Body and Practice in Kant

BODY AND PRACTICE IN KANT

Studies in German Idealism

Series Editor: Reinier Munk, Leiden University and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands Advisory Editorial Board: Frederick Beiser, Syracuse University, U.S.A. George di Giovanni, McGill University, Montreal, Canada Helmut Holzhey, University of Zürich, Switzerland Detlev Pätzold, University of Groningen, The Netherlands Robert Solomon, University of Texas at Austin, Texas, U.S.A.

VOLUME 6 The titles published in this series are listed at the end of this volume.

BODY AND PRACTICE IN KANT

by

HELGE SVARE Oslo, Norway

A C.I.P. Catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN-10 ISBN-13 ISBN-10 ISBN-13

1-4020-4118-7 (HB) 978-1-4020-4118-1 (HB) 1-4020-4119-5 (e-book) 978-1-4020-4119-8 (e-book)

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If, instead of gluing a child to books, I bury him in a workshop, his hands work for the profit of his mind; he becomes a philosopher and believes he is only a laborer. Rousseau, Émile

CONTENTS Abbreviations

xi

Introduction

1

1. The embodied mind 1.1 Seele, Gemüt and Geist 1.2 Empirical and rational psychology and anthropology 1.3 Some preliminary remarks on Kant’s intellectual development 1.4 Living forces 1.5 New elucidation 1.6 Universal natural history 1.7 Maladies of the mind 1.8 Dreams of a spirit-seer 1.9 A crisis? 1.10 An embodied empiricism 1.11 Kant’s Inaugural dissertation 1.12 A new perspective on the body-mind problem 1.13 Holism in the Critique 1.14 The virtual presence of the mind 1.15 Anthropology 1.16 Conclusion

11 14 14 17 20 27 29 33 34 39 41 44 47 50 53 55 59

2. Body and space 2.1 The European discussion of space in the 18th century 2.2 Rousseau and space 2.3 Directions in space 2.4 A Copernican position? 2.5 Orientation 2.6 Anthropology 2.7 Summary

61 63 67 69 73 74 75 77

3. Rationality and embodied practice 3.1 Practice 3.2 Pragmatism 3.3 The historical origin of Kant’s pragmatism 3.4 Rousseau’s influence

79 82 85 86 89

vii

viii

CONTENTS

3.5 Basedow and Crusius 3.6 Kant’s theory of the understanding 3.7 Concepts and rules 3.8 Rules and practices 3.9 Learning by doing 3.10 The unconscious employment of the understanding 3.11 Judgments cannot be learned 3.12 Pragmatic priority 3.13 Some modern parallels 3.14 More about Kant’s theory of concepts 3.15 Summary 3.16 A short summary of the first part of the book

95 99 102 104 106 109 111 115 117 123 126 127

4. The body in the Critique 4.1 The Critique – a brief presentation 4.2 Phases, perspectives and continuities 4.3 Some trends and positions in the interpretation of the Critique 4.4 Transcendental philosophy 4.5 Kant’s Copernican perspective 4.6 Some further remarks on the transcendental and the empirical 4.7 Transcendental idealism 4.8 What did Kant mean?

129 130 131 136 142 145 147 148 151

5. Spatial experience and the body in the Critique 5.1 A brief remark about the structure of my argument 5.2 The architectonic of the Critique 5.3 The cognitive theory of the Critique 5.4 Synthesis 5.5 The syntheses of imagination 5.6 Apprehension 5.7 Reproduction 5.8 The B-deduction 5.9 Transcendental apperception 5.10 § 26 of the B-deduction 5.11 Problems of comparison 5.12 Two versions of the same theory? 5.13 Summary

155 158 159 160 162 164 165 166 167 168 171 173 174 176

6. Spatial schematism 6.1 The production of images 6.2 The construction of geometrical figures 6.3 Mental constructions?

177 181 182 183

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ix

6.4 Rossvær’s anti-mentalist approach 6.5 Kant’s theory of mathematical construction 6.6 Further remarks on the imagination 6.7 Construction and subsumption 6.8 The key argument 6.9 Visual perception 6.10 Schematism in the transcendental deduction 6.11 Degrees of consciousness 6.12 The empirical aspect of apprehension 6.13 Falkenstein’s argument concerning intuition and body in the

185 186 190 192 196 198 201 201 204

Critique

207 210 212

6.14 The embodied agent 6.15 Summary 7. The body and the transcendental 7.1 The transcendental distinction 7.2 The unknown subject 7.3 The temptations of self-consciousness 7.4 The unknown origin of affection 7.5 From the empirical to the transcendental 7.6 Kant’s representationalism 7.7 Kant’s anti-skepticism 7.8 More about the Kantian notion of a representation 7. 9 Summary

213 216 218 219 220 223 229 235 240 242

8. Kant’s transcendental epistemology 8.1 The necessary structure of the world 8.2 Problems 8.3 The a priori 8.4 Embodied practice as a condition of experience 8.5 An empirical or a transcendental deduction? 8.6 The normativity of practice 8.7 Arithmetic as an a priori synthetic science 8.8 Thinking as practice 8.9 Logic 8.10 Transcendental logic 8.11 The categories are acquired 8.12 Summary

245 246 248 249 251 252 255 258 259 261 263 264 266

9. Quantity 9.1 Transcendental schematism 9.2 Quantity

267 268 269

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9.3 The production of time 9.4 Some objections and answers

270 273

10. The relational categories 10.1 The analogies of experience 10.2 The second analogy 10.3 The third analogy 10.4 Time and the world 10.5 Time measuring practices

277 278 281 283 284 284

11. Causality and common sense physics 11.1 Piaget and the cognitive development of the child 11.2 Practice as a condition of experience 11.3 Sensorimotor practices and the relational categories 11.4 Causality and interaction 11.5 Sensorimotor intelligence in the adult 11.6 Objective time revisited 11.7 A very brief remark on transcendental apperception 11.8 The categories of quality and modality 11.9 Summary

289 291 293 296 297 299 301 304 305 306

Conclusion

307

Bibliography

313

Name index

327

ABBREVIATIONS Ak: The Academy edition [Kants gesammelte Schriften] a.t.: Author's translation.

Announcement: Mr. Immanuel Kant's announcement of the program of his lectures for the winter semester 1765-1766. [Nachricht von der Einrichtung seiner Vorlesungen in dem Winterhalbenjahre von 17651766.]

Anthropology: Anthropology from a pragmatic point of view. [Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht.] Critique: Critique of pure reason. [Kritik der reinen Vernunft.] Directions in space: Concerning the ultimate ground of the differentiation of directions in space. [Von dem ersten Grunde des Unterschiedes der Gegenden im Raume.]

Dreams of a spirit-seer: Dreams of a spirit-seer elucidated by dreams of metaphysics. [Träume eines Geistersehers, erläutert durch Träume der Metaphysik.]

Inaugural dissertation: On the form and principles of the sensible and the intelligible world. [De mundi sensibilis atque intelligibilis forma et principiis/Von der Form der Sinnen- und Verstandesvelt und ihren Gründen.] Living forces: Thoughts on the true estimation of living forces, and criticism of the proofs propounded by Herr von Leibniz and other mechanists in their treatment of this controversy, along with some preliminary observations concerning the force of bodies in general. [Gedanken von der wahren Schätzung der lebendigen Kräfte und Beurtheilung der Beweise, derer sich Herr von Leibniz und andere Mechaniker in dieser Streitsache bedienet haben, nebst einigen

xi

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ABBREVIATIONS

vorhergehenden Betrachtungen, welche die Kraft der Körper überhaupt betreffen.]

Logic: The Jäsche logic. [Immanuel Kants Logik, ein Handbuch zu Vorlesungen, hrsg. von G.B. Jäsche.]

Maladies of the mind: An essay on the maladies of the mind. [Versuch über die Krankheiten des Kopfes.] Negative magnitudes: Attempt to introduce the concept of negative magnitudes into philosophy. [Versuch, den Begriff der negativen Größen in die Weltweisheit einzuführen.] New elucidation: A new elucidation of the first principles of metaphysical cognition. [Principiorum primorum cognitionis metaphysicae nova dilucidatio/Neue Erhellung der ersten Grundsätze metaphysischer Erkenntnis.] On a discovery: On a discovery according to which any new critique of pure reason has been made superfluous by an earlier one. [Über eine Entdeckung, nach der alle neue Kritik der reinen Vernunft durch eine ältere entbehrlich gemacht werden soll.]

On the common saying: On the common saying: that may be correct in theory, but it is of no use in practice. [Über den Gemeinspruch: Das mag in der Theorie richtig sein, taugt aber nicht für die Praxis.] Orientation: What does it mean to orient oneself in thinking? [Was heißt: sich im Denken orientieren?] Prolegomena: Prolegomena to any future metaphysic that will be able to come forward as science. [Prolegomena zu einer jeden künftigen Metaphysik, die als Wissenschaft wird auftreten können.]

Universal natural history: Universal natural history and theory of the heavens; or an essay on the constitution and mechanical origin of the entire world edifice treated according to Newtonian principles. [Allgemeine Naturgeschichte und Theorie des Himmels, oder Versuch von der Verfassung und dem mechanischen Ursprunge des ganzen Weltgebaüdes nach Newtonischen Grundsätzen abgehandelt.]

INTRODUCTION I still believe that, with classical works of the past, philosophers today should attempt, at least on some occasions, to give attention to all the dimensions of a major thinker’s work. 1 Karl Ameriks

Kant has often been accused of being a philosopher who blatantly ignores both the body and the fact that we experience the world in and through our bodies. This purported neglect is sometimes used as a basis for arguing that Kant’s philosophy is hopelessly outdated today. Occasionally it is also ascribed to some unfortunate feature of Kant’s psychological predisposition. Hartmut and Gernot Böhme exemplify both trends. They first declare that Kant’s philosophy represents an extreme version of the baseless dualism separating mind and body that has haunted Western philosophy for too long, a dualism that tends to devalue the physical aspect of human existence, and then explain this purported extremism by claiming that Kant was alienated from his body.2 Thandeka categorically states that Kant fails to see that we are 3 biological beings. Looking at more than two hundred years of Kant research seems to confirm that our embodied existence was of little concern to Kant. As for 4 the Critique of pure reason, which has probably received more attention than any of his other works, scholars contend that it contains a theory of human experience. It even contains the concept of an empirical subject, referring to humans as biological, embodied beings. However, following tradition, they deny that this empirical subject occupies any substantial position in the work. If the Critique is regarded as containing a 1

Ameriks (2000), viii. Böhme and Böhme (1983), 14ff. 3 Thandeka (1995), 18. 4 In this book the Critique of pure reason will be referred to simply as the Critique. For other texts by Kant referred to, please consult the list if abbreviations at the beginning of the book and the bibliography at the end of the book. 2

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INTRODUCTION

philosophy of man at all, this man is seen as a transcendental subject existing somehow above or behind the empirical dimension. The aim of this work is to show that this established image of Kant as a philosopher who ignores embodied human existence is radically wrong. Not only does Kant, throughout his career, in works published before and after the Critique, constantly reflect upon the fact that human life is embodied, but he is also occupied in exploring the philosophical implications of this fact. Discussing human cognition, for instance, he often emphasizes that cognition is embodied, and that the constitution and functioning of the human body condition our way of experiencing the world: Our experience of space, for instance, is based on the immediate awareness we have of being in our bodies and of our embodied acts. This idea is found in the first scholarly work that Kant published in 1747 and is repeated in a number of works until his death in 1804. In the Critique the case is not that simple. Its highly abstract style seems to support those scholars who maintain that human embodiment is a topic of little significance within it. Against this, I would argue that the idea that human life is embodied is not only clearly assumed in the text but also that in a very basic sense the Critique may be read as a critical reflection upon the very fact that human life is embodied. This implies not only the simple and relatively trivial fact that while writing the Critique Kant held that a human being was both mind and body, it also means that a number of the philosophical doctrines promoted in this work, such as transcendental idealism, cannot be fully understood without taking human embodiment into account. Bringing this aspect of Kant's philosophy into the light is important, not only because it has too long been generally ignored, but also because it is highly relevant to contemporary discussions in philosophy about, for example, embodiment, learning and practice. By taking his philosophy of embodiment into account, we discover that far from being outdated, Kant stands out as a true contemporary. Even if this aspect of Kant’s philosophy has for the most part been ignored, I am not alone in emphasizing that central parts of it rest on reflections upon human embodiment. A growing number of scholars are paying attention to this dimension in his thought today. In the German Kantian tradition, this trend goes back further than it does in the AngloAmerican one, due to the fact that in Germany more attention was given earlier to what Kant wrote before and after the Critique, texts in which human embodiment is more explicitly discussed. Discussing his early

INTRODUCTION

3

academic years, Friedhelm Nierhaus, for instance, has written a helpful 5 study of the young Kant’s views on the mind-body relation. Turning to the Critique, in the 1960s Friedrich Kaulbach published a number of studies arguing that the central part of this work may be interpreted as a 6 reflection upon self-conscious, embodied movement. Friedrich Kambartel later argued that Kant’s theory of the categories may be read 7 (at least in part) as a theory of embodied practice. Within the Anglo-American Kantian tradition, the significance of the body in his early philosophy has been explored by, among others, Alison Laywine, Susan Meld Shell and Andrew Carpenter, to mention only a 8 few. Kant’s reflections on embodiment have also received an increasing amount of attention through the growing interest in his ideas on pedagogy and anthropology, stimulated by, amongst other things, the publication of volume 25 of the Academy edition containing his lectures 9 on anthropology. As for the Critique, the idea that parts of its theory refer to embodied events, acts or practices has been suggested by, among 10 others, Sarah L. Gibbons, Lorne Falkenstein and Howard Caygill. Most 11 radically this approach has been followed by Arthur Melnick. In 5

Nierhaus (1962). Kaulbach (1960, 1965, and 1968). It may be worth noting that while in the texts referred to here he seems to be taking it for granted that Kant’s critical philosophy is a philosophy of the body, he later appears to be more cautious. In his Philosophie als Wissenschaft from 1981 he suggests that the notion of embodied acts and practices were first incorporated into Kant’s transcendental philosophy towards the end of his life, cf. Kaulbach (1981), 101. 7 Kambartel (1976). 8 Shell (1996) demonstrates convincingly how throughout his life Kant held a continuous interest in the embodied aspects of human life, and also how this interest is reflected in his philosophy. Where the period up to the Critique is concerned, the philosophically most systematic studies I have found in English, besides Shell’s study, are Laywine (1993) and Carpenter (1998). Also worth mentioning is Kitcher (1990) which, moreover, gives valuable information on the intellectual context in which Kant’s ideas of mind and body were moulded. I also want to draw attention to Schönfeld (2000) who even if he does not see the mindbody problem as the young Kant’s central concern, still offers a comprehensive discussion of the topic. Cf. also Ameriks (2000). 9 A survey of relevant literature regarding Kant’s pedagogical and anthropological ideas is found in Munzel (1999), 1ff. Here I want to emphasise Pitte (1971 and 1978), Brandt (1999) and Zammito (2002). 10 Cf. e.g. Falkenstein (1995). Cf. also Gibbons (1994) and Caygill (1995). 11 Cf. Melnick (1989). I came across Melnick’s work just as I was about to finish my own, thus, I do not relate extensively to it. On a number of points I think 6

4

INTRODUCTION

Norway Jens Saugstad has defended what he calls an externalist interpretation of the Critique, arguing, for instance, that Kant’s theory of the categories should be interpreted as a theory referring to what he calls 12 behavioral techniques. Despite the highly valuable efforts of these authors and others working along similar lines, I think more work is needed in order to establish a proper grasp of this important aspect of Kant’s philosophy. We need to see how his reflections in this field are more than just fragments. They form a philosophy of embodiment that underlies much of his philosophical activity throughout his life. There are also problems and aspects of this philosophy of the body that are still neglected or 13 poorly understood. I hope that the present work will make a positive contribution in this respect. When I started to work on Kant some years ago, my interest was originally in the Critique and its interpretation. In a sense, I still think of the present work as essentially a study of the Critique, or to be more specific, of certain central parts of the Critique, such as its cognitive theory (often referred to as Kant’s transcendental psychology), its theory of experience, and its transcendental idealism. My understanding of these parts, however, has changed dramatically. When I first approached the Critique, my understanding of the text conformed more or less to the mainstream interpretation found in standard textbooks. According to this, the Critique is not a text dealing with human embodiment. However, I soon started to notice how terms that normally refer to embodied acts and practices abound on its pages. I started to ask myself whether Saugstad, whose work I had then just become acquainted with, might not after all be right in his claim that Kant’s theory of the categories should be interpreted as a theory referring to behavioral techniques, or what I prefer to call embodied practices. Melnick’s position conforms to the one defended here, such as his attempt to interpret Kantian notions like space, time and the categories as referring to embodied human behavior. Nevertheless, there is also a sense in which his project diverges from mine. His main approach is systematic, and he places little emphasis on showing that the ideas he presents, and which he claims to be Kantian, conform to or are supported by Kant’s actual text. Thus he omits what is most central to my approach, namley to show how extensively these ideas fit in with what Kant actually wrote. 12 Cf. Saugstad (1992, 1993a, 2000, and 2002), and also (1982, 1986, and 1993b). Cf. also Rossvær (1974), Wyller (2000 and 2001) and Svendsen (1999). 13 I have here in mind, for instance, the relation between Kant’s philosophy of embodiment and his transcendental idealism.

INTRODUCTION

5

I could not fail to notice, however, the almost unanimous resistance to this interpretation among my colleagues. A standard criticism I frequently encountered was that this interpretation was incompatible with basic Kantian ideas. One such idea, frequently ascribed to Kant, was the idea of a Cartesian mind, a mind constituted solely by mental acts and processes. Kant’s theory of concepts had to be understood within this Cartesian context, I was told, as a theory referring to inner, 14 mental acts and processes and not to embodied practices. Another objection I met with was that the idea of concepts being practices belonged to a later period in the history of philosophy. It was a Wittgensteinian conception, presupposing the intellectual climate of the late nineteenth or early twentieth century, and could not have appeared as early as the eighteenth century. 15 Susan Meld Shell’s work The Embodiment of Reason, in which she explores the significance of the body in Kant’s philosophical reflections in works published before and after the Critique, inspired me to pursue my own investigations into these texts. The results astounded me. While the Critique presents us with a theory of an abstract subject with certain abstract skills and abilities which make experience possible, in these texts Kant explicitly and vigorously defends the idea that man as we know him is an embodied being, experiencing the world in and through the body, or better, as a body. In some of these Kantian works we also find what I will call a life-world perspective that takes into account not only the material or physical, but also the social conditions under which we live our lives. I had originally started to read these texts in order to learn more about the context in which the Critique emerged. I soon realized, however, that they also deserved to be studied in their own right. Of course, in these texts we also find highly abstract and formal arguments like the ones occurring in the Critique. However, through my reading of these texts a different image of the famous Königsberger emerged from that of the abstract and lofty thinker. They revealed a Kant deeply involved in the philosophical project of exploring the basic significance of our physical and social existence. As part of this project we find philosophical theories and perspectives that are stunningly modern, for instance, what I will call a pragmatic theory of embodied rationality, a theory inviting us to study rationality at the level of human behavior or 14

For a discussion and criticism of Cartesian interpretations of Kant, cf. Collins (1999). 15 Shell (1996).

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INTRODUCTION

practice. This theory, I shall suggest, was developed in part inspired by Rousseau, who, I think, had a far more profound influence on Kant than most interpreters have acknowledged. In both Kant and Rousseau we find expressions of a deep respect for the skills and practices of the common artisan and everyday life. This, I suggest, is far more than just superficial admiration, but serves as the basis for revising the very concept of rationality. The first part of the present work deals with what I have found most significant in my reading of Kant’s early publications, as well as some works published after 1781, the year the Critique first appeared. I see this first part as an independent work that might have been published separately because it draws attention to some aspects of Kantian philosophy that, even if they are now receiving more attention than they used to, are still too little known within the general community of philosophers, let alone among the wider public. However, this first part is included in the present work because I think it also has an important role to play in understanding the context in which the Critique should be interpreted. That a work has to be interpreted in context, and that this should include what its author wrote at other times, is of course neither new nor foreign to interpreters of Kant. With a few exceptions, however, the works I explore in the first part of this work have not generally been regarded as really relevant to the Critique, and I think this has been detrimental to our understanding of it. Even if the Critique contains some philosophical reflections that have few if any parallels outside it, we also find strong continuities between the Critique and the works just referred to. A number of concepts with a central function in the Critique also appear in these other Kantian texts. More than one of the questions discussed in the Critique is also examined there. By including these texts in the context within which we interpret the Critique, therefore, we are in a better position to understand this central piece of Kantian philosophy than we would be if they were ignored. Finally, by reading the Critique in this context, we are able to respond to those who claim that the theoretical reflections of the Critique cannot be taken to refer to embodied events, skills or practices, because Kant did not care about the body, or that such reflections were foreign to the intellectual climate of the eighteenth century. By becoming acquainted with the writings discussed in part one of this work, we discover that Kant both could and did ascribe a basic significance to embodied events, skills and practices in his philosophy in a way that may seem radical even today. Reading the Critique in the context of these

INTRODUCTION

7

texts, therefore, makes it easier to accept that embodied events, skills and practices may have a similar function there. It is impossible to write a work like the present one without entering into a discussion about Kant’s intellectual development. In my view, this development is characterized by both continuity and change. Continuity first: throughout his life, Kant took it as evident that human life as we know it is embodied. Central in this respect is the idea of the embodied mind, i.e. the idea that the mind of a living human being is not a freefloating mental entity that can be studied in abstraction from the body. On the contrary, as it has no life that we know of except its embodied life, it can only be examined and understood in its communion with the body. From start to finish, through all the changes and transformations that his thinking underwent, Kant continued to defend this idea. However, this very same idea that remained constant is also responsible for one of the most significant developments in Kant’s thought. It began as he started to reflect on its epistemic implications. Early signs of such reflections can be seen when he was still quite young and are found in most of his so called pre-critical works and they were triggered by the following problem. If human existence is radically embodied, then it follows that there is no other way of exploring the world except in and through the body. This means not only that a tenable cognitive theory has to explain how the body is used to establish knowledge of the world, it also implies that all knowledge has a subjective origin, which may be specified by reference to the specific constitution of our body, its position within the world and its capacity for action. This, however, raises a troubling question. If the origin of our knowledge is subjective in the sense specified, how is objective knowledge possible? My idea is that Kant, especially from the mid-1760s, was preoccupied with answering this question, and that his transcendental philosophy, as found in the Critique, is the outcome of this endeavor. It may be read as a theory of how man as a self-conscious embodied being confronts the world, how he is totally dependent on his body in establishing knowledge of this world, how he employs certain embodied acts and practices to explore it, and, finally, how such acts and practices make objective knowledge possible, i.e. objective knowledge in a Kantian sense. This interpretation conflicts not only with most other interpretations, it also seems to be incompatible with how Kant defines transcendental philosophy in the Critique. In part two of this work I shall maintain that a careful reading of the Critique reveals that this is not the case. Not only do there exist embodied acts and practices that serve as a priori conditions for knowledge in a Kantian sense, and not only is it possible to

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INTRODUCTION

deduce a philosophical position from this fact, but there are also passages in the Critique that support the view that Kant himself held this position. I also argue that Kant’s transcendental idealism is the outcome of reflections on the facts of human embodiment. The reason why there is no way in which we can arrive at a detached, objective perspective of the world from which we can see it as it is in itself, as perhaps its creator sees it, is the subjective origin of our experience due to the fact that, qua embodied beings we are always limited to the specific perspective offered by our bodies. This also accounts for the specific epistemic status that Kant ascribes to objective knowledge. Objective knowledge is possible, but not of the world as it really is, only as it appears to us. Compared with most works on Kant published today, this one is different. It does not concentrate on a limited part of the Critique or other text. It is more global and examines a large number of texts he wrote over a period covering most of his intellectual career. While there is obviously a place for philosophical studies that focus on a limited text and examine it in minute detail (what, following Thomas Kuhn, we might call ‘puzzle-solving’), I think Ameriks is right, in the passage quoted at the beginning of this introduction, that sometimes it is also profitable to broaden the perspective. Sometimes, distance helps you see what is missed from close up. On the other hand, such a perspective also makes it hard or even impossible to see each and every detail in the material studied. So, each perspective has its advantages and disadvantages. I would maintain, however, that both perspectives are useful and consequently that global studies like the present one should be accepted as legitimate. I would also maintain that in the present case the global perspective is needed in order to establish and get across the intended message. First, throughout his career Kant reflected upon the fact that human life is embodied and how this affects us. Secondly, reading the Critique in this context makes it appear in a different light from the one standard interpretations suggest. The literature on Kant, after two hundred years of research, debate and interpretation, is vast, and the day is long past when a scholar could 16 hope to have anything like a complete overview of the field. Today, even someone working on only a limited aspect of Kant’s philosophy has this problem. It goes without saying that in the present study this problem is even more acutely felt. I have responded to this in a number 16

Zoeller (1993), 445 comments that over the past twenty-five years, scholarship on Kant has taken on ‘colossal proportions, effectively defying summary assessments and manageable presentation’.

