases, an embodied practice may also involve various instruments. The
doctor, for instance, in his medical practice, which, according to my
definition is embodied, uses a number of instruments.
It may be objected that all practices are embodied, and thus, that the
term ‘embodied practice’ is a pleonasm. The response to such a criticism
may depend on the philosophical outlook of the respondent. One might,
for instance, claim that there are acts that are purely mental, and that
such acts may be performed according to a set of rules in order to attain
some end. Following our definition, these acts would then count as a
practice. According to some interpretations of Kant, this is how his
theory of the human employment of the categories is to be understood.
The categories are then conceived as rules directing our mental
operations so that objective knowledge is produced. According to this
model, and our definition of practice, our employment of the categories
is then a practice taking place solely at the mental level. Other such
practices may also be imagined. The term ‘embodied practice’ signals
that such practices, if we accept that they exist, are not to be included
within the extension of the term.
3.2 Pragmatism
In contemporary philosophy the term ‘pragmatism’ is often associated
with what was around the beginning of the twentieth century the most
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