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of ways. With some exceptions, I have given priority to recent secondary publications over older ones. I have also given priority to those scholars who address topics or perspectives that are relevant to my own discussion. As for the Critique, this approach has led me to ignore works that in other contexts would have been indispensable. For instance, as I do not examine the logical structure of the so called transcendental arguments of the Critique, of which the transcendental deductions of the categories are the more famous, I have generally ignored the secondary literature discussing these arguments. Seen from the position of mainstream contemporary research on the Critique, this may appear as unforgivable neglect. However, given the extent of the territory covered here, attempting to deal with the transcendental deductions as well would have resulted at best in merely paraphrasing what other commentators have already said much better. So I am happy to leave the transcendental deductions to those who have more time and energy to devote to them. This, of course, also reflects my general priorities. This work is not intended to be yet another contribution to mainstream Kant research, but an attempt to draw attention to aspects of Kantian philosophy that deserve more attention than they have so far received. A note on translation and citation: the titles of Kant’s works are all rendered in English, as are all quotations from his works. The original terms or phrases used by Kant are added in brackets whenever I think it may help. Passages I have translated myself are marked ‘a.t.’ In citing the Critique, I refer, as is customary, to the pagination of the original ‘A’ (1781) and ‘B’ (1787) editions. All other references to Kant’s works cite the volume and page number of the Academy edition. The pagination of the Academy edition is also included in most standard translations of Kant's works, such as the English Oxford Edition. A number of people deserve to be thanked for the generous help offered me in support of my work. I would like to thank Associate Professor Steinar Mathisen at the University of Oslo for the good advice and support that he offered as I worked with the doctoral dissertation that has now become this book. I would also like to thank Dr. Trevor Curnow of St Martin's College, Lancaster (England) for copy-editing the text and the Norwegian Research Council for meeting the expense involved. First and foremost, however, I wish to thank Professor Jens Saugstad at the University of Oslo. His academic work on Kant has been a constant source of inspiration.

1. THE EMBODIED MIND It is noteworthy that the only form we can think of as suitable for a rational being is that of a man. Any other form represents, at most, a symbol of a certain quality of man – as the snake is an image of evil cunning – but not the rational being itself. 1 From Kant’s Anthropology

In this passage from his Anthropology, Kant reflects upon what he sees as a remarkable fact, which is that the only proper form we can think of as a symbol of a rational being is the form of a human being. Even if he does not explicitly say so, it is clear from the context that this is the form of an embodied human being. What is it about the embodied human being that makes it the only proper symbol of rationality? Is it its upright position, the shape of its head or other organs, or is it the way it moves and interacts with the world? The above passage does not answer this question. However, at some level, a connection is suggested between the human body and rationality. One of the central aims of this work is to explore in more detail how, according to Kant, the body is involved in human rationality. This aim will be pursued as part of a more general project, addressing central topics within his philosophy such as his ideas about the relation between mind and body, his cognitive theory and his epistemology. By ‘cognitive theory’ I mean, roughly, a theory aiming to describe how our experience of the world is constituted. In what follows, ‘rationality’ will be used to denote those aspects of human cognition that are associated in Kant’s theory with the higher cognitive faculties such as the understanding [Verstand] and the power of judgment [Urteilskraft]. Cognitive theory is to be distinguished from epistemology, understood as the theory 2 concerned with whether our beliefs are true or justified. Cognitive 1

Ak VII: 172. The distinction here suggested between cognitive theory and epistemology conforms to Henry Allison’s distinction between a psychological and an epistemic condition, cf. Allison (1983), 11. By a psychological condition Allison means some mechanism or aspect of the human cognitive apparatus that is appealed to in order to provide a genetic account of a belief or an empirical explanation of why

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theory does not appear as an independent discipline in the Kantian corpus, but reflections on human cognition are typically integrated into other discussions dealing with topics such as cosmology, physiology, pedagogy or anthropology. Even in the Critique, epistemology is Kant’s main interest, not cognitive theory. However, passages dealing with what we now call cognitive theory are clearly present in several Kantian texts, and they increase both in number and in volume along with the development of his thoughts. This work is divided in two parts. While its second part is dedicated to a study of the Critique, this first part, comprising chapters 1 to 3, rests mainly on the study of works published before and after the appearance of Kant’s groundbreaking masterpiece in 1781. These are, among others, Living forces from 1747, Universal natural history and New elucidation, both from 1755, Maladies of the mind from 1764, Dreams of a spirit-seer from 1766, Directions in space from 1768, the Inaugural dissertation from 1770, Orientation from 1786, On the common saying from 1793, and then finally Anthropology, Logic and On pedagogy, all published during Kant’s latter years. Dedicated to a wide range of topics and representing different phases in his intellectual development, these texts nevertheless all justify their place in this work because they deal with various aspects of our present concerns, such as the relation between 3 mind and body, cognition and rationality. we perceive things in a certain way, and which includes physiological as well as narrowly psychological factors. An epistemic condition, on the other hand, is appealed to in order to account for the objective validity of knowledge. Allison’s use of the term ‘psychology’ here corresponds to what I call ‘cognitive theory’. 3 In addition to the above mentioned texts, a number of Kant’s unpublished lectures are of relevance to the topics discussed here, especially his unpublished lectures on metaphysics and anthropology. ‘Unpublished’ here means unpublished by Kant. Most of them have subsequently been published in the Academy edition. These lectures are today receiving an increasing amount of attention, but are not included in the following discussion, except for occasional and mostly indirect references. One reason for not including them is to prevent this work from growing too voluminuous. Then comes the specific interpretative challenges following from the fact that they were published without Kant’s supervision. As we know them today, they are based on lecture notes taken by students. This raises the question of whether these students were reliable witnesses. To illustrate the difficulty in answering this question, Reinhold Bernhard Jachmann, a student and friend of Kant, claims that the notes taken from his metaphysics lectures are not always reliable, due to the fact that the students frequently misinterpreted what Kant was saying, cf. Gross (1993), 117. There is also the problem how to decide the status of the content of the lectures

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This first chapter is dedicated to an investigation of Kant’s general ideas about mind and body as put forward in the above-mentioned texts, including some general remarks on cognition. It teaches us that throughout his life, when he discussed the mind and body, he almost exclusively emphasized how deeply the mind as we know it is ingrained in the body. This I will call Kant’s idea of the embodied mind, or perhaps better, his idea of the embodied self. It is the idea that in man as we know him, that is, man as a biological being in a world of physical objects, mind and body form a whole in the sense that all the operations of the mind, understood in a broad sense, depend on, and are conditioned by the body. This also means that human cognition, according to Kant, is embodied: the constitution and functioning of the human body determine, in ways that will be specified below, how we represent the world. While this first chapter deals with the embodiment of cognition at a more general level, the second chapter explores in more detail Kant’s theory of spatial experience, that is, his account of how it is possible for us to experience objects in space. As we shall see, the body is central to this theory as well. Finally, in the third chapter I investigate some of Kant’s remarks on human rationality found in some of the abovementioned texts, especially those dealing with pedagogy, logic and anthropology. Here he also demonstrates a remarkable interest in the body, an interest reflected both in the general framework and the details of his theory of rationality. This first chapter is also divided into several parts. First come some brief remarks on the general intellectual background against which Kant unfolded his reflections on mind, body and cognition. Special emphasis is placed on the existing tradition of metaphysics, and the emergence of the new study of anthropology in eighteenth-century Germany. Then follow some remarks on the phases into which his intellectual career is often divided, and on the nature of the young Kant’s philosophical enterprise. Then, finally, we will approach the texts to be investigated in this chapter, one by one, to see what they reveal about his ideas about mind and body and the embodied nature of cognition in general. As the aim of this chapter is to give a general overview of how these ideas developed, I

even if we assume that the students were accurate in their notes: To what extent do the lectures represent Kant’s own views, and to what extent do they represent ideas that Kant for some reason chose to present as part of his official role and duty as a public servant?

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shall also take a brief look at some relevant passages from the Critique, even if the main treatment of that text belongs in part two.

1.1 Seele, Gemüt and Geist I will normally use ‘mind’ to translate three German terms; Seele, Gemüt and Geist. By this I do not mean to imply that the three terms, when used by eighteenth-century Germans, always meant the same thing, or that they did to Kant. Nevertheless, they often did. According to Grimm’s Deutsches Wörterbuch all three terms were used in eighteenthcentury Germany to refer to the mental or spiritual part of man in general. In this usage the meanings of the terms included both the contents of our consciousness and what made this consciousness possible. Additionally, both Geist and Seele were sometimes used in an even more general sense, denoting the life of an organism in general, or what gave it life. These meanings also reappear in Kant’s use of the three terms. Often he switches between Geist, Seele and Gemüt in a way that makes it hard to see why he uses one term instead of another. To the extent that he distinguishes between the three terms, there is a tendency, at least in the more mature Kant, to use Gemüt in contexts where cognitive issues are discussed, and Seele in more ontologically oriented discussions. The distinction here suggested belongs, however, to the mature years of his intellectual life. In his earlier writings it is not yet established and there the term Seele is the dominant one, used both when the context is metaphysics and when the discussion deals more explicitly with cognitive issues. However, the terms Geist and Gemüt are sometimes also used in a similar way. This is why I will normally translate all of them as ‘mind’. When it seems more natural, however, I occasionally render Seele as ‘soul’ and Geist as ‘spirit’. Where it seems necessary or helpful to do so, I indicate the original German word being translated.

1.2 Empirical and rational psychology and anthropology In eighteenth-century German philosophy there were two main contexts in which the mind or the soul was discussed and these were rational and empirical psychology. While the first aimed by means of logical proofs to reach knowledge of the ontological nature and status of the soul, and thus may be counted as a branch of metaphysics or ontology, the second 4 allowed empirical statements to be included in its body of knowledge. 4

A brief but good introduction to the empirical psychology of eighteenth-century Germany is found in Klemme (1996), 15ff., cf. also Hatfield (1992).

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Both these forms of psychology belonged within a more comprehensive system of disciplines. In the system of the eighteenthcentury German philosopher Christian Wolff, whose works were frequently read at German universities, a distinction was made between what he called ‘general metaphysics’ [metaphysica generalis] and ‘special 5 metaphysics’ [metaphysica specialis]. The task of general metaphysics, according to Wolff, was to discover the nature of things in general. Special metaphysics had three branches: cosmology was the a priori science of every possible material world; rational theology was the science of the existence and attributes of God as far as they could be known by rational argument; and then, finally, there was rational psychology. Even if it may be argued that, strictly speaking, they did not belong there, Wolff included chapters on empirical psychology in both his German and his Latin works on metaphysics. In his Latin Metaphysica he introduces the chapter on empirical psychology with a proof for the existence of the human soul. He points to the fact that we have consciousness of ourselves as well as of objects outside us. From this the existence of the soul is proven by means of a syllogism. Klemme makes a good point, I think, in remarking that the structure of Wolff's proof here 6 demonstrates a close link between empirical psychology and cosmology. By this syllogistic proof, the existence of the mind is established in Wolff’s system. The deeper, ontological nature of the soul, however, remains to be explored. This is the task of rational psychology. In his rational psychology, Wolff argues that the soul is simple, immaterial and 7 immortal. In his system the task of explaining how it is possible for soul and body to communicate also belongs to rational psychology. The reason why this problem belongs here is obvious. Rational psychology proves that the soul is immaterial, but if it is immaterial how can it communicate with a body conceived to be material? In empirical psychology, it is the actual life of the soul as it may be observed through introspection that is the topic, which is why this problem does not belong there. This does not mean that the body is irrelevant to the empirical psychologist. To the extent to which the mind is influenced by the body, the body and its ways of influencing the mind are of concern to empirical psychology. This is not an insignificant point. It means that the 5

For a general overview of Wolff’s metaphysics, see e.g. Tonelli (1967) and Klemme (1996). 6 Klemme (1996), 19. 7 Ibid., 17-19.

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communion of mind and body was discussed at two levels within eighteenth century German philosophy, resulting in two parallel discourses. One belongs to empirical psychology and there the 8 communion of mind and body was regarded as a fact, not a problem. The problem arises only when we move to the discourse of rational psychology. The problem there is to explain the communion of mind and body given the radical difference thought to exist between them. In what follows I will refer to this as ‘the ontological mind-body problem’. In seventeenth and eighteenth-century European metaphysics several possible solutions to this problem were presented and discussed, among these the theory of influxus physicus or real interaction, the idea of preestablished harmony, and occasionalism. In addition to empirical and rational psychology, a third discipline in which the mind was examined and discussed emerged during the eighteenth century, namely anthropology. One of its roots was empirical 9 psychology. Like empirical psychology it considered the community of mind and body to be a fact and not a problem, a fact, moreover, to be examined by empirical observation. However, it also included within its field of study other aspects of human life, such as culture, habit and society. Through his lectures in anthropology, which he gave regularly throughout most of his academic career (starting in 1772 but based on 10 reflections that may date back as far as 1757 ), Kant signaled an acute interest in the new discipline, and also a positive attitude towards the new approach of studying man that was associated with it. In an early anthropology lecture he said that he saw the advantage of anthropology over psychology in that it observed not only the soul, but the whole 11 human being. To be aware of the disciplines within which the human mind and its relation to the body were examined and discussed in eighteenth century German philosophy is important as it helps us arrive at more adequate interpretations of the texts dealing with this topic. Within the disciplines 8

To say that the community of mind and body is here a fact, means that it is taken as a premise that is not questioned. Thus, within empirical psychology one is allowed to investigate or speculate upon the various effects that the body exerts on the mind (or vice versa) without being troubled by the ontological task of explaining how this is possible in the first place. 9 For the development of anthropology in Germany, cf. Klemme (1996), 14ff. and also Zammito (2002). 10 Cf Pitte (1978), xi and (1971), 11. 11 Ak XXV: 471.

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just mentioned different questions were asked, which meant that they were looking for different kinds of answer. Consequently, in order to come up with a fair evaluation of whether or not an author succeeds in a certain text, it is necessary to know which discipline he associated himself with when he was writing it. It is not always easy to decide within which context Kant is operating when he discusses the mind-body relation. He discusses this relation in 12 texts dealing with topics as varied as cosmology, medicine, epistemology, anthropology, pedagogy and logic. There is evidence, however, that at an early stage he adopted an agnostic attitude towards the mind-body problem in its ontological form. I shall return to this later.

1.3 Some preliminary remarks on Kant’s intellectual development In the secondary literature surrounding the Kantian corpus the claim is often advanced that Kant’s intellectual development may be divided into more or less distinct phases. Even if there is no general agreement on the number and nature of these phases, the idea of a threefold structure is often suggested. First, we have a pre-critical phase which includes his early years. Then we have his critical phase, the years that saw the publication of the three Critiques. Finally, there is his later years, when he was struggling to develop a new or revised philosophical outlook, as evidenced by the notes compiled and published in what is now known as his Opus postumum. As for Kant’s pre-critical phase, it has been argued that it too may be divided into phases. According to Ameriks, Kant began as an empiricist, turned toward rationalism in 1756, shifted to a skeptical position in 1766, 13 and finally adopted a quasi-critical point of view after 1768. Beiser in his study of Kant’s early intellectual development identifies four phases as 14 well but they are different from Ameriks’. According to Beiser, Kant was initially infatuated with metaphysics, then became disillusioned in 1760, partially reconciled himself with metaphysics in 1766, and finally liberated himself from metaphysical concerns in 1772. Just as there is no agreement on how best to divide Kant’s intellectual development into phases, so there are various answers to the question of how his projects and their aims are best described. In part two in this work I will briefly look at some interpretations of the Critique. Where his 12

In Maladies of the mind. Ameriks (2000), 11ff. 14 Beiser (1992). 13

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early years are concerned, he is typically regarded either as a traditional metaphysician or as a philosopher of science, or both. Michael Friedman may be seen as representing the second view, in characterizing the young Kant as a committed and sophisticated Newtonian, who attempted to 15 construct the philosophical underpinnings of the Principia. Schönfeld presents a version of the first view by claiming that the underlying theme of Kant’s early philosophy was the attempt to reconcile natural science and metaphysics, or, more specifically, to help construct a unified, nondualist model of nature. Inside this model, the young Kant hoped it would be possible to harmonize Newtonian physics with the main assumptions of metaphysics, i.e. the presence of purpose in the world, the 16 possibility of freedom, and the existence of God. Many views also prevail concerning which philosophers or traditions influenced the young Kant. There is a longstanding tradition within Kant scholarship of looking at the young Kant as a dogmatic follower of Leibniz. I think Tonelli is right, however, in claiming that even if he was influenced by Leibniz, at no point was he a dogmatic disciple of the great 17 German philosopher. Further, an overemphasis on Leibniz may easily overshadow the fact that Kant also oriented himself in other directions. Tonelli reports that when Kant started his philosophical career, Leibniz had for a long time been subject to the criticisms of the Pietist school of philosophers, of which Crusius was a distinguished member. Against the rationalism of Leibniz, Crusius argued that the domain of human knowledge was more limited than the rationalists assumed, a point Kant also adopted. And even if Kant never became an orthodox follower of 18 Crusius, his early philosophy was clearly influenced by him. Other influences included Hume, Locke, Reid, Tetens, Lambert, Condillac, 19 Newton and Rousseau, to mention just a few. This variety of philosophers and thinkers to whom Kant related in the development of his own thoughts should alert us, I will argue, to their 15

Friedman (1992). Schönfeld (2000), 10. 17 Tonelli (1969), LI. 18 For the influence of Crusius on Kant, cf. also Wundt (1924), 70. 19 Kant’s contemporary Ludwig Ernst Borowski reports that Kant was extensively concerned with Hume and Rousseau, cf. Gross (1993), 69. Rousseau’s influence is also emphasized by Pitte (1971), Cassirer (1981) and Zammito (2002). As for Kant’s relation to other thinkers, cf. also Beck (1969a), Vleeschauwer (1962), Kitcher (1990), Kuehn (2002), Schönfeld (2000), Vorländer (1977), Kaulbach (1982), and Beiser (1987). 16

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diversity. Instead of seeing his early reflections as part of a single major philosophical project, inspired by just one or a few philosophers and centered on only one problem or set of problems, I think an approach that acknowledges a variety of dimensions is preferable. Throughout his life he was engaged in dialogue, whether real or imaginary, with a wide range of philosophical and academic traditions and with a number of philosophers both living and dead. His reflections may be seen as prompted by and commenting upon thinkers as different as Leibniz, Newton, Hume and Rousseau. And as is the case with any great philosopher, I think that the philosophy resulting from this is far too rich and multifaceted to be summed up in any single formula. This is also why I am skeptical of a too strict adherence to the idea that Kant’s intellectual development is to be divided into phases. The principal division of his philosophical career into a pre-critical phase and a critical phase is entirely reasonable, but when it comes to dividing the pre-critical years into different phases I think we should be more cautious. It is better, I think, to see his early years as representing a multidimensional development in which many questions, problems, themes and perspectives were elaborated alongside each other. Of course certain ideas, perspectives and inspirational sources stand out as more important than others. As for those who inspired him, I will be emphasizing Rousseau, not because he was the only one who helped Kant develop his own ideas, but because I think his influence on Kant has still not been adequately understood. It is also the case that he stimulated Kant’s philosophical reflections in areas that are highly relevant to this work. As for Kant’s intellectual development, I will underline, among other things, his evolving agnosticism towards ontology, along with what I conceive to be a growing empiricism and a constantly more outspoken pragmatism. I will argue that these three elements combined to form a powerful influence in his philosophy. Dreams of a spirit-seer from 1766 in many ways epitomizes the development here suggested. This text represents a radical agnosticism towards ontology, combined with a just as radical empiricism. This empiricism, moreover, may be regarded as an embodied empiricism, i.e. an empiricism that ascribes to the immediate experience of being in a body an epistemic status that no theoretical speculation can undermine. The text also has a strong pragmatic tone, demanding that priority should be given to knowledge that is useful, i.e. knowledge that improves the quality of life on earth. The development here suggested, I will argue, may also account for a significant change that took place in Kant’s cognitive theory sometime between 1750 and 1770. In the beginning, when he explored how human cognition depends on the body, his focus was on the internal

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organic constitution of the body. At some point, however, this approach was broadened to take embodied acts and practices into account as well. It may even be argued that he gave these acts and practices priority in his cognitive theory. I will argue that he did so not only because these acts and practices are easy observable, which was of significance relative to his empiricism, but also because they could be developed and perfected and so become more useful, which was of significance in the context of his pragmatism. The young Kant’s ontology in the field of mind and body has been frequently discussed.20 One of the views put forward is that in his early years he subscribed to a Leibnizian model according to which both mind and body were of a monadic nature, and also that he conceived of the mind as an independent monad within this model. My intention is not to enter deeply into this discussion about ontology. However, I cannot help but note that in my reading I have never come across any passages where Kant explicitly maintains this position. Instead, as has already been noted, he seems to be following what we might today call a holistic approach, according to which mind and body should not be perceived as two independent entities, monads or substances, but rather as different sides, aspects or dimensions of one being or substance, that is, man as we know him. Whether Kant conceived of this as an ontological model, i.e. as a model competing with the theories put forward by the rational psychologists of his time, is a question to which I do not have a definite answer, but I shall offer some further reflections on this point later.

1.4 Living forces The mind and its relation to the body preoccupied Kant from the very start, as we can see from his first published writing, Living forces from 1747. He wrote this text while he was still a student at the Herzog Albrecht University of Königsberg, before financial problems following the death of his father forced him to abandon his studies and earn a living as a tutor. Very roughly, the topic of the text is the concept of force and the question of whether this concept should include only those forces operating from outside an object, or whether it should include more than this. Kant argues for the second option, seeking inspiration from a 21 Leibnizian concept of force. 20

Cf. e.g. Nierhaus (1962), Carpenter (1998), Laywine (1993) and Schönfeld (2000). 21 For a further discussion of this text, as well as for biographical notes about its genesis, cf. Kuehn (2004), 89f, Shell (1996), 10ff. and Schönfeld (2000), 19f.

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Kant is known for having later considered the text a thorough embarrassment and most interpreters have agreed with him. Schönfeld, for instance, writes: An unsuspecting reader of the Living forces, who thinks that the Bdeduction in the Critique of Pure Reason is the most difficult text in Kant’s oeuvre, will be in for a surprise. Studying Kant’s first book is 22 an extraordinarily strenuous and frustrating undertaking.

Even if Schönfeld has a point, it should not be exaggerated. I agree with 23 Nierhaus when he says that this early text represents both an interesting and for the most part consistent piece of philosophy, and perhaps even more important, it is a text in which Kant approaches topics that will preoccupy him for most of his career. Let us return to the question of the relation between mind and body. A characteristic feature of Kant’s approach in Living forces is that both this question and its solution are part of a general discussion of the concept of a world. A world is a totality [Ganze] of objects [Wesen, Dinge] that stand in real connections [wirkliche Verbindung] to each 24 other, he argues. This connection, further, is established by the exchange of forces. He is obviously operating here within the discipline that is called cosmology within the Wolffian system. 25 The relation between mind and body is first addressed in § 5. Kant here discusses how to explain the fact that a physical impact on the human body provokes changes in the mind. The problem, he explains, is that metaphysics tells us that the two, matter and mind, are of different kinds. How, then, do they communicate? How is it possible that a force that only causes movement could also produce representations and ideas? These things are so different [unterschiedene Geschlechter von Sachen] that it is impossible to 26 conceive how the one may be a source of the other.

In the next paragraph he goes on to ask how it is possible for the mind to move matter. This problem is closely related to the first, he argues, and equally intriguing. However, as we shall soon see, he claims to be able to solve them both. The solution, he argues, is found by adopting a Leibnizian theory of force and movement. 22

Schönfeld (2000), 19. Nierhaus (1962), 12ff. 24 Ak I: 22. 25 Kant here, as well as in the rest of this text, uses the term Seele. 26 Ak I: 20, a.t. 23

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What is this theory? He approaches the answer indirectly, by first formulating the view to which he is opposed, namely, the idea that force is something that affects bodies [Körper] only from the outside. Further, according to this view, only moving bodies possess force, that is, only a body that moves has the capacity to influence another body. A resting body, consequently, does not possess force. This, Kant claims, has been 27 the dominant view up to Leibniz, with the exception only of Aristotle. In addition to Aristotle, Leibniz is mentioned as a philosopher who understood more about the concept of force than others: Leibniz saw that a body possesses an essential force even prior to its extension. This 28 he called its ‘working force’. Unfortunately, according to Kant, Leibniz’s followers misunderstood this concept and so his project may be understood as motivated by the intention to restore the theory of working force to its original state. Due to the brief and rather unsystematic character of the text, it is not easy to determine exactly what the theory is that Kant is proposing. Here is an example of his style, taken from § 4, where for the first time he purports to be give a positive account of his theory: Nothing is easier than to deduce the origin of what we call movement from the general concept of working force. The substance A, which force is directed to work outside itself (that is, to change the inner state of other substances), either immediately finds an object which 29 receives its entire force, or it does not.

What does the above passage tell us about Kant’s theory of force and movement? In the first sentence, he draws a distinction between working force and movement, but he does not say what he means by movement. If we consider the context, however, ‘movement’ seems to be used in its normal sense denoting the movement of material objects in space. What is the relation between such a movement and a working force? The concept of a working force has something to do with the origin of a movement, we are told. More precisely, if we search for the origin of a movement, then this origin may be deduced from the concept of a working force. Does this mean that a working force is simply the origin of a movement? Let us see what the next sentence of the passage says. Here, the working force of a substance is said to be that in the substance which makes it possible for it to work outside itself? What does a substance do when it works outside itself? One possible answer is that it creates a 27

Ak I: 17. Ak I: 17. 29 Ak I: 19, a.t. 28

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movement. An example of such a movement may be when substance A hits substance B and creates a movement in the latter. Is this what Kant has in mind? This seems to be a reasonable answer. However, if we examine what Kant adds in brackets in the above sentence, the answer seems not to be exhaustive. When a substance A acts on a substance B, then ‘the inner state’ of B is altered, Kant tells us. What does he mean? I take his theory to be this. A substance may be described under two perspectives. The first we may call the external perspective. Central to this perspective is extension and position in space. When we describe the movement of a substance in space, then this description takes place according to this external perspective. Then there is what we may call the internal perspective, focusing on the inner aspect of the substance. Kant does not explain in detail what we find when we establish this internal perspective. From the text, however, we may infer that the concept of working force belongs to this internal perspective. That is, when we ascribe to a substance a working force, then the description of this force takes place according to this internal perspective. The concept of working force, moreover, seems to be part of a theory claiming that what we observe as an external movement taking place in space typically has its origin within the substance. And also when a substance is externally affected, the effect involves more than what we observe from the outside. It affects its inner state as well. When a substance A acts on a substance B, we may consequently distinguish between three moments of the corresponding event. First, we have the working force of A considered as the origin of the event. In order to conceptually identify this force, we have to establish an internal perspective on A. Then we have the external movement in which A externally exerts its force on B. This is described according to the external perspective. In this process, however, something also happens with the inner state of B. In order to conceptually identify this, we have again to establish an internal perspective.30 31 This is only meant as a rough interpretation. Instead of going deeper into Kant’s theory of working forces, I would like now to show how he uses it to explain the communion of mind and body. Before we can do this, however, we have to consider another idea from Living forces. Space is not a structure existing independently of the substances existing 30

Kant seems also to be arguing that sometimes two substances may interact without external movement taking place, for instance when a substance acts at another without overcoming its resistance, see §§ 4 and 5. 31 For more details see e.g. Nierhaus (1962), 13ff.

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in it, but is constituted through the physical interaction of these substances: It is easy to demonstrate that no space and no extension would exist if a substance had no force to work outside itself. For without this force there is no connection, without this no order, and without this, 32 finally, no space.

Kant also argues that the specific three-dimensional character of space as we know it is a product of the specific laws according to which substances interact in our universe. We are now in a position to see how Kant uses his general theory of forces and substances to explain communication between mind and body. This explanation is found in § 6 and the paragraph is divided in two parts. The first concerns how the mind affects other substances, the second how the mind is affected by other substances. Unfortunately, again the argument is not unambiguously clear. Let us, however, start with the first part of the argument. A basic premise of this argument is the idea just presented, that space is constituted by the interaction of substances. The argument, further, seems to contain two propositions. The first states that the mind is able to produce changes outside itself and thus to partake in the general interaction of substances. The second states that the mind has a spatial position. Exactly what is the logical relation between these propositions? Kant starts by posing the question of whether the mind has a working force, that is, whether it has the capacity to work outside itself. The answer has to be positive, he argues, due to the fact that the mind has a position in space. That the mind has a position in space is here presented as a fact, and thus seems to have the status of a premise. Kant then proposes what I take to be another premise of the argument, the idea that space is constituted by the interaction of substances. So his argument seems to be that since the mind has a spatial position, and space is constituted by the interaction of substances, we may infer that the mind partakes in the general interaction of substances, which again means that it is capable of producing changes outside itself. Here is the argument.33 32

Ak I: 22, a.t. Nierhaus (1962), 19 argues that Kant’s theory of space in Living forces is ambiguous. Sometimes he treats space as an epiphenomenon of the interaction of substances, sometimes space seems to be a condition of the possibility of such interaction. If this is so, it may explain why Kant’s account of the relation of the two premises just mentioned is not totally clear. 33

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The question of whether the mind [Seele] may cause movements, namely, if it has a moving force, turns into this one: whether its essential force may be judged to have an outbound force, that is, whether it is capable of creating changes in other beings [Wesen]? This question may be quite decisively answered in the following way: the mind must be able to work outside itself, because it inhabits a place [weil sie in einem Orte ist]. For when we analyze the concept of what we call place, we find that it points to the reciprocal effects of 34 substances on each other.

I will not discuss whether this argument is tenable or not. The author himself, however, seems to be convinced that the question has been settled and that the argument explains how it is possible for a mind to produce effects outside itself. And it is just as easy, Kant argues, to understand how physical objects may imprint representations and images in the mind. Matter in movement influences everything with which it is spatially connected, and that includes the mind. It is just as easy to understand the seemingly paradoxical statement on how it is possible that matter, which we imagine can produce nothing but movement, may in fact imprint upon the mind certain representations and images [der Seele gewisse Vorstellungen und Bilder eindrücke]. For matter that is brought to move, works on and in everything that is connected with it in space [was mit ihr dem Raum nach verbunden ist], thus, also the mind [Seele], that is, it changes its inner state in so far as it relates itself to the external [in so 35 weit er sich auf das Äußere beziehet].

Exactly what theory of the mind does this line of argument imply? I think Nierhaus is on the right track when stating that no general distinction 36 between mind and body is made in this text. Nierhaus suggests instead that Kant’s view here is a sort of monism according to which physical movement and thinking are seen not as activities performed by different kinds of substances, but as different forms of expressions [Erscheinungsbilder] of substances that are basically similar 37 [gleichartig]. As I read Living forces Kant here defends a model according to which mind and body are nothing but different aspects or dimensions of the human being, perceived as one substance. An argument in favor of this interpretation is that in discussing the 34

Ak I: 20-21, a.t. Ak I: 21, a.t. 36 Nierhaus (1962), 27. 37 Ibid., 17. 35

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communion of mind and body, Kant claims that this may be explained as a special case of a general principle governing all interactions between substances. In all such interactions both the outer and the inner aspects of the substance are involved, he argues. This suggests that he took the mind to be the inner aspect of the ‘substance man’. If so, this explains why he thought that the communion of mind and body could be understood by reference to this general theory of interaction. Kant’s idea was not that the mind interacts with other substances qua independent substance, but that it does so in virtue of being the inner aspect of the substance man. Regardless of whether this interpretation is correct or not, we may regard it as established that in his very first publication Kant states as an obvious fact that mind and body are intimately united. And as we will see, this is an idea that will stay with him for the rest of his life. In Living forces we also find signs of another idea that will stay with him, namely that cognition has both a passive and an active aspect. Cognition is a passive process to the extent that our representational state is changed following externally caused impacts on the mind. It is active to the extent that the mind modifies its representational state through its own activity. In Living forces the idea is not yet explicitly expressed in this way, but it is clearly present in a primitive form. Most interesting, perhaps, is the fact that in his very first published writing Kant is already explaining the three-dimensionality of space by reference to human activity. The fact that we represent the world as having three dimensions, and that we cannot represent it in any other way, he says, is due not just to the specific way in which substances in our world interact in general, but also to the fact that we are ourselves part of this interaction. This means not only that we are affected according to the rules of the world, but also we 38 also act outside ourselves according to these same rules. As I will argue, Kant will later claim, for instance in Directions in space and also in his Anthropology, that our representation of space is constituted by embodied acts. Even if the present text is too brief and too abstract to allow us to come to a firm conclusion, the above passage may nevertheless be read as a precursor to this theory. If so, we have here found yet another idea that is to stay with Kant for the rest of his life. Shell goes a step further and argues that Kant’s theory of the constitution of space through embodied activity in Living forces anticipates by almost forty years his critical treatment of space and time 38

Ak I: 24.

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39

as forms of intuitions in the Critique. Schönfeld objects that such a claim credits the young Kant with greater originality than the text 40 justifies. In the dispute between Shell and Schönfeld much depends on how Kant’s critical theory of space is interpreted. I will argue later that in the Critique Kant sees space, considered as a form of intuition, as constituted by embodied acts. If this is so, then Shell’s claim is perhaps better founded than it may at first seem. However, the fact remains that Kant’s account of the constitution of space in Living forces is very brief and we should perhaps try not to deduce too much from it.

1.5 New elucidation In 1755 two works by Kant were published. One of them, New elucidation, was written as a Latin dissertation and helped him achieve the status of Privatdozent at the Herzog Albrecht University. As he did in Living forces eight years earlier, in New elucidation Kant puts forward a theory according to which the relation between mind and body is explained in the context of a general theory of interaction between substances, i.e. the context is cosmology. A world, he argues in New elucidation, as he did in Living forces, consists of a number of substances included in the same space and reciprocally conditioning each other through a dynamic interplay of physical forces. The mind, he maintains, participates in this interplay of physical interaction. This is how Kant presents his argument. Substances may only be changed when in connection with others. So a substance totally isolated from other substances would be unchanging. This also applies to changes in the inner condition of a substance. In a world that was free from all motion (for motion is the appearance of a changed connection), nothing at all in the nature of 41 succession would be found even in the inner states of substances.

Following this, he argues that no change in the mind of a human being would occur if the mind did not interact with physical (i.e. external) things.

39

Shell (1996), 21. Schönfeld (2000), 42. 41 Ak 1: 410. 40

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For it follows immediately from what we have demonstrated that, if the human soul were free from real connection with external things, 42 the internal state of the soul would be completely devoid of changes.

What may we infer from this? First, Kant claims, the above principle proves that, contrary to what idealism teaches, the body really exists. It also supports those who claim that a finite mind has to be connected to an organism: And should anyone, perchance, seek to provoke a dispute with me, I should refer the matter to the modern philosophers who unanimously and as with one voice openly declare that the connection of the soul 43 with an organic body is necessary.

As representatives of this view, he points to those he loosely calls ‘the moderns’, and Crusius is mentioned as one. According to Crusius, so Kant tells us, the endeavor of the mind to have representations always 44 corresponds to an endeavor for outer movement. Here embodied movement is again associated with cognition. In a highly interesting passage Kant then faces an imaginary critic 45 accusing him of being a materialist. It is true, he admits, that his theory seems to lie close to materialism. Instead of explicitly denouncing materialism, however, he targets what he takes to be a fatal flaw in a purely idealist view of the mind. The idealist contends that the mind operates independently of all physical interaction. But, he asks, would not this imply the idea of an unchanging mind, or worse, would we not then deprive the mind of the capacity to represent altogether? Regardless of what changes Kant’s thinking may have undergone between Living forces and New elucidation, his theory of how the mind communicates with the body, and thus, indirectly also with the physical universe, seems to be more or less the same in the two texts. In both texts we learn that the mind, conceived as the inner aspect of the human substance, partakes in the general interaction of substances, because this is how all substances interact. Moreover, in all such interaction, the inner as well as the outer aspect of the substance are involved. If this is so, then it is obvious why the mind has to partake in the general interaction of 42

Ak I: 412. Ak I: 412. 44 Ak I: 412. 45 Ak I: 412. 43

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substances. It does so in virtue of being the inner aspect of the substance man. Let us now proceed to he second work that Kant published in 1755, Universal natural history.

1.6 Universal natural history At a general level, the topic of Universal natural history is the same as 46 that of the other texts examined so far. It deals with the physical universe. Its aim, more precisely, is to explain the present structure of the universe without presupposing divine intervention. In a remarkable appendix, Kant then proceeds to discuss the relation between mind and body. To most modern readers, his approach in this appendix must seem exotic as he enters into a hypothetical discussion concerning life on other planets. If we assume that the other planets of our solar system are inhabited by intelligent beings, he asks, what would they be like, given the differences in physical conditions prevailing on those planets? Regardless of the exotic character of this question, however, and the hypothetical nature of the discussion, the appendix is worth studying. What we should look for is what ideas underlie the discussion. Among these we find the idea of a very intimate integration of mind and body. Let us take a closer look at the text. Due to gravitational force, Kant argues, the planets orbiting near the sun are composed of a denser and heavier matter than the more distant planets. If thinking beings exist on all these planets, these differences in material conditions will probably influence their cognitive processes in a radical way.47 More specifically, he argues that the inhabitants of the more distant planets, being composed of a lighter and finer matter are likely to surpass the cognitive powers of their neighbors closer to the sun. Not only will their senses be so constituted that the representations they receive are clearer and more vivid, but their capacity to think, that is, to connect and use these representations will also be swifter and more appropriate than that of their more unfortunate neighbors. Kant writes:

46 47

For the story behind the publication of the text, see Vleeshauwer (1962), 17. Ak I: 352.

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…. we can conclude with more than probable confidence that the excellence of thinking natures, the promptness in their reflections [die Hurtigkeit in ihren Vorstellungen] the clarity and vivacity of the notions [Begriffe] that come to them through external impression, together with their ability to put them together, finally also the skill in their actual use, in short, the whole range of their perfection, stands under a certain rule, according to which these natures become more excellent and perfect in proportion to the distance of their habitats 48 from the sun.

As we see from this passage, as part of his hypothetical discussion concerning the cognitive skills of extraterrestrial beings, Kant presents a radical theory of an intimate integration of mind and body. Despite the infinite distance between mind and body, he argues, it remains a fact that the mind receives all its representations and concepts from the impressions that the universe produces in it through the body. And not only does the capacity to receive representations depend on the body but the capacity to connect and compare these representations, he argues, is also conditioned by the matter of which the body is constituted. Whatever the infinite distance between the ability to think and the motion of matter, between the rational mind [Geist] and the body, it is still certain that man – who obtains all his notions [Begriffe] and representations through the impressions that the universe through the mediation of bodies [vermittels des Körpers] evokes in his soul, both in respect of their meaning [der Deutlichkeit derselben] and of the readiness to connect and compare them, which man calls the ability to think – is wholly dependent on the properties of that matter to 49 which the Creator joined him.

The anatomy of the human body is also introduced in the discussion. The coarse nature of the matter of which the earth is composed is reflected in human anatomy, Kant argues, making it gross and inflexible. This, again, affects our cognitive functioning. The nerves and fluids of the human brain, for instance, and their lack of flexibility, are part of the reason why most people find it so hard to think clearly:

48 49

Ak 1: 359. Ak I: 355.

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If one looks for the cause of impediments, which keep human nature in such a deep abasement, it will be found in the crudeness of matter into which his spiritual [geistiger] part is sunk, in the unbending of the fibers, and in the sluggishness and immobility of fluids that should obey its stirrings. The nerves and fluids of his brain deliver to him 50 only gross and unclear concepts …

He thinks this also explains why old age normally leads to a decline in cognitive functioning. Because of this dependence, the spiritual [geistigen] faculties disappear together with the vigor of the body: when owing to the slackened flow of fluids advanced age cooks only thick fluid in the body, when the suppleness of the fibers and the nimbleness in all motions decrease, then the forces of the spirit too stiffen into a similar dullness. The agility of thought, the clarity of representation, the vivacity of wit, and the ability to remember lose their strength and 51 grow frigid.

As part of the discussion of mind and body, Kant also discusses whether 52 our immortal souls are reborn on other planets. Even if the term ‘immortal soul’ may seem to signal an ontological position on his behalf, it is worth noting that his remarks are here characterized by an explicit agnosticism. Despite what our senses and consciousness tell us, he argues, we do not really know what a human being is. And we know even less about the afterlife: It is not really known to us what man really is today, however selfawareness and reason [Bewußtsein und die Sinne] should instruct us on this point; how much more may we err as to what he is to become eventually! Still the human soul’s thirst for knowledge reaches out eagerly after these topics so distant from here and strives to find some 53 light in such a dark [field of] knowledge.

The idea that the mind is perhaps reborn on other planets is nothing but a fantasy, Kant concludes. When the discussion turns to more earthly matters, however, and he considers how body and mind are related in a 50

Ak I: 356. Ak I: 357. 52 Ak I: 367. 53 Ak I: 366. 51

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living human being, he is more decisive. Psychology teaches us that mind and body communicate: It is clear from the principles of psychology that in virtue of the actual arrangement by which the creation made soul [Seele] and body dependent on one another, the former not only must obtain all concepts about the universe through union with the latter and under its influence, but that also the exercise of the faculty of thinking depends on the latter's disposition and borrows from its support the 54 necessary ability.

What is the relation between the ideas of mind and body promoted in this text and the two other texts so far examined? First, it may be worth noting that in Living forces and New elucidation, Kant presents his ideas about the communication between mind and body within a more comprehensive theory dealing with physical interaction in general. In the appendix to Universal natural history no such context is present. True, the cosmological context is present in the first main part of the text, but cosmological arguments, i.e., arguments dealing with the general interaction of substances, are absent from the appendix. Here we enter a different context, one more related to that found both in the short text Maladies of the mind published a few years later, and also in the Anthropology. In these texts the community of mind and body is not discussed at a general level, that is, as something in need of a general explanation. It is simply presupposed as something obvious, and the discussion revolves instead around the question of how at a very concrete level the body affects our mental or cognitive processes. On the basis of the similarity between the three texts, I will argue that Kant’s discussion in the appendix of Universal natural history belongs within the context of 55 empirical psychology, or even anthropology. At first sight, this may escape our attention, due to both the hypothetical character of the discourse, and also, perhaps, the cosmological nature of the first main part of the text. Yet, if we look at the basic structure of the ideas present in the appendix, they are remarkably similar to what we find in Maladies of the mind and parts of the Anthropology. That the appendix of Universal natural history belongs within the theoretical context of empirical psychology or anthropology may also account for the fact that Kant here expresses an explicit agnosticism, for 54

Ak I: 355, footnote. The medical content of Maladies of the mind may here also be sorted under the anthropological. 55

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instance when the question of the afterlife is raised. He does not deny that we, in some way or other, may live on after death, in fact, I think he most certainly believed that we did. Still, it is remarkable to see how elusive he is when the matter is discussed. We know neither what man really is, nor what he will become, he says, not only denying that we have decisive knowledge of what happens after death but extending his agnosticism to the question of what man really is, i.e. man considered ontologically. How then can he be so confident when it comes to the actual relation between mind and body in a living human being as we know it? The answer is that the relation on this level may be studied empirically. According to its program, the empirical psychology of the eighteenth century was an empirical discipline, and so was anthropology. Thus Kant may safely discuss, in the context in which he has now placed himself, for instance, how the material constitution of the body affects the mental and cognitive processes of man, being confident that, in doing so, his statements are (or at least may be) confirmed by observation. As Nierhaus also points out, Universal natural history promotes the idea 57 that mind and body are somehow different, but explicit statements regarding the ontology of mind and body and their community are avoided. Instead the community of mind and body is simply taken to be 58 an indubitable fact of the experience [Tatsache der Lebenserfahrung]. As we shall soon see, both the agnosticism and the empiricism of Universal natural history are more than passing fancies on Kant’s behalf. Indeed, I shall argue that they combine to form a strong basis for his subsequent reflections.

1.7 Maladies of the mind An example of this is found in the small text Maladies of the mind from 1764. I do not want to put too much emphasis on this text, but within the present context it deserves some attention. In it, Kant develops a typology of mental illnesses associated with a theory of cognitive capacities. Mental illnesses may be divided into three main categories corresponding to the main faculties or powers of the mind, he explains. Among these he mentions reason [Vernunft] and the power of judgment [Urteilskraft]. Whenever one of these faculties deteriorates a specific kind 56

Ak I: 366. Cf. e.g. Ak I: 355. 58 Nierhaus (1962), 30. 57

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of mental illness results. In his description of the functioning of the mind, Kant also includes what in other contexts is called imagination [Einbildungskraft]. He describes the capacity of the mind to ‘paint 60 pictures of things that are not immediately present’. When this capacity is disturbed there occurs the mental illness called Verrückung. What is interesting in all this is not only that we recognize the perspective from Universal natural history but it is also worth noting how the cognitive powers of the mind, later to appear in the elevated spheres of transcendental philosophy, are here discussed within the down-toearth field of mental diseases. Kant more than suggests that these diseases 61 are caused by bodily disturbances. He warns against what he takes to be a common prejudice of his time, namely the assumption that mental illnesses have only mental causes. Contrary to this common belief, the causes of mental illnesses are primarily to be sought in bodily 62 disturbances, he claims. The idea that mental diseases are caused by bodily disturbances is also implied by his constant shifting between the notion of a disturbed head [Kopf] or brain [Gehirn] on the one hand and a disturbed mind [Gemüt] or soul [Seele] on the other, as if it were obvious and beyond dispute that these corresponded to each other. Maladies of the mind is a text devoid of any ontological hypotheses. This does not mean, however, that Kant has now put all interest in ontology behind him. On the contrary, two years later, in 1766, ontology again becomes a major topic of discussion. However, the approach is now more critical and agnostic than ever.

1.8 Dreams of a spirit-seer Dreams of a spirit-seer from 1766 is one of the most commented on of all Kant’s works apart from the three Critiques. Its association with the Swedish mystic Emmanuel Swedenborg, its dialectical and ironic style, and its critical examination of central aspects of traditional ontology have continued to intrigue readers up until our own time, resulting in a 63 number of commentaries. It is often seen as heralding a new critical 59

Ak II: 264. Ak II: 265. 61 That physical decay may negatively influence our cognitive functioning, was maintained also in Universal natural history, cf. Ak I: 357. 62 Ak II: 270. 63 For a discussion of Dreams of a spirit-seer and its significance within in Kant's development, as well as a survey of various interpretations of this text, see for instance Laywine (1993), 15ff. or Shell (1996), 106ff. 60

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outlook in the development of Kant’s philosophy. On the surface, the work is written as an examination of the ideas of Swedenborg. Kant lets it be understood, however, that indirectly the examination also relates to certain aspects of traditional ontology, more specifically rational psychology and its claims to possess decisive knowledge about the human mind or soul. Among those ascribing a fundamental significance to Dreams of a spirit-seer in Kant’s intellectual development are Laywine and 64 Schönfeld. According to them, because Kant’s earlier discussions of the mind-body problem had been infected by dubious ontological assumptions, a fact he now realized, the text may also be read as a critical examination of Kant’s own position before 1766. In fact, they argue, this was the real aim of the work. The real target of Dreams of a spirit-seer was neither Swedenborg nor rational psychology in general, but Kant’s own previously held position. Consequently, Dreams of a spirit-seer represents a crisis in his pre-critical project. I will return to discuss this idea of a crisis a little later. First, however, let us take a look at the text. From the very outset he establishes a sarcastic, critical tone which is going to characterize large parts of the text. If we add together all that schoolboys and philosophers have to say about spirits [Geister], he comments, then it may seem that we possess quite a lot of knowledge in this field. However, this is hardly the case. If it were to occur to someone to linger for a while over the question as to what this thing which, under the name of spirit [Geist], people claim to understand so well, exactly is, all the know-alls would be put 65 in a very embarrassing position.

For his own part, Kant admits, he does not know what a spirit is. He 66 does not even know what the term ‘spirit’ means. In order to sort out his thoughts concerning what a spirit is, and also, we must assume, the thoughts of the reader, he then asks us to perform a thought experiment. Imagine a cubic foot of space and imagine it to be filled up so that 67 nothing more can be placed inside it. No one would refer to such an entity as spiritual as it would obviously be of a material nature. And it would possess all the properties we typically ascribe to a material object, 64

Cf. Laywine (1993), 8ff. and Schönfeld, (2000), 238ff. Ak II: 319. 66 Ak II: 320. 67 Ak II: 320. 65

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such as extension and impenetrability. Imagine now a simple being endowed with reason, Kant continues, thereby introducing a definition of spirit well-known to rational psychology. If such a simple being were to be placed inside this same space, would we then have to remove some of the matter already in there? And if so, could we then continue to replace matter with spirits until the whole space was filled with spirits instead of matter? And if this were possible, what would this cubic foot of space be like then? Would it still offer resistance if we tried to insert a material object into it? If that were the case, would it not then be indistinguishable from a cubic foot of matter? Between the lines Kant lets it be understood that the whole idea of replacing matter with spirits is absurd. However, he asks, if it is absurd, how can we then explain that the human mind, which we assume is a spirit, interacts with physical entities, such as the human body to which it belongs? If we subtract from the human mind all the essential features we ascribe to matter, such as the capacity to fill a space and to offer resistance, how can we then explain its interaction with the body? Then the argument takes a somewhat unexpected direction. There are several features of our experience that it is hard to explain, he tells us. The impenetrability of matter is one example. Experience teaches us that matter offers resistance, but we cannot explain how it is possible for it to do that. The impenetrability of matter is acknowledged [erkannt], but 68 not understood [begriffen]. We become aware through experience, that those things that exist in the world, and which we call material, possess such a force; the 69 possibility of this, however, can never be understood.

Kant’s point in the last passage is that there are phenomena in the world that we experience as real even if we cannot fully comprehend them. This idea of a limit to the human understanding is then presupposed when Kant returns to discuss the communion of mind and body: It is possible that spirits may be present in space and may communicate with material bodies, even if we cannot understand how this communication takes place, he states. 68

Ak II: 322. Ak II: 322 (a.t.). My translation here differs from the Cambridge edition. Here is the original: ‘Denn nur durch die Erfahrung kan mann inne werden, daß Dinge der Welt, welche wir materiell nennen, eine solche Kraft haben, niemals aber die Möglichkeit derselben begreifen.’ 69

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Is this all there is to say, then? The limit to the human understanding that Kant has just defined, seems to imply that the answer is yes. We are therefore in for yet another unexpected turn of the discourse, when Kant now puts forward a suggestion as to how we may conceive of the presence of spirits in physical space. They are present in space as activity: Such spirit-natures would be present in space, but present in space in such a way that they could always be penetrated by corporeal beings; for the presence of such spirit-natures would involve being active in 70 but not filling space.

The way this observation is phrased might lead us to think that Kant is here merely putting forward an hypothesis towards which he is himself neutral or even skeptical, and which is, consequently, of little significance or relevance to his own thinking. However, we should not rush to judgment. What he is doing is presenting a theory of how a spirit can be conceived, without contradiction, to be present in space alongside physical objects, or even in the same place as them, without interfering with the repulsive forces offered by such objects due to their material character. Spirits can do this because they do not exist in space in the same way as material objects do, that is, as extended objects filling up space. They exist in space as activity. A few lines later Kant makes a connection between this idea, which has so far been discussed only at a general level (i.e. concerning spirits in general), and the question of how the mind [Seele] may exist in the body. The relevance of this question to the more general discussion of spirits is clear: if the mind is a spirit in the sense just suggested, then we can understand how it is possible for it to inhabit the same space as its body without conflicting with the material properties of this body. This is possible because the mind is present in the body not as an entity with its own extension or repulsive forces, but merely as activity. And even if he does not say so explicitly, I think we may here add that it is present as the activity of the body, or perhaps better, as the activity of the embodied self. It is apparent from the many reservations Kant brings to his presentation of this theory that he does not wish it to be accorded the status of hard science. The best we can say in its favor, he seems to be saying, is that it is not contradicted by experience. From this we might be tempted to conclude, again, that he attaches little significance to the theory, but I think that would be a mistake. His reservations tell us 70

Ak II: 322.

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something of how he conceived of the epistemic status of the theory. It is an hypothesis, but, he stresses, one that is not refuted by experience. Even more important, however, is that associated with this hypothesis is a particular idea that, I will argue, stands out from the others. This is the idea that we may use the terms ‘mind’ or ‘soul’ to refer to the activity of the embodied self. From now on, whenever Kant uses these terms, we must be aware that this meaning may be part of their meaning. ‘Activity’ is here to be understood in a broad sense, akin to the German Wirksamkeit, including both the biological processes of the body as well as the conscious and unconscious behavior of the embodied self. The two terms, it should be noted, also continue to carry their earlier meanings, referring to our capacity to sense, feel and think, as well as our consciousness of this. When the term ‘soul’ is used a little later in the text, all these meanings, I believe, are implied. Kant here states, as an irrefutable fact of experience, that the soul is present wherever its body is: Where is the place of this human soul in the world of bodies? My answer runs like this: the body, the alterations of which are my alterations — this body is my body; and the place of that body is at 71 the same time my place.

What about those who claim that the mind or soul is present only in one particular place in the body, such as the brain? They are misled by a certain way of reasoning that is not confirmed by experience, Kant argues: But no one is immediately conscious of a particular place in his body; one is only immediately conscious of the space one occupies relative to the world around. I would therefore rely on ordinary experience and say, for the time being, where I feel, it is there that I am. I am as immediately in my fingertip as I am in my head. It is I myself whose heel hurts, and whose heart beats with emotion. And when my corn aches, I do not feel the painful impression in some nerve located in my brain; I feel it at the end of my toe. No experience teaches me to 72 regard some parts of my sensation of myself as remote from me.

Kant seems to be taking it as an obvious fact, directly confirmed by experience, that the human mind is present in every part of the body. However, he denies that we may infer from this that the mind, 71 72

Ak II: 324. Ak II: 324.

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ontologically considered, is extended, that it has a certain shape, or that it has other properties in common with a material object. All we can say is that its domain of activity is congruent with the space of the body. Immediate presence in the totality of a space only proves a sphere of external activity; it does not prove a multiplicity of internal parts, nor, 73 therefore, any extension or shape.

Instead of delving deeper into the highly fascinating text of Dreams of a spirit-seer, let us return to the question put forward above. To what extent does Dreams of a spirit-seer involve a criticism of Kant’s previous position? And to what extent does Dreams of a spirit-seer represent a new critical or even skeptical trend in Kant’s way of thinking about mind and body?

1.9 A crisis? Both Laywine and Schönfeld claim that Dreams of a spirit-seer represents a crisis in Kant’s intellectual development, and that its real target was his own previously held ideas on the mind-body relation. Both base their argument on the claim that in his pre-critical phase Kant 74 subscribed to an ontology of a Leibnizian kind. This ontology committed him to the idea that the mind was an independent monad present in space in the same way as other monads, Laywine argues, that is, by exerting attractive and repulsive forces. Actually, he had to presuppose this, Laywine argues, for only a mind endowed with such forces would be able to interact with the body. Still, this view also entailed a serious problem, or even contradiction for if the mind had repulsive forces, how could it be present in all parts of the body, or inhabit the same space as the body, as Kant assumed? Would it not rather produce an irresolvable conflict between its own repulsive forces and those of the body? The possibility cannot be absolutely ruled out that in his early years Kant subscribed to an ontology of a kind that made him face such a problem, and that this led him into a crisis as the one here suggested. However, when one examines his explicit remarks on the topic, it is far from obvious that he did. As I have already pointed out, in the two texts where he discusses at a general level how it is possible for mind and body 73 74

Ak II: 325. Cf. Laywine (1993), 1ff. and Schönfeld (2000), 243ff.

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to communicate, his theory seems to be not that the mind is an independent monad but rather that a human being must be thought of as a single substance of which mind and body are nothing but different aspects or dimensions. It is not obvious that this theory is affected by the problems that, for instance, Laywine claims Kant was facing. According to Schönfeld, Kant also struggled with the problem of combining on the one hand the idea that the mind was part of the physical universe and on the other the idea that it was immortal. Kant was committed to the idea that the mind or the soul continued to exist after it left its mortal body, Schönfeld maintains, and he wanted his general theory of the world to have room in it for this idea of immortality. I think there is little reason to doubt that Kant believed in the afterlife of the soul. However, I do not see it as obvious that he perceived this idea as a problem in need of a philosophical solution. If he did, he would surely have raised it and discussed it more explicitly. However, the immortality of the soul almost never surfaces in Kant’s explicit discourse, and when it does, for instance in Universal natural history, it is combined with an explicit agnosticism. Despite what our senses and consciousness tell us, Kant argues, we do not really know what 75 a human being is, and we know even less about the afterlife. It may also be worth noting that he does not seem to find this agnosticism problematic. On the contrary, he seems to be entirely happy to move the question of the immortality of the soul out of the realm of philosophical discourse and into the field of belief. In his critical phase, the idea that the soul is immortal was explicitly classified as an ‘idea of faith’. Kant’s explicit agnosticism in Universal natural history may be read as a sign that this perspective may have been present as early as 1755. If so, the idea of immortality would hardly have had the force to provoke a philosophical crisis. Finally, if Dreams of a spirit-seer is the product of a crisis following Kant’s previous ontological commitments, one would have expected him to now abstain from any further excursions into this dubious field of human enquiry. However, as we have seen, in Dreams of a spirit-seer Kant does not reject ontology in an absolute sense. The idea that the mind is present in the body qua activity does not have to be regarded as an ontological thesis. However, by claiming that this idea is compatible with the idea that the mind as such is single and without extension, he is obviously thinking against the background of classical ontology. He even seems to adopt the above-mentioned idea as his own position within this 75

Ak I: 366.

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field. Does this mean that despite the explicit agnosticism of Dreams of a spirit-seer, Kant here still puts forward an ontological position? Again, we must be careful to see what he is actually doing. He does not claim that it is possible to prove that the mind as such is single and without extension. All he says is that this idea is compatible with the idea that the mind is present in the body as activity. Whether the first of these ideas is true or not, however, he leaves open. Thus, the basic outlook here too is agnostic. Whether this outlook was new in 1766 is another question. As already suggested, the explicit agnosticism of Universal natural history may suggest that it was present as early as 1755. If so, this also undermines the claim that Dreams of a spirit-seer is somehow the product of a crisis developing in the years immediately preceding its publication.

1.10 An embodied empiricism If Dreams of a spirit-seer is not the product of a crisis in Kant’s intellectual development, what is it? How does it fit into this development, especially where his theory of the mind is concerned? Rather than representing a crisis, I think that Dreams of a spirit-seer may be read as a text where he sorts out and re-emphasizes perspectives and ideas that have already been part of his thinking for some time. Let me elaborate on this point. I take the basic perspective of Dreams of a spirit-seer to be agnostic and empirical. Its basic message is that agnosticism is required in all that cannot be immediately experienced. Nothing in this is new. Empiricism is present in Kant’s association with empirical psychology in the appendix to Universal natural history in 1755, and his detailed discussion of the embodied aspects of cognition in this text, as also in Maladies of the mind, may be seen as taking place within the context of this discipline, or even the new discipline of anthropology emerging from it. Agnosticism is, as we have seen, also present in Universal natural history. If not new, however, these empirical and agnostic tendencies appear in Dreams of a spirit-seer in a dramatically more radical form. For instance, Kant directs his agnosticism now not only at the afterlife of the soul, but also at any purported explanation of how it is possible for mind and body to communicate. Actually, even the possibility of explaining the impenetrability of matter is now claimed to belong to the domain where decisive comprehension must be given up. Instead the mind-body communion, along with the impenetrability of matter, are now maintained as facts immediately experienced. Immediate experience, moreover, is claimed to represent a knowledge superior to all theoretical

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explanations. In the terminology of Dreams of a spirit-seer this point is expressed in the distinction between that which is experienced as real [erkannt] and is therefore in some way obvious, and that which it is impossible to comprehend [begreifen] because it lies beyond the reach of human knowledge. The facts that mind and body communicate, and that matter is impenetrable belong to the first. It is something of which we have an immediate experience, and is therefore obvious. Any attempt at trying to explain these facts, however, belongs to the second group, and made subject to agnosticism. It is worth noting that the epistemic superiority ascribed to immediate experience as a form of knowledge is maintained in order to establish a critical or agnostic outlook not only towards ontology, but also, it seems, towards other kinds of theoretical models or explanations. For instance, if anyone should try to locate the mind in a specific part of the body, they are corrected by Kant with his appeal to experience: the soul is present wherever I can experience (i.e. feel) myself, that is, throughout my body. Even if this is not made explicit, we can see here an implied criticism of a materialist science that tries to locate the mind in the brain or the nervous system. Although I have argued that the empiricism of Dreams of a spirit-seer is not new, I think the passages examined so far demonstrate that it is now more radical and more self-confident than it was earlier. Another point worth noting is how this empiricism is very explicitly presented as the empiricism of an embodied subject declaring that its embodied experience has an epistemic status that no theoretical speculations can 76 undermine. Thus, it may be called an embodied empiricism, in contrast with, for instance, Humean empiricism, which is the empiricism of a mind skeptical towards everything existing in the external world, 77 including its body. Against Hume, Kant stresses how the space inhabited by our bodies is also the space in which we immediately feel ourselves to be present. If I am to base my beliefs on what immediate experience tells me (and Kant advises that I should) then I have to conclude that I am where my body is. Historically, Kant’s radical empiricism and the associated agnosticism present in Dreams of a spirit-seer may be seen as having a number of sources. In addition to the scholarly disciplines of empirical psychology and anthropology (both of which share an empirical approach), which 76

This point is also made by Shell (1996), 128ff. I shall return to discuss the relation between Humean and Kantian empiricism in part two. 77

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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, 78 among others, Tonelli, 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 79 also have contributed to the empiricism of 1766. 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 80 examination of our cognitive capacities. 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). Cf. e.g. Borowski’s testimony in Gross (1993), 69. 80 Nierhaus (1962), 116. 81 Shell (1996), 127ff. 79

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Let us attend to our happiness, and go into the garden and work.

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Even if Kant’s reference is here to Voltaire, he might have conveyed a similar message with a reference to Rousseau. In Émile, a book that deeply impressed Kant, the author praises practical work, as well as the knowledge associated with the skills of the practical worker. A number of scholars have suggested that Dreams of a spirit-seer was inspired by 83 Rousseau. Pitte argues that Kant adopted from Rousseau the idea that the attainment of knowledge is not an end in itself, but that all aspects of philosophy must be directed toward the comprehension and fulfillment of the moral nature of man; and that, in general, moral or practical 84 philosophy takes precedence over speculative. In a later chapter I shall argue that the influence of Rousseau gave rise to a strong pragmatic strain in Kant’s philosophy, a strain that is also reflected in his theory of knowledge, even in the Critique. If this is right, then we have found here yet another idea that will underlie Kant’s intellectual development for a long period of time and serve to establish continuity in his thinking.

1.11 Kant’s Inaugural dissertation In 1770, at the age of 46, Kant composed a Latin dissertation for public debate to inaugurate the professorship in logic and metaphysics to which he had recently been appointed. This Inaugural dissertation is often seen as a distinctive step in the development of the critical perspective which found its mature form in the Critique eleven years later under the heading of ‘transcendental philosophy’. The Inaugural dissertation deserves its place in this chapter for several reasons. First, in it Kant sets out a terminology that will thereafter lie at the heart of what might be called his cognitive psychology, which I prefer to call his cognitive theory, i.e., a theory that aims to describe the capacities of human cognition, how they function, and how each of them contributes to the constitution of human experience. Secondly, the transcendental perspective introduced in the Inaugural dissertation opens up a radically new way of discussing and evaluating the ontological mind-body problem. Finally, the text belongs here because it also discusses the mind-body problem in a way reminiscent of Kant’s earlier 82

Ak II: 373. Cf. Vleeschauwer (1962), 41 and Pitte (1971), 46ff. 84 Pitte (1971), 46. 83

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reflections on the topic as he claims that the mind has a virtual presence in the body. I will return to all of these points later. Let us first take a look at the cognitive theory of the Inaugural dissertation. In § 3, Kant draws a distinction according to which all cognitive functions are organized in a bipolar system, in which ‘sensibility’ belongs on one side and ‘intelligence’ on the other. ‘Sensibility’ is defined as the receptivity of a subject by which its representational state is affected by the presence of an object. Sensibility is the receptivity of a subject in virtue of which it is possible for the subject’s own representative state to be affected in a definite 85 way by the presence of some object.

‘Intelligence’, on the other hand, is defined as the faculty by which a subject may represent that which cannot enter its senses. Intelligence (rationality) is the faculty of a subject in virtue of which it has the power to represent things which cannot by their own quality 86 come before the senses of that subject.

Sensibility is described as a passive faculty. Intelligence is said to be 87 active. With our intelligence we perform certain acts without which cognition as we know it would never take place. It is by means of these acts that intelligence adds to our sensible representations its own kind of representations which cannot enter through the senses. Examples of such representations are concepts like possibility, existence, necessity, substance and cause, all required to make experience as we know it 88 possible. In his Inaugural dissertation Kant also introduces the idea that our sensible representations do not tell us how the things of the world are in themselves, only how they appear to our sensibility. Along with this, he introduces the distinction between the matter and form of a sensible representation, i.e., intuition. The matter of such an intuition, Kant tells us, comprises sensations produced by the passive affection of our 85

Ak II: 392. Ak II: 392. 87 The idea that cognition involves activity as well as passivity in the cognitive subject was, as we have seen, found as early as in Living forces. There, however, this idea was not explicitly connected to a theory of sensibility and understanding. 88 Ak II: 395. 86

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sensibility. Its forms are space and time, which are not objective determinations pertaining to things as they exist in themselves, but subjective or ideal forms of our intuition, by means of which the manifold of our sensibility is organized. Time is the form of inner sense, whereas 89 space is the form of outer sense. The organization of the sensible manifold in time and space is made possible, he explains, by a law implanted in our cognitive powers: … and there is also something which may be called the form, namely the aspect of sensible things that arises as the various things affecting 90 the senses are co-coordinated by a certain natural law of the mind.

In this process the mind also reveals itself as active. Where for instance the organization in time is concerned, this is claimed in § 14 to be 91 performed by an ‘action of the mind in coordinating what it senses’. Later, in the corollary to § 15, both time and space are said to be the products of the activity of the mind. 92

But each of the concepts has, without any doubt, been acquired, not indeed by abstraction from the sensing of objects […], but from the 93 very action of the mind… 89

Ak II: 398ff. Ak II: 392. 91 Ak II: 401. 92 The fact that Kant here talks about concepts may be taken to mean that he does not speak about space and time as intuitions, however, in the next sentence he adds that ‘each of the concepts is like an immutable image’ suggesting that ‘concept’ is here not used in the specific sense it typically has in the Kantian terminology, as opposed to ‘intuition’, but in a sense that actually more or less conforms to ‘intuition’. 93 Ak II: 406. Even if the Inaugural dissertation represents a milestone in Kant’s development towards the mature philosophy of the Critique, the terminology and perspectives which we have now taken a brief look at are not all Kant’s own doing. Vleeschauwer (1962), 45ff., for instance, points out that Kant’s general distinction between the matter and form of a representation is also found in the writings of earlier philosophers, such as Lambert and Leibniz. As for Lambert, a philosopher well known to Kant, he taught that in all knowledge it is necessary to consider both the content or matter which is supplied by perception and the form which is found in the laws of logic and mathematics. In the posthumously published Noveaux essais of Leibniz, appearing in 1765, and studied with great interest by Kant, Leibniz defended a model analogous to that of Lambert. The concepts and principles by which we represent the material content of experience are the consciousness of intellectual laws or functions. This material content is represented by the sensible manifestations of things. The intellectual operations, 90

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1.12 A new perspective on the body-mind problem Now, let us look at how the transcendental perspective suggested by the Inaugural dissertation opens up a radically new way of discussing and evaluating the traditional ontological mind-body problem. Kant himself makes this point when eleven years later he discusses the problem in the Critique. Let us briefly examine his argument, found in the paralogism chapter of the A-edition of the Critique. The argument rests heavily on the distinction between appearances and things in themselves. From the fact that physical objects appear to us as extended, he argues, we cannot infer that they are also extended in themselves. On the contrary, extension is nothing but the form of outer sense. This insight, he now argues, may be used to show that the old problem of the community of mind and body [der Möglichkeit der Gemeinschaft der Seele mit einem organischen Körper] is built on 94 nothing but a fantasy. This fantasy, which according to Kant has haunted rational psychology for far too long, involves the idea that extension pertains to objects as they exist independently of our sensibility. At the same time, rational psychology defines the mind as an immaterial substance without extension. So conceived it is impossible to explain how mind and body can communicate. We may escape this dilemma, Kant continues, once we make clear to ourselves that what we perceive as extension in material objects, including our own bodies, is nothing but the form of outer sense. How does this help us to solve the ontological mind-body problem? His point, as I understand it, is not that this insight solves the problem in itself, but it sets us free from the problem by making us see that there is no need to solve it. There is no need to explain how extended, material objects, including our own bodies, can affect and communicate with immaterial minds, because, whatever those objects or bodies are, we have no reason to believe that they, considered in themselves, are extended, material objects.95 Here is a summary of his argument: of which we become aware as they take place, pass into Leibniz’ doctrine of cognitive forms. As for Kant’s cognitive theory, we have seen that parts of its terminology were already present in Maladies of the mind from 1764. This terminology also belongs to a longstanding tradition in philosophy. 94 A 384. 95 Whether Kant’s point is that the things in themselves have no temporal or spatial determinations, or whether his point is more modest, that our knowledge of the ultimate nature of the objects of our world is limited, has been much discussed. I will say more about this in chapter 7.

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Now I assert that all the difficulties one believes he [the dogmatic] finds in these questions and with which, as dogmatic objections, one seeks to give the appearance of having a deeper insight into the nature of things than the common understanding can have, rest on a mere semblance [Blendwerke], according to which one hypostatizes what exists merely in thoughts, and — assuming it to be a real object outside the thinking subject — takes the same quality, namely extension, which is nothing but appearance, for a property of external things subsisting even apart from our sensibility, and takes motion for its effect, which really takes place in itself outside our senses. For matter, whose community with the soul excites such great reservations, is nothing other than a mere form, or a certain mode of representation of an unknown object, through that intuition that one calls outer sense. Thus there may very well be something outside us, which we call matter, corresponding to this appearance; but in the same quality as appearance it is not outside us, but is merely as a thought in us, even though this thought, through the sense just named, represents it as being found outside us. (A 384-385)

As we see, this argument leans heavily on the distinction between appearances and things in themselves. In order to make this point as clear as possible, the argument may be paraphrased as follows. When I observe myself, I perceive nothing but appearances. Through my outer sense, I appear to myself as a body, and as space is the form of outer sense, this body is extended in space. Through my inner sense, I appear to myself as a mind, and as time (only) is the form of inner sense, this mind has no spatial extension. Now, as long as I stay on this level of appearance, the community between my mind and my body is a mystery. How can two phenomena that appear to be so different communicate? However, reminding myself of the distinction between appearances and things in themselves, and applying this distinction to the present case, I realize that what I know as my body and mind are nothing but appearances. They are appearances of an underlying and unknown reality. And once we move to this level of reality, the above problem dissolves. It does so, because on this level we have no reason to believe that mind and body (or whatever corresponds to them at this level) are different in the way they appear on the level of appearance. By rephrasing Kant’s argument in this way, I do not mean to say that Kant suggests that we should move to the level of things in themselves in order to solve the traditional ontological mind-body problem there. That would be quite contrary to the spirit of the Critique and its emphasis that things in themselves lie beyond the reach of human knowledge. Kant’s appeal to this deep level of reality in the above argument is merely negative, reminding us that, as we know nothing about mind and body as

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things in themselves, we also have no reason for believing that their communion is a problem. Another way of stating Kant’s point is that by critically examining our sensibility we understand that the classical ontological mind-body problem is based on a misinterpretation of the representations of sensibility. Without noting, we translate cognitive categories (time and space qua forms of sensibility) into ontological categories pertaining to things in themselves. Once we give up this misinterpretation, the traditional problem dissolves. Instead it reappears in another form, Kant tells us. The problem is now to explain how the representations of the inner and outer sense, in spite of their heterogeneity, are co-coordinated so that they constitute one experience. Now the question is no longer about the community of the soul with other known but different substances outside us, but merely about the conjunction of representations [Verknüpfung der Vorstellungen] in inner sense with the modifications of our outer sensibility, and how these may be conjoined with one another according to constant laws, so that they are connected into one experience. (A 385-386)

In this passage, the body and its community with the mind is not explicitly mentioned. However, along with the general problem of the coordination of outer and inner sense, comes the more specific problem of how to co-ordinate the two modes of self observation corresponding to the outer and inner sense. When I observe myself through the outer sense I perceive what I have learned to call ‘my body’. When I observe myself through the inner sense I perceive what I have learned to call ‘my mind’. What is the relation between what I here call my body and my mind? From the context of the Critique we understand that this question cannot be answered by means of traditional ontology. It cannot be so answered, because this would require a knowledge of body and mind as things in themselves that we can never have. So if it can be solved at all, it has to be solved at another level, by considering how I co-ordinate the two modes of self observation corresponding to my outer and inner sense. Let us call this formulation of the mind-body problem ‘the critical version of the mind-body problem’. Does Kant solve this specific problem? I cannot see that he explicitly deals with it anywhere in the Critique. However, he may have thought that it was solved as part of his general theory of the unity of experience through transcendental apperception. I have paid a lot of attention to the paralogism chapter of the Aedition of the Critique here because I think it represents the position towards which Kant was heading when he formulated his new theory of

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inner and outer sense, with its corresponding distinction between appearances and thing in themselves, in the Inaugural dissertation. As such, it belongs exclusively within the transcendental context established around 1770. However, in a more general way it also continues a trend dating further back in Kant’s career. At a general level, there is a clear link between the agnosticism expressed in Universal natural history, its radical restatement in Dreams of a spirit-seer, and his analysis of the ontological mind-body problem in the Critique. In all of these cases the claim is put forward that there are aspects of ourselves that cannot be known due to the limited resources of our cognitive capacities. Of course, there are also differences. The agnosticism of Dreams of a spirit-seer, for instance, is both more radical and more explicit than that of Universal natural history, and the agnosticism of the Critique is more radical and more explicit still, and also more sophisticated. Nevertheless, when we consider Kant’s agnosticism in these three texts, I think a continuity may be identified.

1.13 Holism in the Critique Before returning to the Inaugural dissertation, I shall examine one more line of argument that Kant brings to the mind-body relation in the Critique. The argument is found in the A-version of the second paralogism of this work. I believe this argument implies that in the Critique Kant still supports a model like the one discussed above, according to which a human being is one substance, of which mind and body are nothing but two aspects or dimensions. Before we turn to the argument, let me add that if my interpretation is correct, it counts against those who assert that Kant’s theory of the mind in the Critique conforms to traditional immaterialism. By traditional immaterialism I mean the view that the mind is an immaterial substance in its own right, a substance essentially different from the body, and that conscious thoughts are ascribed to this kind of substance only. Now let us turn to the A-version of the second paralogism. In an argument starting at A 357, Kant begins by reminding the reader of the now well-known idea that bodies [Körper], according to transcendental philosophy, are nothing but appearances of the outer sense. From this we may justly conclude that our thinking subject is not a body. However, he then continues: Now this is to say in effect that thinking beings, as such, can never come before us among outer appearances, or: we cannot intuit their thoughts, their consciousness, their desires, etc. externally; for all this belongs before inner sense. (A 357)

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As I understand it, Kant is here making the simple and somewhat trivial point that, if by a ‘thinking being’ we mean what comes before our inner sense, then we may also conclude that such a being may never appear before our outer sense. This does not mean, however, that the idea of a thinking being should be associated only with what we inwardly intuit as thoughts, desires, etc. It is possible, Kant argues, to think that the unknown something that lies behind the outer appearances (that is, the unknown something that affects our senses so that representations of space, matter, shape etc. result) also has thoughts. … yet that same Something that grounds outer appearances and affects our sense so that it receives the representations of space, matter, shape, etc. – this Something, considered as noumenon (or better, as transcendental object) could also at the same time be the subject of thoughts, even though we receive no intuition of representations, volitions, etc., in the way we are affected through outer sense, but rather receive merely intuitions of space and its determinations. (A 358)

Kant here puts forwards the idea of a possible thinking being which, even if it affects our outer sense so that we represent it as extended in space, is still a thinking being. Kant further maintains that when we consider this thinking being as a thing in itself, we cannot say that it is extended. However, neither are we justified in ascribing the predicates of the representational content of inner sense to this thing in itself. The most we can say is that these predicates do not contradict the idea of such a thing in itself. Yet the predicates of inner sense, representation and thought, do not contradict it. (A 359)

What are the predicates of inner sense? As I understand Kant, these are the predicates we normally ascribe to the immaterial. So his point may be summarized by saying that it involves no contradiction to think of a thinking being qua thing in itself as immaterial. Even if Kant has so far not explicitly stated that a thinking being qua thing in itself is immaterial, there seems to be a bias in the argument towards immaterialism. Kant seems to be arguing that while we cannot ascribe to a thinking being, considered as a thing in itself, extension, there is no contradiction involved in thinking it to be immaterial. We may thus feel tempted to regard the argument as having come to its

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conclusion. Immaterialism seems to be the more rational option after all. However, let us see how the argument continues. In returning to discuss the idea of a thinking being, which due to the constitution of our sensibility appears to us as extended, Kant now says again that this being (which is now given the status of a substance!) may well be conceived of as having conscious thoughts, even if we cannot observe them. This means, he argues, that the very same thing that from one perspective may be called embodied [körperlich], may from another be thought of as a thinking being, whose thoughts we cannot observe even if we may observe the signs [Zeichen] of this thinking. In such a way the very same thing that is called a body in one relation would at the same time be a thinking being in another, whose thoughts, of course, we could not intuit, but only their signs in appearance. (A 359)

If this line of argument is accepted, Kant concludes, we would no longer say that it is minds [Seelen], considered as a particular kind of substance, that think. We would simply say that human beings think. Thereby the expression that only souls (as a particular species of substances) think would be dropped; and instead it would be said, as usual, that human beings think, i.e., that the same being that as outer appearance is extended is inwardly (in itself) a subject, which is not composite, but is simple and thinks. (A 359-360)

Kant has now put forward an hypothesis about the ontological nature of 96 thinking beings, which, even if it is nothing but an hypothesis, is claimed to be consistent with transcendental philosophy. Exactly what this hypothesis is, is, I think, not unambiguously clear. However, whatever it is, it does not seem to point towards traditional immaterialism, i.e. the idea that the mind is an immaterial substance in its own right, a substance essentially different from the body, and that conscious thoughts may be ascribed only to this kind of substance only. In fact, this idea is explicitly rejected in the above passage. We are asked not to say that minds [Seelen], considered as a particular sort of substance, think. Instead he tells us to say simply that human beings [Menschen] think. What exactly is meant here by the term ‘human being’? What theory or hypothesis is implied by this term and the way it is used here? This is still far from clear. What is clear, however, is that the theory implied 96

Cf. A 360.

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seems not to be a dualist theory. Rather, it appears remarkably similar to the one I suggested was already present in 1747. It involves the idea that 97 a human is not two substances, but one substance. We now learn that this substance may appear in various forms depending on the perspective established. From the perspective characteristic of the outer sense, for instance, human beings appear as extended in space. From another perspective, for instance the perspective established when we talk about a human being as it exists in itself, extension is no longer an issue. However, the different perspectives do not present different things or substances to us. In each and every case there is only one substance present. Only the way we see it, or conceive of it, changes. The same point is maintained when man is considered as a thinking being. It is not this or that part or aspect of man that thinks. It is man, considered as a unity, i.e. as one substance, that thinks. Again, what we may observe about this thinking being, or how we may conceive of it, changes according to the perspective taken. From the perspective characteristic of the outer sense, for instance, we cannot see thoughts as such. However, we can see the signs of thoughts. Due to the brief character of Kant’s remarks, it is difficult to elaborate further the theory implied here. I would also stress that, whatever it is, what he is putting forward is nothing more than an hypothesis. He does not claim that it represents proper knowledge. The only explicit argument given in its favor is that it does not contradict our experience or transcendental philosophy. Still, there seems to be a strong underlying message in the passages just examined that thinking is an activity involving not only a certain hidden or even immaterial part of man. It involves the whole human being, body and mind included. In the second part of this work, I shall discuss how Kant further develops this idea.

1.14 The virtual presence of the mind Let us now return to the Inaugural dissertation and its claim that the mind [Seele] is virtually present in the body. How are we to understand this claim? The idea of the virtual presence of the mind in the body is introduced in the Inaugural dissertation as part of a more general discussion of the immaterial [Unstofflichen] and its relation to matter. All 97

Cf. A 359 where Kant says ‘and thus I can also assume that in the substance in itself to which extension pertains in respect of our outer sense, thoughts may also be present, which may be represented with consciousness through their own inner sense.’ (My emphasis.)

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matter exists in time and space, Kant argues. When it comes to the immaterial, however, this is not so. Its presence in the spatio-temporal 98 world is virtual. In a footnote at the end of the text Kant then describes the mind and its relation to the body as a special case of the relation 99 between the immaterial and the material generally understood. In being immaterial [unstofflich] the mind is not in itself spatial, he explains. That is, having a spatial location is not part of its original nature. An embodied mind may still be said to have a spatial location, however, through its relation with a body. … the soul is not in interaction with the body because it is detained in a certain place in the body; a determinate place in the universe is rather attributed to the soul because it is in reciprocal interaction with a certain body; and when this interaction is interrupted any position 100 it has in space is destroyed.

What theory of the mind is implied here? As before, this is not easy to decide. The fact that Kant includes in this passage a remark concerning the dissolution of the community of mind and body, suggest that he is taking it for granted that the mind survives the body, and even that it may have an existence independent of it. The exact status of this idea is, however, not specified. At present, I will simply draw attention to the notion of virtual presence. Kant does not say exactly what he means by saying that the mind’s presence in the body is virtual. The term ‘virtual’ 101 has an equivalent in the German virkungsfähig. Even if the textual evidence is not unambiguous, I think this suggests that Kant, in the above passage, puts forward the idea that the mind is present in the body qua activity in a wide sense. If this interpretation is right, it seems to point in two directions. First, it points back to Dreams of a spirit-seer. Here we find the idea expressed that the mind is present in the body qua activity, and that the mind is therefore present in every part of the body. It also points forwards to the Critique, and the argument of the A-version of the second paralogism examined above. As we saw, Kant there suggests that a thinking being, which due to the constitution of our sensibility appears to us as extended, may well be conceived of as having conscious thoughts. Moreover, even 98

Ak II: 414. Ak II: 419. 100 Ak II: 419. 101 Cf. Hofmeisters German dictionary (1955). 99

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if we cannot observe these thoughts, we may observe their signs. What kind of signs might these be? And what kind of theory is implied here? My guess is that this theory is more or less the same as the one implied by Kant’s theory of the virtual presence of the mind in Dreams of a spiritseer and the Inaugural dissertation. While the mind as it exists in itself is unknown to us, there are other aspects of the mind of a person that are open to empirical investigation, i.e. facial expressions, gestures, acts, etc.

1.15 Anthropology The Anthropology was first published in 1798 and a second edition followed in 1800, but the text was based on lectures Kant had been delivering since the 1770s. Some of the material in these lectures derived 103 from even earlier ones. Kant was the first to introduce anthropology as a branch of study into German universities, and he took pride in the fact 104 that these lectures were given at no other institution. The Anthropology belongs to the group of Kantian texts generally regarded as of little or no philosophical interest or significance. Reinhard Brandt, one of the editors of volume 25 of the Academy edition containing Kant’s lectures on anthropology, observes that no major [namhafte] study has ever been dedicated to the Anthropology. Unlike 105 other Kantian texts, it has also led to no controversy between schools. This does not mean, however, that the work has been totally ignored, and some have even emphasized its interest. In his introduction to an English translation of the Anthropology, Pitte argues that even if this text is written in a popular style full of examples and humorous elements, this should not cause us to conclude that it is not worthy of serious 106 attention. The work supplies a rough outline of Kant’s entire system and thus serves as an excellent introduction to his thought, Pitte argues. Moreover, in this work we find clues of several kinds that may help us 107 understand both Kant and his system more completely. This last point is, I think, significant, and I will return to it later. 102

A 359. Pitte (1971), 11 and 15. 104 Ibid., 3. 105 Brandt (1999), 7. 106 Others signalling a positive attitude towards Kant's Anthropology are Munzel (1999), Gerhardt (1987) and Zammito (2002). 107 Pitte (1978), xix. 103

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The Anthropology, which is Kant’s only published work in this field, is characterized as a pragmatic anthropology. In the preface of this work, Kant explains that anthropology can be either a physiological or a pragmatic discipline. In the first case the focus is on what nature has made of man. In the second case attention is given to what man, considered as a free being, can and should make out of himself. Kant uses memory as an illustration, and in doing this, also suggests why he values the pragmatic version of anthropology above the physiological. The task of a physiological anthropology is to explore how our memory depends on and corresponds to processes in the brain. As these processes are unknown to us, however, we can only speculate about them and this, he complains, is a waste of time. In pragmatic anthropology, on the other hand, the task is to observe what either promotes or impedes memory. This knowledge is directly useful in making it possible to control and perfect memory.108 According to Brandt, Kant arrived at his notion of a pragmatic anthropology at the end of a process of development that had several 109 phases. Like Klemme, Brandt sees its starting point in the empirical psychology of the eighteenth century which appeared as a topic in Kant’s 110 lectures on metaphysics in the winter of 1765/6. In his Announcement of 1765, Kant says that the lectures will begin with an introduction to empirical psychology, which he calls ‘the metaphysical science of man based on experience’ [metaphysische Erfahrungswissenschaft vom Menschen].111 Later, a distinction is drawn between empirical psychology, which according to Kant deals only with the representations of inner sense, and an anthropology dealing with the human being as a 112 unity of mind and body. At about the same time, the notion of an anthropology distinct from such an empirical psychology appears in Kant’s reflections. However, at this point it is still considered as only an 113 empirical science, and not as a pragmatic one as well. The transformation of anthropology into a pragmatic science, according to Brandt, took place in about 1773, after Kant’s first lectures on the topic, and was then explicitly contrasted with the former 108

Ak VII: 119. Klemme (1996), 14. 110 Brandt (1999), 10. 111 Ak II: 309. 112 Cf. Ak II: 397. 113 Brandt (1999), 49. 109

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approach. At the same time, the purportedly useful or pragmatic aspect of anthropology was declared by Kant to be an ideal for university studies in general as well. A university education should not only be theoretical [für die Schule], but it should also be of use in the future 115 everyday life of the student. Kant’s pragmatic anthropology is a science explicitly dealing with man as an embodied being. Its object is not mind or body, but both. The idea that the mind is embodied is one of the most fundamental ideas on which the discipline is based. This makes the Anthropology a fascinating source of information for those interested in Kant’s ideas in this field. The work is divided into two parts. The first is called ‘anthropological didactic’ and consists of two books, one about the cognitive faculties, and the other about pleasure and displeasure. The second deals with the character of a person, the character of the sexes, and so on. The cognitive theory presented in the Anthropology is expressed in more or less the same terminology as that used in the Inaugural dissertation and the Critique. A fundamental distinction is drawn between sensible and intellectual representations, the first derived from effects passively received by the mind [Gemüt], the second produced by 116 the activity of the mind itself. The faculty corresponding to the passive side of the mind is called ‘sensibility’ [Sinnlichkeit], while the faculty corresponding to the active side of the mind is called ‘understanding’ 117 [Verstand]. This term is again used in two ways, sometimes as a general term covering the higher cognitive faculty in general, at other times in a more limited sense, denoting only the lower part of this faculty, along with the power of judgment [Urteilskraf] and reason [Vernunft] which are then defined as superior members of the higher cognitive 118 faculty. A highly interesting aspect of the Anthropology is that cognition is here described using the same terminology as that of the Critique. Both works describe the same cognitive apparatus. However, in the Critique nothing is said explicitly about how this apparatus relates to the body. It is otherwise in the Anthropology. Here cognition is explicitly described as embodied. In the Critique sensation is being described as the affection of the mind [Gemüt]. However, no mention is made of whether this mind 114

Ibid., 10. Ibid., 10-11. 116 Ak VII: 140, cf. also Ak VII: 196. 117 Ak VII: 196. 118 Ak VII: 196-7. 115

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communicates with a body or not, or whether the affection of the mind also involves the affection of the body. In the Anthropology, in the chapter entitled ‘On the Five Senses’, Kant describes the outer sense as 119 the sense by which the body is affected by physical objects. Kant also offers a detailed theory of the various senses of the body that are involved in human sensation. Where cognition of external objects is concerned, there are five senses involved, he argues. These are touch, sight, hearing, taste and smell. Each sense corresponds to a certain organ; sight to the eyes, hearing to the ears, etc. In each organ a specific sort of sensation is produced by the effect on the organ: There are exactly five senses that have specific organs. Three of them are more objective than subjective, that is, as empirical intuitions they contribute to our knowledge of the external object rather than arouse our consciousness of the organ affected. The other two are more subjective than objective, that is, the idea they give us is more an idea of our enjoyment of the object than knowledge of the external object. […] The more objective senses are 1) touch (tactus), 2) sight (visus), 3) 120 hearing (auditus).

It is also worth noting that, having defined the higher cognitive faculties and described their functioning, as in Maladies of the mind of 1764, Kant continues by discussing how they sometimes degenerate, and how 121 this degeneration may result in mental diseases. Due to the limited insight of contemporary physiology, he says, he will not venture to offer physiological explanations of this degeneration. However, he does not exclude the possibility that such explanations might one day be found. In support of this idea he notes that a certain mental illness, Verrückung, has been observed to be inherited, and often emerges at the time when a youth reaches puberty. This clearly suggests a physiological explanation. The fact that Kant describes cognition as radically embodied here is not sufficient to justify the claim that he does the same thing in the Critique. That requires a separate discussion that will come later. Furthermore, the few passages that have been considered from the Anthropology here cannot fully convey the significance of the work. However, I will return to discuss the Anthropology in more detail in later chapters. In the next chapter, I will discuss Kant’s theory of space, that is, how, according to the Anthropology, our experience of space is 119

Ak VII: 153. Ak VII: 154. 121 Ak VII: 202ff. 120

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constituted by embodied acts. In the third chapter I will deal with Kant’s discussion of the higher cognitive faculties as it is found in the Anthropology, and how this implies a theory of embodied rationality.

1.16 Conclusion In this chapter I have explored Kant’s ideas about the mind-body relation in works published over a period that covers most of his intellectual career. We have seen that not only does he put forward in all of them the idea that the mind, as we know it, is embodied, but he also discusses, down to the minutest detail, how the workings of the mind presuppose and are conditioned by the constitution and functioning of the human body. We have also seen that in a variety of contexts he put forward what might be called a holistic model of man, according to which mind and body should not be conceived as two independent entities, monads or substances, but rather as different sides, aspects or dimensions of one being or substance. In human beings as we know them, he seems to be saying, mind and body form a whole so complete that the one cannot be understood in abstraction from the other. Above I raised the question whether Kant conceived of this as an ontological model that was meant to compete with the theories put forward by the rational psychology of his time. To answer this question decisively lies outside the scope of this study. My guess is, however, that the answer is negative. In brief, my reason for saying so is twofold. First, most of the time when he is addressing the questions of rational psychology, he adopts an agnostic attitude. Instead of entering into a discussion with the rational psychologists of his time on their own terms, he emphasizes how limited our cognitive resources are. From early on, his attitude seems to be that the questions of rational psychology must be left unanswered. Secondly, it is also worth noting that when he actually addresses the mind-body relation, he does so within theoretical disciplines other than rational psychology. The context is, for instance, cosmology, empirical psychology or anthropology. In spite of their internal differences, all these disciplines aim to describe the world as we know it, not to disclose some hidden dimension of reality. They do not reach out to try and grasp the essential nature of God or of the soul in its assumed afterlife. This also applies to the eighteenth-century version of cosmology. While cosmology in the Kantian sense is not an empirical science in the modern sense of the term, nevertheless the world it aims to describe is still the physical universe. And to the extent to which man appears as a topic for consideration in the field of cosmology, it is as an inhabitant of this

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universe. The human being that Kant discusses within the context of the three disciplines mentioned is man as we know him, man as a living, biological being; in short, the embodied self. It may be that the young Kant also held more substantial beliefs in the field of ontology, such as when in Dreams of a spirit-seer and even in 122 the Inaugural dissertation he echoes the rational psychology of his time in suggesting that the mind as such is without extension and may have an existence independent of the body. However, it is difficult to decide upon this question due to the fact that he says so little about it. As also Laywine remarks: Kant was not especially interested in the nature of the soul as such – so little interested that his rational psychology was very impoverished 123 indeed.

What remains beyond doubt, however, is that regardless of what ontological ideas he may or may not have been committed to, throughout his life Kant took it as a basic fact that man as we know him is a unity of mind and body. Also, as we have seen and will see again, in his cognitive theory this is one of the basic premises that he begins with, such as when in Universal natural history he maintains as a fact that the mind receives all its representations and concepts from the impressions 124 that the universe produces in it through the body. In part two of this work, my aim will be to demonstrate that the idea of the embodied mind is also a basic premise of the Critique. Before that, however, come two chapters that explore in greater detail how Kant saw our experience and thinking to be conditioned by the constitution and functioning of the human body. 122

Ak II: 419. Laywine (1993), 7. 124 Ak I: 355. 123

2. BODY AND SPACE The sense of touch is located in the fingertips and their nerve papillae, so that by touching the surface of a solid body we can find out what shape it has. Nature seems to have given this organ only to man, so that by feeling all the sides of a body he could form a concept of its shape. […]Touch is also the only sense in which our external perception is immediate, and for this reason it is the most important and the most certain in what it teaches us.[…] Without this sense organ we should be unable to form any concept at all of the shape of a body. 1 From Kant’s Anthropology

In this passage from the Anthropology, Kant claims that the tactile sense located in the tips of our fingers is essential for our capacity to explore the spatial form of physical objects. Actually, he claims, without this sense we would have no concept of such a form at all. The body, or, more precisely, our capacity for embodied action together with the awareness accompanying this action, is here given the status of an essential condition without which our concept of the spatial form of an object would not exist. The aim of this chapter is to explore this idea of the body as a condition of spatial experience as it is found in some Kantian texts. As we have seen, this idea is suggested as early as 1747 in Living forces.2 Rather than staying with this early text, however, in this chapter I shall explore three texts belonging to the more mature phase of Kant’s intellectual development. They are Directions in space from 1768, Orientation from 1786 and the Anthropology from 1798, the first published thirteen years prior to the Critique, the second five years after its first publication, while the third, as we have seen, is based on lectures 1 2

Ak VIII: 155. Ak I: 22.

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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 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 4 spatial form of other objects can only be achieved by means of the body. 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. 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. 4

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spatial form of a given object, or other such acts. I shall consider this argument again later.

2.1 The European discussion of space in the 18th century Kant’s embodied theory of space should also be seen in the context of the general discussion of space taking place in Europe in the eighteenth century. Most frequently discussed today, perhaps, is the controversy between Leibniz and Newton on the nature of space, discussed in the so called Leibniz-Clarke correspondence, published in 1711, in which Samuel Clarke (1675-1729) acted as a spokesman for Newton. Very roughly, the Newtonian view holds that space is an absolutely real, selfsubsistent ‘container’ and would exist even if no physical objects were contained in it. The opposite Leibnizian view maintains that space exists as relations between objects. To say that objects exist in space is to say that they stand in certain relations to one another. Statements about space may therefore be reduced to statements about objects and their relations.5 The publication of the Leibniz-Clarke correspondence provoked a lively discussion among European scholars, a discussion followed with great interest by Kant when it re-emerged with some intensity in the 6 1760s and 1770s. He also involved himself in the debate and his theory of space and time as subjective forms of intuition in the Critique may be seen as his alternative to both the Newtonian and the Leibnizian views. Alongside this discussion concerning the Newtonian and the Leibnizian conceptions of space, however, another kind of discussion relating to space was going on, focusing more on the embodied aspect of spatial cognition. Kant also took an interest in this discussion, which will be considered in more detail later, and I shall argue that the historical origins of his embodied theory of space are primarily to be found there. Of course, the discussion of space in Directions in space and Orientation also relates to the Leibniz-Clarke controversy. However, I will generally ignore these connections as they do not relate to what is my main topic

5

For a more detailed discussion of the Leibniz-Clarke controversy, cf. Vleeschauwer (1962), 47, Tonelli (1959), Kaulbach (1960), Martin (1969), Caygill (1995), 367ff. and Allison (1983), 108ff. 6 Cf. Vleeschauwer (1962), 47.

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here which is Kant’s view on the embodied basis of spatial 7 experience. A central problem for those interested in the embodied basis of spatial experience was to explain the fact that we experience visual space as three-dimensional. The seventeenth and eighteenth-century natural philosophers understood the internal structure of the eye very well and knew that visual images were produced by rays of light affecting the retina. But as the retina is two-dimensional, how can rays of light affecting it produce three-dimensional visual images? Berkeley presents a version of this problem in his Essay towards a new theory of vision from 1709 thus: It is, I think, agreed by all that Distance of it self, and immediately cannot be seen. For Distance being a Line directed end-wise to the Eye, it projects only one Point in the Fund of the Eye. Which Point remains invariably the same, whether the Distance be longer or 8 shorter.

A ray of light will always hit the retina at one point only, Berkeley argues, and whether the ray originates from near or far makes no difference. How, then, do we see things to be either near or far away? How do we visually perceive distance, and so three-dimensional space? In suggesting solutions to this problem, most natural philosophers in one way or another resorted to our capacity for moving our bodies. A famous example is supplied by Étienne Bonnet de Condillac (1715-1780) in his work Traité des sensations from 1754. Here he imagined a marble statue internally constituted like a living human being, but having a mind deprived of all ideas, and with all its senses closed, so that it would be possible to open them one at a time and to analyze their relationship. Condillac argued that hearing, taste, and sight would produce in the statue no idea of exteriority. To show how the perception of phenomenological exteriority arises, he therefore added to the statue the sense of touch. The term le toucher used by Condillac includes a number of elements, such as the awareness we have of processes internal to the 7

I do not intend to give anything like a complete account of the discussion taking place between philosophers and scientists of the eighteenth century focusing on the embodied aspect of spatial experience, but only enough to serve as a background. A brief but still excellent survey of some main lines of this debate is found in Kitcher, which also serves as a basis for the following exposition, cf. Kitcher (1990), and also Herrnstein (1968). 8 Quoted from Herrnstein (1968), 118.

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body, as well as the experience we have when we connect with external objects. By opening the sense of touch, he also permitted the statue to move itself, emphasizing that in doing this, it was aware of the contractions of its muscles. Through all of this, he argued, the statue would finally arrive at consciousness of phenomenological exteriority, and by way of attention, judgment, and reasoning it would also be 9 capable of transforming its findings into the notions of space and matter. The significance of movement, touch and awareness of muscle movements was also emphasized by other writers such as Descartes and Berkeley. Even if these writers disagreed on a number of points, they nevertheless agreed that the movements of the body and our awareness of these movements are essential for producing ideas of spatial distance and shape. Even Descartes, despite his strong metaphysical dualism, explored how embodied movements contribute to our representation of threedimensional space. In La Dioptrique from 1638, he claims, for instance, that there is no essential difference between perception through the eyes 10 and perception by means of the hands. In both cases, parts of the body are involved and impulses are produced in them that are then carried through the nerves to the brain where they are processed. In elaborating this point, Descartes asks the reader to imagine a blind person holding a stick in each hand. Lacking sight, blind people may use sticks to investigate distant objects, he argues. The case is meant to work as an analogy in which the hands play the role of the eyes and the sticks play the role of the rays of light connecting a distant object with our eyes. Descartes points to the fact that even a small movement of one of the arms of the blind person will produce an effect in the brain, telling it not only the relative distance between the limbs of the body, but also, when these limbs are artificially extended to external objects by means of sticks or another physical medium, the position, size and shape of these objects. As visual observation takes place, in principle, in the same way, the same explanation may also account for the fact that we visually perceive objects in space.

9

Hallie (1967), 180-182. Cf. Herrnstein (1968), 113.

10

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As to the way in which each part of an object is placed with respect to our body, we perceive it no differently through our eyes than with our hands. Moreover, our knowledge of it does not depend on an image or on any action by the object, but only on the arrangement of the small parts of the brain where the nerves originate – for this arrangement, which changes so little with each shift in disposition of the members reached by the nerves, is of such a nature as not only to make known to the soul where each part of the body it animates is in relation to the other parts but also to enable the soul to shift its attention to the entire area that lies within such straight lines as we might imagine drawn from the end of each of these parts and 11 extended to infinity.

Descartes also draws special attention to the movements of our muscles: Likewise, when our eye or our head is turned toward one side, our soul is alerted by the change that the nerves leading from the muscles 12 used for these movements cause in our brain.

In a parallel argument, in his Essay towards a new theory of vision Berkeley draws attention to the sensations aroused by the movements of the pupils as one of the many sensations from which we gain information on the spatial distance between objects and ourselves. It is certain by Experience, that when we look at a near Object with both Eyes, according as it approaches, or recedes from us, we alter the Disposition of our Eyes, by lessening or widening the Interval between the Pupils. This Disposition or Turn of the Eyes is attended with a Sensation, which seems to me, to be that which in this Case 13 brings the Idea of greater, or lesser Distance into the Mind.

The idea of spatial properties of objects in the first place, however, according to Berkeley, is produced by touch. The idea that objects do not change in size, contrary to what seems to be the fact from our visual impressions of them as we either approach or recedes from them, is also derived from touch, he argues:

11

Quoted from Herrnstein (1986), 113-14. Ibid., 114. 13 Ibid., 120. 12

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The Magnitude of the Object which exists without the Mind, and is at a Distance, continues always invariably the same. But the Visible Object still changing as you approach to, or recede from the Tangible Object, it hath no fixed and determinate Greatness. Whenever therefore, we speak of the Magnitude of any thing, for Instance a Tree or a House, we must mean the Tangible Magnitude, otherwise 14 there can be nothing steady, and free from Ambiguity spoken of it.

There is little doubt that Kant was acquainted with the discussion carried out along the lines here suggested, at least in its main features. One of his sources was Johann Nicolaus Tetens’ book Philosophishe Versuche über die Menschliche Natur und ihre Entwickelung from 1777 where Tetens promotes ideas similar to those of Condillac and the other authors discussed above. According to Tetens, the idea of space cannot be abstracted from the alterations and impressions that objects inflict on our senses. Rather, it is abstracted from the act of seeing. When, for example, I see that a tower is further from me than a tree, I move my eyes, and that is felt as something present and absolute. Kant is reported to have had Tetens book open on his desk as he worked with his Critique, that is, 15 in the 1770s.

2.2 Rousseau and space Kant also found similar ideas in Rousseau's Émile, a book that, as we 16 know, deeply impressed him when he first read it in the early 1760s. In explaining how a child first acquires knowledge of space, Rousseau points to the basic significance of the tactile sense and embodied action. The tactile sense is important not only because it gives us immediate and first hand knowledge of the objects of the world, he argues, but it is also important because it accompanies the movements of the body. Through these movements and the awareness it has of them the child acquires a unique knowledge of space, a knowledge that cannot be acquired in any other way. As part of this, it learns also for the first time to distinguish between itself and that which is not itself. 14

Ibid., 124. Kitcher (1990), 34 and 238, footnote. 16 Rousseau’s ideas are here most probably inspired by Condillac. In Émile Rousseau tells about his personal acquaintance with this man, who, he said, would one day be regarded among ‘the greatest thinkers and the profoundest metaphysicians’ (Rousseau (1979), 71). 15

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It is only by movement that we learn that there are things which are 17 not us …

Continuing this reflection, Rousseau tries to imagine what it would be like to be an oyster. Without the capacity to move, he imagines, the whole world must appear to the oyster as nothing but a point. Even if we ascribed to the oyster a human mind, whatever this would mean, it would not help. Neither would it help to give the oyster sight. In order to acquire an idea of space, it needs to be able to move around in the world. Without touch, without progressive movement, the most penetrating eyes in the world would not be able to give us any idea of extension. The entire universe must be only a point for an oyster. It would not appear to it as anything more even if a human mind were to inform this oyster. It is only by dint of walking, feeling, counting, of 18 measuring dimensions that one learns to estimate them.

Thus the capacity to receive impressions from without is but a first requirement for spatial experience. Just as important, and absolutely essential, is the capacity to move, originating in the spontaneity of the subject. This is Rousseau’s point. Of the various authors who may have inspired Kant in the formulation of his embodied theory of space, I will put particular emphasis on Rousseau, not only because we possess definite information that Kant was acquainted with Rousseau’s ideas well before he published Directions in space in 1768, but also because we know the deep impact that Émile made on him. I will discuss this impact and what it meant to Kant in more detail later. For now, I will try to set out the salient points of the ideas examined above. First, all those mentioned ascribed to the body a basic and indispensable role in spatial cognition, and in the most detailed and concrete way. Emphasis is placed on the way we sense the various parts of our bodies, their positions relative to each other and the way we move them, as well as how we experience the impact of physical influences on the body from the outside. Attention is drawn, for instance, to the pupils of the eyes and the muscles directing their movements, and the muscles directing the movements of the head and shoulders as we turn to look in a specific direction. All of these movements, along with the subtle 17 18

Rousseau (1979), 64. Rousseau (1979), 143.

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awareness we have of them, contribute to the constitution of our spatial representations. Secondly, priority is ascribed to touch. It is by means of touch that the first, basic ideas of space are formed in the observer, that is, by touching, grasping and holding objects we form our first and most basic ideas of their spatial form. Visual perception is claimed to work in a way analogous to touch. When we look at a distant object, the light reflected from the object exerts a felt influence on the pupil, just as when we feel the resistance of an object when we touch it. And just as we become aware of the size of an object, for instance, by holding our hands on either side of it and noting the relative distance between our hands, so we become aware of the size of a distant object by means of the subtle awareness of the position of our pupils as we direct them towards the object. Finally, even if the above ideas seem to belong to the context of a purely scientific investigation of man, they also imply a more philosophical perspective. Most importantly, they presuppose the idea that man is an embodied being, with an awareness that is also fully embodied. We have seen that two years before he wrote Directions in space, in Dreams of a spirit-seer Kant advanced a very similar kind of embodied empiricism. On this matter, his views lie close to those of Condillac, Tetens and Rousseau. It is scarcely surprising, then, if Kant incorporated aspects of their ideas of the embodied constitution of spatial representations into his own reflections on space.

2.3 Directions in space This text, published 1768, two years after Dreams of a spirit-seer and two years before the Inaugural dissertation, is often seen as signaling Kant’s conversion to Newtonianism, after having earlier supported the 19 Leibnizian side of the Leibniz-Clarke controversy. However, commentators have also noticed how the text calls attention to the body 20 and its significance with regard to our capacity for spatial orientation. Below I will argue that even if Kant appears to be a Newtonian in Directions in space, in that he defends the idea of absolute space, I do not think this is all there is to be said on the matter. Amongst other things, the text may also be seen as his attempt to incorporate within his theory of space ideas taken from Rousseau and others, as well as the 19 20

Cf. e.g. Vleeschauwer (1962), 48. Cf. e.g. Caygill (1995), 367, Rossvær (1974), 41 and Kaulbach (1960).

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implications of his own embodied empiricism. As I shall argue, the text may also be seen as representing one of Kant’s first attempts to express the position that has come to be called Copernican. Like so many other Kantian texts, Directions in space is an intriguing piece of work. He opens the discussion by announcing that his aim is to prove that there is an absolute space, independent of all matter. My purpose in this treatise is to see whether there is not to be found […] [a] clear proof that: Absolute space, independently of the existence of all matter and as itself the ultimate foundation of the possibility of the compound character of matter, has a reality of its 21 own.

This opening, no doubt, appears as a powerful argument for those arguing that he sides with the Newtonian party of the Leibniz-Clarke controversy here. After having introduced the idea of absolute space, however, he continues, somewhat surprisingly, by arguing that without our bodies we would not be able to orient in space. He begins this new line of argument by imagining three planes intersecting each other at right angles in space. He then imagines that these planes stand in a certain relation to our body. This relation, now, is the ground making it possible for us to produce [erzeugen] the concept of locations [Gegenden] in space: Because of its three dimensions, physical space [in dem körperlichen Raume] can be thought of as having three planes, which all intersect each other at right angles. Concerning the things which exist outside ourselves: it is only in so far as they stand in relation to ourselves that we have any cognition of them by means of the senses at all. It is, therefore, not surprising that the ultimate ground, on the basis of which we form [erzeugen] our concept of directions [Gegenden] in space, derives from the relation of these intersecting planes to our 22 bodies.

Kant does not say that I produce [erzeuge] space as such, but what he says is something not very far from this: I produce the concept of spatial locations. And this concept-production, he argues, is directly dependent on my body and the imaginary planes crossing it. 21 22

Ak II: 378. Ak II: 379.

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One of the planes is placed so that the length of the body stands at a right angle to it, he explains. This may be called the horizontal. By means of this plane we distinguish between up and down. The two other planes are placed in a position so that the line constituted by the upright position of the body stands at their intersection. One of these divides the body into two equal parts and is the ground for our distinction between 23 left and right. The other gives us the concept of in front of and behind. Kant not only focuses on the body and its relation to an imaginary system of co-ordinates when explaining how we produce the basic concept (or concepts) of spatial locations, he also refers to our intuitive capacity, based on immediate feeling, to distinguish between the location of the different parts of our body, such as its left and right side. And thus it is that the two sides of the body are, in spite of their great external similarity, sufficiently distinguished from each other by a 24 clear feeling.

Without this awareness, Kant argues, we would not be able to distinguish between spatial locations. So, the whole body participates in this essential concept formation. I think that it is particularly here, in the reference to our immediate awareness of the various parts of our bodies, that a connection can be seen with Rousseau and the other authors mentioned above who place the body in the center of their theory of space. Like them Kant points to the body in order to explain the origin of some very basic spatial concepts. Like them he draws attention to the awareness we have of the body and its parts. He will later add that embodied acts are also essential for the constitution of spatial concepts. Now, let us return to the spatial concepts originating in the immediate awareness of the body, such as up and down, right and left, in front of and behind. These concepts, Kant suggests, are also the ground for other kinds of spatial determinations. When, for instance, we distinguish between the front and back of a piece of paper, we use the same concepts as those grounded in the immediate awareness of the body. Even if he moves away from the body here, by discussing spatial relations pertaining to objects outside us, the human body remains the center of the theory. The concepts we use in order to determine the 23 24

Ak II: 379. Ak II: 381.

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spatial locations of such objects and their parts derive from the intuitive body-awareness examined above. Let us now return to how Kant begins the essay. He states that his aim is to prove the existence of absolute space, then he proceeds to present a theory of the embodied grounding of some basic spatial concepts. Is there any connection here? At first sight it is difficult to see one. The introductory claim and the following theory seem to be seriously mismatched. The first suggests the idea of a space totally independent of human intervention while the other seems hardly to extend beyond the limit of the human body. But perhaps these two perspectives are not incongruent. Perhaps Kant’s theory of the embodied basis of basic spatial concepts is in fact also a theory of the constitution of the concept of what he calls absolute space. It is worth noting that whatever ideas the notion of absolute space leads us to consider, Kant emphasizes that absolute space is not an object of the outer sense. It cannot be observed. Rather; it is a fundamental concept. … absolute space is not an object of outer sensation; it is rather a 25 fundamental concept …

How do we arrive at this fundamental concept? Does it have anything to do with the basic concepts just discussed, i.e. those originating in the body? Kant does not say but his silence allows us to suggest that it has. More precisely, it is possible that the concept of absolute space is based in some way or another on our primitive capacity to determine spatial locations relative to our body, and that this is how Kant conceives of the matter in Directions in space. How does this conceptual movement from the body to the idea of absolute space take place? As Kant does not supply the answer to this question, we can only guess. We have seen that according to Kant the basic spatial concepts of up and down, right and left, in front of and behind originate in our immediate awareness of the body and its parts. Later, he argues, these concepts are also used to decide the spatial relations of external objects and their parts, for instance the front and back of a piece of paper. Somehow he seems to think that these concepts, with their subjective origin, may be used to decide the objective relations between objects and their parts. Metaphorically, we may speak here of a movement from a subjective origin towards a more objective use of the 25

Ak II: 383.

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concepts, and perhaps the idea of absolute space lies at the end of this movement. Whether or not this corresponds to Kant’s view is hard to say but it is at least a possible interpretation. A version of this interpretation is also put forward by Kaulbach. He argues that, contrary to how it may seem, the term ‘absolute space’ as Kant uses it in Directions in space does not refer to a Newtonian conception of space. The term ‘absolute’ refers, Kaulbach argues, to the unconditional basis of spatial orientation in the 26 embodied reality of the cognitive self.

2.4 A Copernican position? According to Viggo Rossvær, Directions in space is the first text in which 27 Kant operates with what may be called a Copernican perspective. I shall return to discuss the notion of this Copernican perspective in chapter four. At present I will define this perspective in a very general sense as involving the idea that all experience is conditioned by the subjective position of the observer and/or the observer’s cognitive resources. Most clearly, I think, such a perspective is expressed in the last section of Directions in space. Our determinations [Bestimmungen] of space are not the result of the spatial position of matter, it is the other way around. The spatial position of matter is the result of our spatial 28 determinations. Our considerations make it plain that the determinations of space are not consequences of the positions of the parts of matter relative to each other. On the contrary, the latter are the consequences of the 29 former.

Due to the brevity of the argument, we should be careful not to put too much weight on it. However, I think that Rossvær is right to say that a Copernican perspective is present here. In claiming that our judgments [Bestimmungen] of space determine the spatial position of matter, Kant ascribes to the cognitive subject a capacity going far beyond the passive role of an observer. Actually, he seems here to be approaching the theory promoted in the Inaugural dissertation, where space (and also time) is 30 said to be the product of the activity of the subject. As the Inaugural 26

Kaulbach (1960), 95. Rossvær (1974), 43. 28 Cf. also Kaulbach (1960), 95. 29 Ak II: 383. 30 Ak II: 405f. 27

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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 31 the publication of its second edition. 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 32 right and left hands.

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.

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In the dark I orient myself in a room that is familiar to me if I can take hold of even one single object whose position I remember. But it is plain that nothing helps me here except the faculty for determining position according to a subjective ground of differentiation: for I do not see at all the objects whose place I am to find... [...] But I can soon orient myself through the mere feeling of a difference between my two sides, the right and the left. That is just what happens if I need to walk and take the correct turns on streets otherwise familiar 33 to me when I cannot distinguish any of the houses.

The text also has more to offer. In the following passage the term a priori (by this time a well-established one) is explicitly associated with the movement of the body and the awareness of this movement. If I did not have this faculty of distinguishing, without the need of any difference in the objects, between moving from left to right and right to left and moving in the opposite direction and thereby determining a priori a difference in the position of the objects, then in describing a circle I would not know whether west was right or left of the southernmost point of the horizon, or whether I should complete the 34 circle by moving north and east and thus back to south.

Without the capacity to draw a circle, and in doing this to recognize whether the direction is from left to right or the opposite, we would not be able to determine a priori the different locations of objects in space, Kant argues. The possibility of distinguishing a priori between locations in space presupposes the body, the awareness of its parts, and the movements of these parts. Given the standard interpretation of Kant’s theory of the a priori, it may be difficult to see why the term ‘a priori’ is introduced here. This will be considered in part two of this work.

2.6 Anthropology In our examination of the theories of Condillac, Tetens, Rousseau and others at the beginning of this chapter, we saw that embodied acts were accorded an essential role in the formation of spatial concepts. Rousseau, for instance, argued that only by moving around does a child acquire knowledge of the spatial properties of the world. Special emphasis is given to the sense of touch, i.e. various acts through which we explore the shape of an object by touching and grasping it. 33 34

Ak VIII: 135. Ak VIII: 135.

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From what has been seen so far, Kant did not emphasize such embodied acts or movements very clearly. An exception is found in the last part of Orientation. Here the capacity to determine a priori spatial locations is said to presuppose the capacity to move the hands, and to be aware of the direction of this movement. The movements of the hands and the awareness we have of them are also emphasized in the Anthropology: The sense of touch is located in the fingertips and their nerve papillae, so that by touching the surface of a solid body we can find out what shape it has. – Nature seems to have given this organ only to man, so that by feeling all the sides of a body he could form a concept of its shape … […] Touch is also the only sense in which our external perception is immediate, and for this reason it is the most important and the most certain in what it teaches us… […] Without this sense organ we should be unable to form any concept at all of the 35 shape of a body.

Without the capacity to grasp and feel an object, Kant argues, we would never arrive at the concept of the shape of an object. Here, like Rousseau, Condillac and others, he believes the sense of touch has an essential function in the formation of the concept of spatial form. The significance of the sense of touch is also testified elsewhere in the Anthropology. Kant discusses how a person without sight can compensate for this loss by using other senses. He could for instance use the tactile sense, and explore the shape of an object with his hands: If a man is born without one of the senses (sight, for example), he cultivates another sense, as far as possible, to serve as a substitute for it, and uses his productive imagination to a great extent. So he tries to make the shapes of external bodies apprehensible by touch, and when touch fails because the body is too large (a house), he tries to grasp extension by still another sense – perhaps by listening to the echo of 36 voices in a room.

The passage just quoted also contains an interesting remark about the sense of hearing. When an object is too large to be explored by holding and grasping it, a blind person may explore its shape by listening to the echo produced by his own or another persons voice. 35 36

Ak VIII: 155. Ak VII: 172-3.

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Above I argued that, according to the theory of Rousseau, Tetens and the other authors examined at the beginning of this chapter, touch is not only taken to be essential because it is the sense by which our first and most basic concepts of space are formed but it is also taken to be essential in being the sense on which the functioning of all the other senses is modeled. I think that the last example examined may be used as evidence that Kant’s thoughts on the matter followed the same lines, at least where hearing is concerned. In hearing, we do not touch objects directly, but in Kant’s analysis what happens is structurally similar to an act of touching. When I touch an object with my hand, this is an active movement. The resulting concept of the spatial form of the object is in part caused by this movement. However, just as important as my own movement is the resistance offered by the object. Without this resistance, I should not be able to form a concept of its form. The structure of this event, I think, is also present in the example of the blind person. Standing in the room, not knowing where its walls are, he uses his voice, and by noting how it is echoed by the room’s walls, he understands where they are relative to himself. What is the structure of this event? First the blind person acts by making a sound with his voice. Secondly, due to the resistance of the walls, this sound is reflected back to his ears. And once again the resulting concept of the spatial dimensions of the room is the result of both. Both the initial act and the resistance of the object, in this case the walls, are required. Metaphorically speaking, we might say that the sound in the above example is like a hand. By means of the sound, the observer reaches out for an object. When the sound hits the object, it is like the moment of touch, and the resistance causing the reflection of the sound is like the resistance felt when he literally touches an object, only now it is experienced indirectly, mediated by the sounds reflected back to his ear. I have found no evidence to suggest that Kant conceived of the act of seeing in an analogous way, but by arguing along the same lines as Descartes did in his example of the man with the sticks, he could well have extended the above model to include this sense as well.

2.7 Summary In this chapter I have given a brief outline of what I have called Kant’s embodied theory of space and I have argued that this theory, at least in part, may be seen as inspired by authors such as Condillac, Tetens and Rousseau. However, I have also argued that it may be seen as the logical consequence of some basic Kantian ideas. If, for instance, we start out from the idea expressed explicitly both in Dreams of a spirit-seer and the

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Inaugural dissertation that the mind in itself has no extension and that its spatiality is only derived (caused by its association with the body), then it follows that we would have no awareness of space, and consequently no representation of space, without the body. Moreover, when we remember that in these texts Kant suggests that the mind is present in the body both as immediate awareness and as its activity, it is no wonder that he locates the first origin of our spatial concepts in the body, i.e. in our immediate awareness of its different parts. If Kant is to remain faithful to this perspective, however, he also has to contend that the body is indispensable when we wish to explore the spatiality of the world. It is not possible for the mind to go outside its body in order to explore the spatial properties of things. It has to take its body with it and use this body as its tool of investigation. As we have seen, this is exactly what Kant says. Without the sense of touch, he argues, that is, without our capacity for grasping, holding and feeling objects, we would never acquire knowledge of their spatial form. However, other senses (such as our sense of hearing) may be used in an analogous way with the same results. So far, I think, Kant is roughly in line with Condillac, Rousseau and the others mentioned above. In Directions in space and in Orientation, however, he goes beyond them. In Directions in space he does so by approaching what will later be known as his Copernican perspective, arguing that the spatial locations in which we perceive objects are the product of our determinations [Bestimmungen] concerning these 37 38 locations. In Orientation he does so by suggesting that our capacity to draw a circle, and by doing so to recognize whether the direction is from left to right or the other way around, is a necessary condition of our capacity to determine a priori the different locations of objects in space. I think it is extremely interesting to see how this Copernican perspective and the notion of the a priori are associated here with a theory of the embodied origin of spatial awareness and spatial concepts. Kant’s Copernican perspective and his notion of the a priori are normally seen as constitutive of his transcendental philosophy, which is typically thought to have no connection with reflections such as the one explored in this chapter. In part two I shall claim, however, that there is such a connection after all and that the body is central to Kant’s mature transcendental philosophy and its corresponding theory of space. 37 38

Ak II: 383. Ak VIII: 135.

3. RATIONALITY AND EMBODIED PRACTICE A spirit is a being endowed with reason. No miraculous powers are needed, therefore, to see spirits; for, whoever sees human beings sees beings endowed with reason. 1 From Dreams of a spirit-seer

With these words Kant mocks those rational psychologists who invoke the existence of invisible spirits to explain human rationality. Human beings are rational beings, he reminds us. So, if by ‘spirit’ we mean simply ‘rational being’, then no supernatural endowment is required for a person who wants to see a spirit. He can just look at a human being. Kant’s criticism of rational psychology should come as no surprise by now. We have seen how in texts published both before and after the Critique he generally avoids entering into the traditional ontological discourse about the mind. Instead, we have seen how he embraces a more empirical or pragmatic perspective in these texts, and how, within this perspective, he advances a theory of an intimate integration of mind and body, an integration that also includes the higher cognitive faculties. In Universal natural history, for instance, he claims that the capacity to connect and compare concepts is influenced by the physical constitution of the body of the thinking subject. Consequently, the reason why human rationality in general is so imperfectly developed is to be sought in the crudeness of the matter of which our bodies are composed. It may be worth noting, however, that while in Universal natural history he stresses a causal connection between the internal constitution 2 of our bodies and our rational capacities, later he downplays this part of his theory. He never seems to have given up completely the idea that insight into the nervous system or other organs may disclose important knowledge about human rationality, but alongside this he develops another perspective that increasingly dominates his theory of rationality. The entire human being as a totality of mind and body, that is as an embodied agent, is now the main focus, and human rationality is 1 2

Ak II: 319. Ak I: 356.

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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

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lectures given over a long period of time. On pedagogy, for instance, was based on lectures he began to give in 1776, while the lectures on which Anthropology was based date back to 1772 or even earlier. He gave his 3 first lectures on logic in the early 1760s. My guess is that Kant’s new ideas on rationality emerged during the 1760s, inspired by his reading of Rousseau's Émile, amongst other things. I will return to this point again and in a later chapter I shall argue that Kant espoused this pragmatic theory of embodied rationality in 1781 when he published his first Critique, and that it influenced both the cognitive theory and the epistemology of the work. That Kant puts forward a pragmatic theory of embodied rationality in his writings on anthropology, pedagogy and logic is, as far as I know, a 4 fact that has been almost completely ignored. I think this overwhelming lack of recognition may be due to a number of reasons. One possible explanation is that what I call Kant’s pragmatic theory of embodied rationality is found in passages scattered throughout a number of texts none of which contains an explicit and comprehensive formulation of it. Secondly, the texts in which these passages are found belong to a group of texts, such as his writings on anthropology and pedagogy, that are typically not very highly valued in the Kant research. A third, and by no means trivial reason, may be that the theory is overlooked either because it does not fit into what the interpreters regard as philosophy proper, or simply that it does not correspond to what they expect to find in an eighteenth-century philosopher. I will return to this point later. Earlier I mentioned how Kant’s anthropological writings were generally regarded as having little or no philosophical relevance. This, I think, is even more the case where his pedagogical writings are concerned. They have typically been regarded as little more than a collection of practical and didactic bits of advice containing little of any originality. Weisskopf even claims that On pedagogy cannot be regarded as an authentic work by Kant at all and should therefore be removed 5 from the corpus. Even if it may very well be the case that not all parts of On pedagogy (which was compiled by Brink, a contemporary of Kant) 6 are authentic, the general estimation of Kant’s writings on pedagogy 3

Cf. Oberhausen (1997), 108. The only exception I am aware of is Svendsen (1999). As for the Critique, however, a number of authors have commented upon the pragmatic strains of this text, e.g. Bennett (1966). 5 Weisskopf (1970). 6 Cf. e.g. Beck (1979). 4

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seems to be about to change. For instance Munzel argues, in terms similar to those I have used concerning Kant’s anthropology, that Kant’s pedagogical theory contains important philosophical insights, moreover, it may also help us achieve a better understanding of other parts of his 7 philosophy, such as his ethics. Before I say more about Kant’s pragmatic theory of embodied rationality and how it developed, let me present some general remarks concerning the terms ‘practice’, ‘embodied practice’ and ‘pragmatic’.

3.1 Practice In contemporary philosophy the term ‘practice’ is central to the tradition following the late Wittgenstein, who in his Philosophical investigations 8 ascribes a basic significance to human practices. He argues that the meaning of a term is defined by its use, and that this use is not arbitrary, but directed by the language games in which it appears. A language game, in turn, is typically seen as embedded in a more comprehensive, practical enterprise. One of Wittgenstein’s well known examples is a group of carpenters building a house. Their language game is in this case embedded in their project of building the house. If we define ‘practice’ in a preliminary way, as a set of acts serving to realize a goal, then building a house may be characterized as a practice, and what Wittgenstein calls a language game may be seen as a part or aspect of such a practice. The notion of a game also implies the presence of rules, so a Wittgensteinian practice may be seen as a set of acts taking place according to rules and aiming at the realization of a goal. This, I think, is also more or less the notion implied by Rawls when in his Theory of justice he defines a practice as an activity taking place according to rules. I use the word ‘practice’ throughout as a sort of technical term meaning any form of activity specified by a system of rules [...] and 9 which gives the activity its structure.

MacIntyre also adheres to a conception close to the Wittgensteinian one, defining ‘practice’ as: 7

For a further discussion of Kant’s On pedagogy and its reception, see Munzel (1999), 258. Cf. also Pleines (1985), Hufnagel (1988) and Stark (2000). 8 Wittgenstein (1984). 9 John Rawls (1955), 3, footnote.

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… a coherent and complex form of socially established cooperative human activity through which goods internal to that form of activity are realized in the course of trying to achieve those standards of excellence which are appropriate to, and partially definitive of, that 10 form of activity.

MacIntyre’s definition seems to rest on a distinction between a set of acts on the one hand, and these acts when they are embedded in a more comprehensive cultural and social structure on the other. Moreover, he seems to want to restrict the meaning of ‘practice’ to the latter case. Tictac-toe, for instance, is not a practice according to MacIntyre, nor is throwing a football with skill; but the game of football is, and so is chess. And whereas bricklaying and planting turnips are not practices, architecture and farming are. So also are the enquiries of physics, chemistry and biology, and the creation and sustaining of human communities in the Aristotelian sense. A practice, he concludes, involves standards of excellence and obedience to rules as well as the achievement of goods (also in the Aristotelian sense). MacIntyre’s reference to Aristotle suggests that his notion of practice has a Greek equivalent and if we look at Aristotle, I think we may find two concepts more or less closely related to the modern notion of a practice; praxis and poiesis. In his Metaphysics Aristotle introduces his well known division of the human sciences into three classes; the 11 theoretical, the practical and the productive. The theoretical sciences give us knowledge that is true and necessary, i.e. episteme. Praxis is the Aristotelian term associated with the second class of sciences; ethics and politics. These both have their goals in themselves, Aristotle explains. 12 Their goal is the good life or eupraxia, i.e. ‘good praxis’. Poiesis is the Aristotelian term associated with the third class of sciences. These 13 sciences have their goals outside themselves, i.e. in their products. Central to the last class of sciences is also the concept of techné. Techné is a Greek term not easily translated, however, it refers to a system of practical knowledge, or skills. In English the term is often translated by ‘art’. In the Aristotelian model, both praxis and poiesis refer to sets of acts having a goal, whether this goal is seen as internal to the activity or not. 10

MacIntyre (1984), 180-203. 1025b25ff. 12 1098b22 13 Cf. e.g. 980b25ff., and also 1140a1ff. 11

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Moreover, there are specific standards according to which these acts are to be performed, which according to Aristotle typically exist as a sort of tacit knowledge in the community of agents performing them. Thus, I think that the activities corresponding to the Aristotelian terms praxis and poiesis may both be seen as falling under the concept of a practice suggested above. In what follows I shall mainly be using the definition of ‘practice’ found in Kant’s short work On the common saying from 1793. This is how he defines it there. A sum of rules, even of practical rules, is called theory if those rules are thought as principles having a certain generality, so that abstraction is made from a multitude of conditions that yet have a necessary influence on their application. Conversely, not every doing is called practice, but only that effecting of an end which is thought as the observance of certain principles of procedure represented in their 14 generality.

Not just any kind of activity [Hantierung] deserves to be called ‘practice’, Kant argues, but only acts following some sort of general rules or principles for behavior. Even if he does not say so explicitly here, his examples also imply that people involved in a practice do it in order to attain an end. Hence it may be defined as a set of actions performed according to a set of rules to attain an end. In what follows this is the definition I shall use. In his examples of practices, which will be considered again later, Kant often refers to medicine, law and agriculture, i.e. the practices corresponding to these sciences. This may suggest that his notion of practice lies close to the MacIntyrian conception. However, I cannot see that the text as a whole supports this conclusion. Accordingly, I will take the Kantian concept of practice to refer to any set of acts taking place according to rules or principles15 and aiming at some goal. This means that contrary to MacIntyre, I will count bricklaying, for example, as a practice in a Kantian sense, as well as activities like walking, swimming or riding a bicycle. As a general rule, I shall let any activity associated with the notion of a skill count as a practice in the Kantian sense. The concept of skill signals that the activity in question may be judged according to explicit 14

Ak VIII: 275. As we shall soon see, these rules do not have to be made explicit. They may be present simply as tacit knowledge. 15

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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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influential school in American philosophy, represented by such as Charles S. Peirce (1839-1914), William James (1842-1910) and John Dewey (1859-1952). In this school, a pragmatic theory of truth evolved according to which the truth of a theory does not lie in its structural similarity with the world, or in its correspondence with the world in some other way, but in its use or instrumental value. According to the pragmatist, if it is useful or satisfying to the person having it, then it is true. In the following I will be using the term ‘pragmatic’, if not exactly in this sense, then in a related one. I will use the term to qualify a certain view of rationality according to which a person is said to be rational not on account of the possession of abstract concepts, principles or theories, but because of the capacity to perform certain practices. We shall soon see how this fits in with Kant’s theory of rationality, even if he does not use the term ‘pragmatic’ to describe it. In addition to this, I shall also be using the term in a somewhat looser sense. The term will then be used to qualify those who evaluate theories, things or activities by their usefulness, which is close to Kant’s explicit use of it.16

3.3 The historical origin of Kant’s pragmatism Before looking more closely at the details of what I have called Kant’s pragmatic theory of embodied rationality and how it is expressed in various texts, I shall make some observations concerning its origin and development. Just as was the case with his theory of the embodied constitution of spatial representations, I think its origin is twofold. It may in part be viewed as the logical outcome of some basic ideas and assumptions he espoused, but in working out these consequences, he may also have been influenced by other philosophers and scholars, as well as by the general cultural climate of the eighteenth century. If we start by looking at the internal logic present in the development leading to Kant’s new conception of rationality, one central starting point is his growing discontent with the approach that he himself pursued in his younger years when, for instance in Universal natural history, he suggested that the key to understanding human rationality was to gain insight into the internal constitution of the human body, especially the nervous system. Even if he probably did not altogether give up hope that insight into the nervous system or other organs might one day disclose 16

Cf. e.g. Zammito (2002), 297.

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important knowledge about human rationality, he realized that given the actual state of eighteenth-century physiology, the prospects of success in this field were poor. Another approach was needed. In the Anthropology there are two passages confirming that the lines of thought here suggested were actually entertained by Kant. A first example is found in the first part of the book, where as we have seen he discusses the difference between what he calls a physiological and a pragmatic anthropology. Kant’s example is memory. The task of a physiological anthropology is to explore how our memory depends on and corresponds to processes in the brain. As these processes are unknown to us, however, we can only speculate about their character, which, he complains, is a waste of time. In pragmatic anthropology, on the other hand, the task is to observe what either promotes or impedes memory. This knowledge is directly useful in making it possible to control and perfect memory.17 Where are we to direct our attention if we are to pursue this project? One answer is that we have to study human behavior in context. Exploring what either promotes or impedes memory, we have to look at the practices entertained by people trying to learn, for instance, a certain method or technique. Or we may look at the pedagogical institutions where the art of making students remember what is being taught is cultivated in the form of didactic practices. Even if Kant does not explicitly draw this last connection there are arguments in support of the idea that he did so implicitly. This, further, puts us in a position to understand his strong interest in pedagogy. Pedagogy is important because within this discipline didactic measures are developed that make it possible to influence the skills of the students so that they become more qualified participants in practices that are useful. Furthermore, through the mastery of these practices the students also become more rational. A second passage conveying a similar message is found in the Anthropology where Kant discusses the human capacity for making associations between ideas. A physiological explanation of this capacity will never be found, he claims, and the hypotheses that do exist in this field do not qualify as pragmatic because they do not help us improve the art of association:

17

Ak VII : 119.

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To try to explain this in physiological terms is futile; we are free to use some principle that will always remain a hypothesis (which is itself, again, a construction), such as Descartes’ so-called material ideas in the brain. But in any case, no explanation of this kind is pragmatic: that is, we cannot use it in practicing the art of association, because we have no knowledge of the brain and of the places in it where the traces of impressions made by ideas might enter into sympathetic harmony with one another, insofar as they touch one another (at least 18 mediately), so to speak.

The impotence of the physiological sciences is here contrasted with the art of association. Kant does not specify what is here meant by ‘art’, but I think we may safely assume that this art is somehow connected to what 19 he elsewhere defines as practice. Another part of the internal logic leading Kant to form a new conception of rationality may be found by focusing on the idea that the mind is virtually present in the body, combined with the widespread idea, shared by most philosophers at the time, that human rationality is a skill or capacity that may be ascribed to a certain part of the mind. In Kant’s own terminology, human rationality is associated with the three higher cognitive faculties; reason, power of judgment and understanding. Typically, these faculties are perceived to be inner, mental faculties, for instance of a Cartesian mind, hidden and not subject to external

18

Ak VII: 176. According to Sturm (2001), 175ff., Kant’s emphasis on practice, i.e. behavior, in his Anthropology may be seen as constituting a third way between the physiological approach of some natural philosophers, and the introspectionist approach of empirical psychology. In the second part of the eighteenth century, he says, the empirical psychology of Wolff and Baumgarten was challenged by scholars like Charles Bonnet, David Hartley and Ernst Platner, all promoting the idea that the human mind should be explored by investigating the human brain. This physiological approach, however, soon came under attack, resulting in a strengthened position of introspectionist psychology, represented by, among others, Johann Nicolas Tetens, whose work Kant knew well. Against both of these trends, Kant promoted a behavior-oriented approach arguing that the state of a person’s mind may be explored through attention to their externally observable activity. He advised Johann Caspar Lavater that if his aim was to know his own soul or state of mind, he ought to look at what he was doing rather than observe his inner states. According to Kant, so Sturm’s argument goes, our 19

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observation. However, if we replace the notion of a Cartesian, mental or hidden mind with the notion of a mind present as the general activity of an embodied self, then the image changes. Even the simplest movement of the body may then also be seen as a movement of the mind. The mind is not positioned somewhere else, directing the movement from afar. The mind is the origin of the movement, it is true, but it is also in the movement. This again opens up for the idea that acts ascribed to the higher cognitive faculties of the mind, which within a Cartesian or mentalist context will be interpreted as mental acts, need no longer be perceived in that way. Acts of reason, power of judgment and understanding may just as well be identified with external acts and practices. I would not go so far as to claim that Kant’s thinking actually did develop along these lines, but the possibility certainly lay open to him. And whether he did so or not, there is evidence to support the claim that he ended up with an idea of rationality like the one suggested here. However, before we go further into this, let us examine also some historical influences that may have been significant in the development of his new conception of rationality.

3.4 Rousseau’s influence Among these influences, Rousseau’s central position is unassailable. In Émile, published in 1762, he combines a vigorous pragmatism with a thoroughly embodied perspective. In the previous chapter I argued that Kant’s theory of space may have been inspired by Émile. I think the same applies to Kant’s general theory of rationality. Written as the story of the growth and development of Émile, the work gives a genetic account of human rationality; that is, it describes how the rational skills and capacities of the child develop over time. According to Rousseau, this development involves the whole body and consists in the development of embodied skills:

vocabulary of representations, thoughts, feelings, passions, traits of personal character, and so on, is intimately connected to a careful observation of human practices and human life as it occurs and can be observed, especially in society.

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To exercise an art one must begin by procuring for oneself the instruments for it; and, to be able to employ these instruments usefully, one has to make them solid enough to resist wear. To learn to think, therefore, it is necessary to exercise our limbs, our senses, our organs, which are the instruments of our intelligence. And, to get the greatest possible advantage from these instruments, the body which provides them must be robust and healthy. Thus, far from man’s true reason being formed independently of the body, it is the body’s good constitution which makes the mind’s operations easy and 20 sure.

In order to learn to think we must exercise our limbs, Rousseau argues. Our limbs, our senses and other organs are the tools of the intellect. As for cognition and rationality in general, he defends the radical idea that every aspect of it has to be learned. The newborn baby has sensations in a primitive sense, but it neither sees nor hears. Actually, it recognizes nothing outside itself, Rousseau maintains. It does not even know that it has a body. The only primitive idea the child has at this 21 point is the idea of itself, to which it also ascribes all its sensations. Thus, cognition has to be learned. The child has to learn both to see and to 22 hear. That is, it has to learn to apply its senses so that they may be used to perceive objects in the external world. This learning process starts long before the child has anything like language or understanding, Rousseau argues; that is, it begins on a pre-linguistic and pre-reflexive level. Still, the learning taking place at this level is most significant. Here the foundations are laid for every skill that is to be developed later: The education of man begins at his birth; before speaking, before 23 understanding, he is already learning.

In this original learning process, each and every sense is important. A special significance, nevertheless, is ascribed to touch and the direct physical manipulation of objects. The child wants to touch and handle everything, and thus it learns to know the basic properties of the physical world; that is, heat, cold, hardness, softness, etc. It learns to know the weight or lightness of bodies, and to judge their size and shape. 20

Rousseau (1979), 125. Rousseau (1979), 143. The same point was promoted by Condillac in his Traité des sensations, cf. Copleston (1985), vol. IV, 32. 22 Rousseau (1979), 62ff. 23 Ibid., 62. 21

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According to Rousseau, embodied activity is also essential to the further development of the cognitive and rational abilities of the child. Thus, rather than giving the child books to read, or make it listen to lectures, he promotes the principle of learning by doing. More specifically, he advises that the child partakes in certain embodied practices by which basic skills are acquired. These skills have a double significance. In addition to being useful, they further develop and refine the cognitive and intellectual capacities of the child. Thus, for instance, Rousseau advises that the child is encouraged to make drawings of the objects of its environment. By doing this, it learns to estimate the shape and size of these objects, and also develops a deeper understanding for the laws of perspective. One could not learn to judge the extension and the size of bodies well without also getting to know their shapes and even learning to imitate them; for, at bottom this imitation depends absolutely only on the laws of perspective, and one can estimate extension by its appearances only if one has some feeling for these laws. Children, who are great imitators, all try to draw. I would want my child to cultivate this art, not precisely for the art itself but for making his eye 24 exact and his hand flexible.

If the child is normally talented, it may also acquire the principles of geometry in this way, that is, by drawing figures, combining them, and comparing them, Rousseau argues. I have said that geometry is not within the reach of children. But it is our fault. We are not aware that their method is not ours, and that what becomes for us the art of reasoning, for them ought to be only the art of seeing... […] Make exact figures, combine them, place them on one another, examine their relations. You will find the whole of elementary geometry in moving from observation to observation, without there being any question of definitions or problems or any 25 form of demonstration other than simple superimposition.

The principle of learning by doing may also be illustrated by what Rousseau says about language. The best way to teach a child the proper use of language is simply to speak correctly before it. In this way, without any further instruction, it will soon have acquired a grammar. The same 24 25

Ibid., 143. Ibid., 145.

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principle holds concerning map-making. By letting the child make simple maps of well-known places, it not only learns to understand what a map is, it also learns to find its way from one position to another better. When the child is to have its first lessons in experimental physics, embodied action is also emphasized. The child should be encouraged to partake in the construction of the apparatus involved in the experiments. Not only does it then learn to use its hands skillfully, which may be useful later in life, but this way of learning also gives the child the chance to further perfect its senses. The most palpable advantage of these slow and laborious researches is that they keep the body active and the limbs supple during speculative studies and continuously form the hands for the work and the practices useful to man. All the instruments invented to guide us in our experiments and to take the place of accuracy of the senses 26 cause the senses to be neglected.

I introduced this paragraph by claiming that in Émile Rousseau puts forward an embodied pragmatism, but what exactly is this embodied pragmatism? The pragmatic aspect of Rousseau’s theory is most easily seen, perhaps, by the fact that in all his learning, Émile is encouraged to become master of practical skills useful in his daily life. Also, Rousseau vehemently attacks the traditional knowledge of the schools and the abstract knowledge of books. This knowledge is, in the end, next to useless. Even if he does not coin a separate term for it, I think Rousseau, in his emphasis on practical skills, may be said to promote a pragmatic theory of rationality. In this theory, not only do the practical skills of everyday life count as forms of knowledge, but this knowledge is conceived of as a form of knowledge superior to the theoretical knowledge of the schools. If we are to express the same point in Aristotelian terms, we may say that Rousseau turns the Aristotelian hierarchy of the sciences upside down. The episteme of the theoretical sciences is no longer regarded as a superior form of knowledge. Its superior position is now taken by the techné of the productive sciences. As for Rousseau’s embodied perspective, it is present not only as the trivial idea that education should include the cultivation of the body, but I think Rousseau’s idea of embodiment goes much deeper, signaled by his tendency to equate embodied and rational development. The child’s 26

Ibid., 176.

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rational powers are not developed in silent reflection, they are developed in practice. Its whole body appears as an organ of rationality, a rationality exercised in and through the acts corresponding to the practices constituting its education. A number of authors have commented upon Rousseau’s influence on Kant. It is well known that Kant was so fascinated by Émile when he first read it in 1764 that he abandoned his daily walks in order to continue reading it. Kant was also familiar with Rousseau’s other works, as one of 27 his first biographers, Ludwig Ernst Borowski, testifies. A possible sign of Kant’s admiration is also the fact that the only work of art in his home 28 was a portrait of the French philosopher. Even more conspicuous are a number of statements in which Kant declares his admiration for Rousseau. One example may be found in his Announcement written just after he had read Émile. Kant announces that in his next lectures on ethics he will proceed according to the method by which man is studied, not in the varying forms in which his accidental circumstances have molded him, nor in the distorted form in which even philosophers have almost always misconstrued him, but by focusing on that which is enduring in human nature. Kant speaks of this new approach as a ‘brilliant discovery of our time, which, when 29 considered in its full scheme, was completely unknown to the ancients’. 30 Even if Rousseau is not explicitly mentioned here, I agree with Pitte that he is the originator of the brilliant discovery that Kant celebrates. This is clear when we turn to comments made in Kant’s notes. There he explicitly mentions that just as the theories of Newton had brought order, regularity, and great simplicity into our conception of the universe, so Rousseau had provided the key that would permit a neat and orderly 31 philosophy of man. In a recent publication, Zammito characterizes the intensity in Kant’s admiration for Rousseau by claiming that he was 32 never so enthusiastic in his reading of any other thinker. If Kant’s admiration of Rousseau is a well-established fact, the nature of Rousseau’s influence is more debated. Most authors emphasize the ethical aspect of this influence. They see Rousseau as responsible for what is often characterized as Kant’s ethical turn. According to Cassirer, 27

Cf. Gross (1993), 69. Cf. e.g. Cassirer (1991), 3. 29 Cf. Pitte (1978), xiv. 30 Op. cit. 31 Cf. Cassirer (1991), 20. 32 Zammito (2002), 93. 28

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Kant saw in Rousseau’s philosophy a model of character building, and in the author of this philosophy a proponent of human rights and dignity, 33 ideas that later came to fruition in his ethics. The philosophy of religion is also singled out as a field in which the influence on Kant of Rousseau 34 was decisive. However, even if this is accepted, I do not think it by any means exhausts what there is to say about the influence of Rousseau on Kant. For my own part I want to stress Kant’s interest in pedagogy, and the strong Rousseauan tone of his own pedagogical works, documented 35 for instance by Niethammer. I want to call attention to Rousseau’s disparagement of scholarly knowledge and the high esteem he accords the practical skills of ordinary people, adopted, at least in part, by Kant, enhancing the pragmatic and empiricist tendencies of his philosophy, as 36 commented upon by e.g. Vleeschauwer and others. First and foremost, however, I want to emphasize how all these ideas and ideals are founded in a unified conception of man, a conception recognized and adopted by Kant. It is a conception according to which man is basically an embodied being whose first development is mediated by his free interaction with his physical environment. Here human rationality has its basis, Rousseau argues, a rationality that is later developed through the embodied practices the child learns to master. When Kant, like Rousseau, denounces Dressieren in the education of children, and advises instead that the educational process should be characterized by freedom, including freedom of movement, fiercely attacking artificial inventions inhibiting such movement, the reason is not only that it impedes the physical development of the child. It also negatively affects the healthy development of man considered as a 37 rational being. I think that when Kant ascribes to Rousseau the brilliant discovery of how man must be studied with an eye for that which is enduring in human nature, he also has in mind the idea that human rationality is embodied, and that reflection on human rationality has to 33

Cf. Cassirer (1991), 12ff. Similar ideas have been promoted by e.g. Pitte (1971 and 1978), Dieterich (1878) and most recently by Zammito (2002). According to Zammito, however, Kant’s enthusiasm for Rousseau lasted only for a while. From around 1770 Kant began to distance himself from Rousseau. Dieterich also emphasises Rousseau’s influence in the fields of social theory and the philosophy of history. 34 Cf. e.g. Cassirer (1991), 44 and Klemme (1996), 56. 35 Niethammer (1980), 129. 36 Cf. Vleeschauwer (1962), 41, Makkreel (2001), 187 and Zammito (2002), 113ff. 37 Cf. Ak IX: 463.

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be based on this idea, i.e. it requires that we direct our attention to the 38 embodied aspects of man and to his embodied acts and practices.

3.5 Basedow and Crusius Similar influences to those just mentioned may also have come through the writings of Johann Bernhard Basedow, whose pedagogical ideas Kant eagerly supported. In 1774 Basedow opened a radical educational institution in Germany, an initiative backed by Kant. In the same year, pedagogy was introduced as a subject at the University at Königsberg, and in the following year pedagogy was added to the topics on which 39 Kant lectured. Less radical, and theoretically not as interesting as Rousseau's Émile, Basedow nevertheless ascribes a basic significance to practice. Concerning the education of the young gentleman, he suggests in his Elementarwerk that he should spend time with experienced artisans and craftsmen in order to learn to use their tools to perform simple 40 operations. He also recommends regular studies in practice on a well41 run farm. By being part of such practical contexts, the student acquires his first concepts of the relevant arts and of agriculture. Basedow, like Rousseau, ascribes to embodied participation a highly significant role in the education of practical skills, skills, moreover, valued more highly than mere theoretical reflections. A third source of influence may have been Christian August Crusius who in his Anweisung vernünftig zu leben promoted a cognitive theory with pragmatic strains, based on an anthropology in which the human 42 mind was seen as radically embodied. As Tonelli points out, Crusius 43 was an eclectic whose position was not always consistent. Thus, his pragmatism is perhaps not as clear cut as the pragmatism of e.g. Rousseau. I still, however, see him as a possible influence on Kant. He introduces his Anweisung vernunftig zu leben with a chapter on Thelematologie, or a theory of the will. ‘Will’ is here defined as the 38

That Kant saw Rousseau as an inspiration within the field of rational theory is suggested also by a remark found in the Blomberg Logic of 1771. Here Rousseau is heralded as supplying a ‘grammar of the understanding’. Cf. Ak XXIV: 300. Cf. also Ak XXIV: 495 and Zammito (2002), 260-261. 39 Cf. Munzel (1999), 266ff. 40 Basedow (1965), 192. 41 Ibid., 192. 42 For Crusius’ influence on Kant, cf. also Heimsoeth (1971), 127ff. 43 Tonelli (1969).

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power of a spirit to act according to its representations. A spirit [Geist] 45 is defined as a living substance which has ideas, or which thinks. The fact that Crusius introduces his work with a chapter on the will is no coincidence. He ascribes to the will a basic role in human life. This may not be evident at first sight. He operates with a rather traditional distinction between understanding [Verstand], defined as the power that makes it possible for us to find the truth, and will, defined as the capacity 46 to act, and he argues that they are different Grundkräfte. However, he immediately undermines this distinction by claiming the will to be an allpervasive power, permeating the understanding as well as the body. It affects the understanding, for instance, by making it possible for it to direct its attention towards a certain topic over time. Also, in order to develop a proper understanding, we have to use it, which requires 47 practice, which again presupposes an enduring will, he argues. Finally, he explains the existence of certain basic concepts by referring to what he calls ‘basic desires’ [Grundbegierden], which are also expressions of the will. Thus, for instance, the concept of an object [der deutliche Begriff des Objectes] is based on such a desire.48 How far this undermines his distinction between the understanding and the will, I shall not say. However, it certainly gives the will an essential function in the cognitive process. The will, Crusius suggests, also permeates all parts of the body and its functions. He distinguishes between various classes of embodied acts; actiones animales, which are embodied acts driven by desires of which we are conscious; and action vitales and action naturales which are unconscious. An example of the latter is the process of digestion. These acts, he argues, probably have their origin in the will, even if we are not aware of doing them, and even if they do not require a deliberate 49 decision. In addition to this the will is, of course, also involved in embodied acts deliberately performed. The ideas investigated so far do not in themselves constitute a pragmatic theory of rationality. However, by making the will an allpervasive power, a theoretical basis is laid on which such a theory may be constructed. If we look at the will as the active principle in man, and if 44

Crusius (1969), 5. Ibid., 5. 46 Ibid., 9. 47 Ibid., 33. 48 Ibid., 116-117. 49 Ibid., 39. 45

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we accept that this will exists as an omnipresent force, directing even our rational capacities, it is not far from this to the idea that our rationality realizes itself through acts initiated by this will. If, further we assume that these acts have a goal, and that their rational status is decided on the basis of whether they reach this goal or not, then we are close to a pragmatism of a Kantian sort. I think there are passages in Crusius’ work suggesting that he may have approached such a position. One is found in the first part of the Thelematologie, where he announces that he regards thinking as 50 involving more than just the possession of abstract concepts. In § 73 he continues by discussing various practices such as writing, composing 51 verses and chopping wood. These practices, he explains, come into existence through the regular repetition of certain acts. In this process, the will acquires gradually a better control of the practice. And the concepts required for the practice come ever more easily to the soul, as it remembers how it has proceeded in the same situation earlier. Finally, 52 along with this, the body becomes a proper instrument of the soul. Rather than being seen as isolated opposites, concept and action, mind and body are here all viewed as part of an integral whole. Man is not a being who first calculates the steps of future actions which are then implemented. The concepts directing the practice are formed and reinforced through the practice itself. This implies a pragmatic conception of conceptual knowledge, or so I will argue. The person exercising the art of writing, composing verses and chopping wood, moreover, also does so in order to become good at making use of these arts. Thus, the context in which his concepts evolve is also the context in which certain practical ends are realized. I will not claim that Crusius’ work had a decisive impact on Kant’s thought. However, together with Rousseau, Basedow and perhaps other like-minded philosophers, he helped to form a background of pragmatic or quasi-pragmatic ideas that may well have influenced Kant’s thinking. A final source of inspiration may have been an idea shared by both the empiricists and the rationalists of his time, namely that thinking involves certain mental operations like comparison and judging.53 An 50

Ibid., 5. Crusius uses here the Latin term habitus, cf. Crusius (1969), 92. 52 Ibid., 92-93. 53 For a discussion of the Aristotelian roots of this idea, see Forschner (1986), 82ff. Forschner also more specifically compares the notions of synthesis and action in Aristotle and Kant. 51

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expression of this idea is found in the Port-Royal Logic first published in 54 1662, which was well known to Kant. Here the mind is ascribed four basic operations; conceiving, judging, reasoning, and ordering. The last of these functions is described as follows: Here we call ordering the mental action in which different ideas, judgements, and reasonings are arranged on the same subject, such as the human body, in the manner best suited for knowing the subject. This is also called method. All this is done naturally and sometimes better by those who have never studied any rules of logic than by 55 those who have.

Notice, first, how in the first part of this passage, the mental operation of ordering is called ‘method’. If by ‘method’ we mean acts performed in a regular way in order to achieve a goal, then ‘method’ is here equivalent 56 in meaning to ‘practice’ as defined by Kant. Notice, secondly, how, in the last part of the above passage, this method or practice is associated with the rules of logic, and finally, how it is said to be sometimes better performed by a person who has never studied these rules than by a person who has done so. Here two things are implied. First, we find implied the idea that what logic studies, i.e. the rules of human rationality, exist originally as something people do. That is, these rules exist at a pre-reflective level in the practices of ordinary people. Secondly, the text implies that what we set up as the rules of logic are nothing but abstractions derived from this practice. Shortly thereafter this point is also explicitly stated: logic does not invent its rules, we are told, its task is merely to reflect on what nature 57 makes us do. Due to the rationalist outlook of the Port-Royal Logic, there is no suggestion there that the practices described are embodied practices. Rather they seem to be conceived of as practices taking place only in some inner mental realm. Still, there is a sort of pragmatism implied by this theory that is worth noting, a pragmatism locating the origin of rationality more in the successful performance of practices than in the abstract principles of books. Along with the more embodied pragmatism of Rousseau, Basedow and Crusius, this pragmatism may well have 54

Cf. Caygill (1995), 280. Arnauld (1996), 23. 56 Cf. Ak VIII: 275. 57 Arnauld (1996), 23. 55

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served as a further inspiration for what I have called Kant’s pragmatic theory of embodied rationality.

3.6 Kant’s theory of the understanding It is time to return to Kant’s theory of rationality. I will first give a brief recapitulation of what I have called his cognitive theory, that is, his theory of the cognitive faculties and processes of man as it is found in his writings on anthropology, pedagogy and logic. Special emphasis will be given to two of the higher cognitive faculties; the understanding and the power of judgment. I shall then explore some passages in which these faculties are discussed in a context suggesting that their domain of activity is not restricted to the inner mental realm only, but that they are also present in embodied practices. These practices are not merely expressions of underlying rational processes taking place elsewhere, directed by the understanding and the power of judgment. They are a medium in which these faculties have an immediate and direct presence in and through the practices themselves. Finally, we shall see how this interpretation leads us to what I call Kant’s pragmatic theory of embodied rationality, and we shall examine the basic principles of this theory. In the tradition of eighteenth-century philosophy it was usual, whenever a certain part or aspect of the cognitive process was identified, to regard it as corresponding to a specific cognitive power or faculty of the mind. Kant conforms to this tradition when, as part of his cognitive theory, he introduces a comprehensive theory of cognitive powers and capacities. As we have seen, in this cognitive theory a fundamental distinction is drawn between sensibility and understanding; sensibility belonging to the passive and receptive side of human cognition, understanding to its active side. Let us take a closer look at what Kant has to say about the understanding. Of the texts examined in this chapter, his cognitive theory is presented most comprehensively in the Anthropology. In the section entitled ‘On sensibility as contrasted with understanding’, Kant describes the faculty of understanding, or the intellectual faculty as it is also called, as follows:

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When our mind conducts itself passively toward ideas [Vorstellungen, in Ansehung deren sich das Gemüt leidend verhalt], so that we are affected by them (whether we affect ourselves or are affected by an object), these ideas belong to our sensuous cognitive power. But ideas that consist in a mere activity (thinking) belong to our intellectual cognitive power. Accordingly, the sensuous cognitive power is called the inferior cognitive power, and the intellectual, the superior 58 cognitive power.

Not only is the understanding here described as an active faculty, but Kant also suggests that what we refer to by the term ‘thinking’ is the acts performed by this faculty. The understanding then reappears as a topic in the section entitled ‘On the cognitive power insofar as it is based on 59 understanding’. It is here defined as ‘the capacity of thinking’. Thinking, Kant further explains, is the capacity to represent something through concepts. His way of making the point may suggest that he takes thinking to involve merely the possession of mental representations, perhaps even mental images of some kind. However, we must bear in mind that he has just defined thinking to be an activity. What kind of activity is it? In language highly reminiscent of the Critique, he now tells us that the understanding has the function of producing unity in the manifold of our empirical representations so that the cognition of objects is made possible. Moreover, the understanding is associated with rules, which are said to inhere in the concepts with which the understanding works: Understanding, taken as the power of thinking (representing things to ourselves by concepts), is also called the higher cognitive power (as distinguished from sensibility, the lower); for the power of intuition (pure or empirical) is limited to objects in their singularity, whereas the power of concepts contains the universal element of ideas. Understanding contains, in other words, the rule to which the manifold of sensuous intuitions must be submitted in order to 60 produce the unity essential to knowledge of objects.

So far Kant has used the term ‘understanding’ in a general sense, referring to the higher cognitive faculty in general. At this point, however, he introduces a model according to which this higher cognitive faculty has three parts, forming a hierarchy of levels. In the terminology 58

Ak VII: 140. Ak VII: 196. 60 Ak VII: 196. 59

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corresponding to this new model, ‘understanding’ is used in a more limited sense than before, referring to the lowest level of the threefold hierarchy only. Reason [Vernunft] is the term associated with the highest level, while at the intermediate level we find what he calls the power of judgment [Urteilskraft]. But we also take the word ‘understanding’ in a particular sense, namely, when we subordinate it to understanding in the general sense, as one member of a division that has two other members. In this case the higher cognitive power (considered materially - that is, not merely in itself but with respect to knowledge of objects) consists 61 in understanding, judgment [Urteilskraft] and reason [Vernunft].

Now, how are we to characterize the understanding, considered in this new and more limited sense? In an explanatory passage Kant defines this 62 understanding as ‘the faculty of rules’ [Vermögen der Regeln]. The power of judgment is defined as the capacity to identify the particular insofar as it falls under a rule. Reason, finally, is defined as the capacity to deduce the particular from the general so that it is seen as conforming to a principle, and necessarily so. Now if understanding is the power of rules [Vermögen der Regeln], and judgment the power of discovering the particular insofar as it is an instance of these rules, reason is the power of deriving the particular from the universal and so representing it according to 63 principles and as necessary.

This passage may be criticized for not being too clear in explaining what distinguishes the three higher cognitive faculties. To say that the understanding is a capacity for rules may not seem very illuminating. What is meant here by rules, and in what way is the understanding their capacity? And what is the distinction between the power of judgment and reason? Here they are both associated with a movement from the general to the particular. So what is the difference between them? We need, obviously, to inquire further into the text. 61

Ak VII: 196-7. Ak VII: 199. 63 Ak VII: 199. 62

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3.7 Concepts and rules In what follows I shall generally be using ‘understanding’ in the more limited sense indicated above, that is, as a term referring to the lower part of the higher cognitive faculty in general. And I will be focusing on Kant’s proposition that the understanding is a capacity for rules. How are we to understand this proposition? What are these rules? And what may these rules tell us about the understanding? First, we may note that in a number of his writings Kant treats ‘concept’ and ‘rule’ as closely related or even interchangeable terms. The following passage from On the common saying from 1793, may serve to illustrate this. As we have seen, the text starts by defining a theory as something based on rules. Even practical rules, Kant points out, may combine to form a theory. A sum of rules, even of practical rules, is called theory if those rules are thought as principles having a certain generality, so that abstraction is made from a multitude of conditions that yet have a 64 necessary influence on their application.

So far, Kant has not equated rules and concepts, but he has taken a step in this direction by saying that a theory is a systematic collection of rules. Ordinarily theories are thought to consist of concepts, and he often says this. In fact, he does so only a few lines after the passage just quoted. Here, also, an explicit link is made between concepts and rules by the claim that concepts contain rules. It is obvious that between theory and practice there is required, besides, a middle term connecting them and providing a transition from one to the other, no matter how complete a theory may be; for, to a concept of the understanding, which contains a rule, must be 65 added an act of judgment…

By saying that concepts contain rules, Kant may seem to be making a conceptual distinction between concepts and rules. I would not put too much emphasis on this, however. Rather I take this passage as 66 confirming that the meaning of these terms converge in his terminology. 64

Ak VIII: 275. Ak VIII: 275, my emphasis. 66 This is most evident in the Critique where e.g. the categories are described both as transcendental concepts, and as rules. 65

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The basic question still remains, however. What are the concepts/rules of the understanding? And what is the understanding itself? In pursuing these questions further, I shall now turn to some passages in which Kant discusses the understanding and its rules in the context of the human life-world. The term ‘life-world’ is here used to characterize everything in our lives as human beings that belongs to our everyday existence as embodied agents taking part in the standard practices of everyday life as well as the more specialized procedures of various professions. The term will also be used to characterize a certain perspective under which the world is observed when these aspects are included. This life-world perspective may be contrasted with the more abstract perspective of scientific and philosophical theories, in which what is irrelevant to the theories has been abstracted away. Characteristic of (parts of) the Anthropology, and also of the other texts examined in this chapter, is the discussion of human rationality from what I have here called the life-world perspective. A somewhat exotic, but still, I think, illustrative example, is the following, in which the three higher cognitive faculties are associated with three social roles of a hierarchical society; reason with a general, the power of judgment with an officer, and finally, the understanding with a servant. A domestic or civil servant who is under express orders needs only understanding. An officer, who is given only the general rule for discharging his duties and left to decide for himself what to do in cases that come up, needs judgment. A general, who has to evaluate 67 all contingencies and think up the rule for them, must have reason.

It may be objected that this is simply an illustration and that the passage does not contain any genuine theory. This is true, but I think the passage can still be seen to contain some interesting suggestions on how to understand Kant’s theory of the higher cognitive faculties. First, let us note that the understanding is associated with the bottom of the social hierarchy. It is placed at the ground level, where the manual labor is done, labor carried out with the body, involving simple, but basic practices essential to human life. Here, in the performance of these embodied practices, is the place to look, so the passage suggests, if we are to identify the defining characteristics of the understanding.

67

Ak VII: 198.

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No space for individual judgment is left for the servant. This is a privilege allowed only to the inhabitants of the two higher levels. As for the first of these, the level corresponding to the power of judgment, we find rules prescribed, but individual judgment is needed in order to decide how the rules are to be applied in particular cases. At the highest level, the level of reason, there is also a certain creativity at play. Here, new rules are designed. Thus, one of the functions of reason, the passage suggests, is to be a producer of rules. We should take care not to draw premature conclusions based on a passage that is perhaps only meant as a metaphorical illustration. For instance, Kant defines reason in various ways in different places, and it is not always easy to see how these descriptions match the image just sketched. As for the understanding, however, the above passage contains a recurring motif in Kant’s writings on anthropology, pedagogy and logic. As we shall soon see, these texts contain a number of passages in which the understanding is associated with the performance of embodied practices. Moreover, as in the above passage, these practices are conceived of as rule-governed activities. What does this tell us about the understanding and its rules/concepts? Before we attempt to answer this question, let us examine another passage discussing the relation between rules/concepts and practices.

3.8 Rules and practices This passage is found in Kant’s Logic published in 1800. The notion of rule here has a very central role to play with regard not only to logic but also to Kant’s idea of a world at large. He introduces the entire work by stating that everything in nature changes according to rules. The exercise of human powers also takes place according to rules, he maintains, but in the beginning this regular exercise of powers takes place without consciousness. Only gradually, through a process of hard labor, do we start to think more abstractly about the rules according to which we act. Here is the passage:

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The exercise of our own powers also takes place according to certain rules which we first follow without being conscious of them, until we gradually come to cognize them through experiments and long use of our powers, and finally make them so familiar to us that it costs us great effort to think them in abstraction Thus, for example, general grammar is the form of a language as such. One also speaks, however, without knowing grammar, and he who speaks without knowing it actually does have a grammar and speaks according to 68 rules, even though he is not conscious of them.

Let us take a closer look at the passage and what it implies. The example chosen is grammar [allgemeine Grammatik] which is, according to Kant, the set of rules according to which we speak when we master a language. Now, he stresses, a person may very well master a language without being conscious of the rules according to which he speaks. However, he still has a grammar. As a grammar is a set of rules, this is equivalent to saying that the person possesses a set of rules even if not conscious of having them. What general theory may be derived from this example? First, we may notice that speaking a language is an activity taking place according to a set of rules, i.e. the rules of grammar. Thus, it counts as an example of what Kant defines as a practice.69 As speaking a language is something we perform as embodied agents, it may also be used as an example of an embodied practice. The general theory derived from this example may therefore be stated like this: a person may possess a rule solely through the successful performance of a certain embodied practice. The person does not have to be conscious of the fact that she acts according to a rule. She still possesses it. Above I argued that ‘rule’ and ‘concept’ are convergent or even equivalent terms in Kant’s terminology. Thus, the point just made may also be expressed by saying that a person may possess a concept solely through the successful performance of an embodied practice. We may also notice that in the above passage Kant seems to be operating at two levels. First we have the level where a person possesses a rule/concept solely through the performance of a certain embodied practice. Then we have the second level where the person has also learned to think of these rules/concepts abstractly [in abstracto zu denken]. Kant does not specify the process taking us from the first to the second level, except that it requires experiments [Versuche] and hard 68 69

Ak IX: 503. It also has an end, i.e. communication.

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labor. What he does suggest, or more than suggest, however, is that the first level is ontologically prior to the second. It is ontologically prior due to the fact that the second level in a basic way depends on the first. If there were no embodied practices, there would be nothing from which to 70 abstract the rules present on the second level. Is this a general principle for Kant? It is perhaps premature to draw this conclusion after having examined only one passage. Let us, therefore, continue by examining other passages relevant to his ideas about the relation between rules/concepts and practices. In doing this I will take ‘rule’ and ‘concept’ to be equivalent terms. Thus, when the German term Regel appears in the text, I will take it to mean both rule and concept and I will usually translate it as ‘concept’.

3.9 Learning by doing In a passage in On pedagogy, Kant discusses the role of abstract concepts in education. To what extent should students be confronted with such abstract concepts? And to what extent may such concepts be useful in the educational process? He begins the discussion by stressing that concepts are necessary in order to cultivate the understanding of young people. He also advises that the concepts in question should be made abstract as part of the educational process. This is to prevent the students from performing their skills mechanically, or without consciousness, and to help them better remember what they have learned. Rules must be present in all that which is to cultivate the soul. It is very useful also to make these rules abstract, so that the understanding proceeds not only mechanically, but with 71 consciousness of a rule.

Even if the text here points to the virtue of abstract knowledge, it also contains an implicit gesture pointing beyond such knowledge. It is useful, Kant tells us, also to abstract the concept involved in the educational process. The little term ‘also’ here discloses that there is more to this process than just the abstract concepts. What is more, we learn, is practice. 70

This does not mean that each and every individual must first establish a practice from which a concept is then abstracted, only that on a general level the practice is fundamental. 71 Ak IX: 474, a.t.

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This is made explicit in what follows immediately after the above passage when Kant discusses whether it is better to have students first learn concepts abstractly, and then later have them learn the practice [Gebrauch] corresponding to these concepts, or whether it is better to combine the two. According to Kant, the latter is better. The question is: should the abstract rules come first... […] or should the rule and its application go along with each other? Only the latter 72 is advisable.

So far, nothing has been said about the actual practices to which the text is referring. What kind of practices are they? A few pages later, Kant discloses that the practices he has in mind involve, for instance, the practice of speaking a language or making a map. The capacities of the mind [Gemütskräfte] are best cultivated when the student does for himself what is to be learned, he advises. For instance, when he learns a rule of grammar, he should immediately also use it in speaking. And for a student to understand what a map is, it is best for him to learn how to make one. The capacities of the mind are better cultivated when one does for oneself what one wants to achieve, for instance, when one immediately applies the rules of grammar that have been taught. One understands a map better when one is capable of producing it oneself. Production is the best aid of the understanding. One learns most 73 thoroughly and remembers best that which one learns by oneself.

At first sight it may, perhaps, not be evident that these passages are relevant to Kant’s theory of rationality. However, if we try to identify some of the assumptions on which the above didactic advice is founded, we arrive, I think, at ideas similar to the one we found to be implied by the passage from Logic considered earlier. First, let us notice that in the above text, as in the Logic, Kant seems to be giving a sort of priority to practice. However, while he gives a number of reasons why it is profitable for students to learn to know concepts in abstracto he also more than suggests that a topic cannot really be learned if the students do not learn to master the practices corresponding to the concepts. The capacities of the mind are best cultivated when the student does for himself what is to be learned, he 72 73

Ak IX: 475, a.t. Ak IX: 477, a.t.

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insists, reminding us here of Rousseau’s didactic in Émile. If the topic, for instance, is map-making, then an optimal learning situation is not established just by letting the students learn the principles of map-making in abstracto, but also by letting the students partake in the practice of map-making. Secondly, Kant uses the notion of Regeln in abstracto. The very notion of abstraction implies that the concepts here referred to, before they are abstracted, exist as part of a richer and more comprehensive context. This context, obviously, is a practice. Finally, let us recall that when Kant advises that the rules or concepts corresponding to a certain practice are presented to the students in abstracto, it is to prevent, their understanding from proceeding ‘mechanically’. Even if he explicitly advises against it, he also implies that a mechanical employment of the understanding is actually possible. What does it mean for the understanding to proceed mechanically? I suggest that Kant has in mind the same unconscious mastering of a 74 practice as the one described in Logic. If my interpretation is on the right track, then we may conclude that the passage just examined implies or presupposes the same basic ideas as those in Logic. Very briefly, these are: 1) A person may possess a concept solely through the successful performance of an embodied practice. 2) Such a concept may also be possessed in abstracto, that is, in abstraction from its corresponding practice. 3) In such a case the practice has ontological priority over the 75 abstract concept. As suggested at the beginning of this chapter, I do not claim that these three points exhaust all Kant has to say about concepts. I do not claim, for instance, that he held all concepts to be abstracted from practices. I will claim, however, that the three points just stated represent more than just a passing fancy on his behalf. They represent a lasting theory, presupposed or implied by a number of passages in his writings on anthropology, pedagogy and logic, some of which will be examined below. These three points, I maintain, are also central to what I have called Kant’s pragmatic theory of embodied rationality. Before continuing, however, let us turn briefly to the second question asked above. If concepts are rules that may be possessed solely through the successful performance of an embodied practice, what does this tell us 74 75

Cf. Ak IX: 503 Below I will slightly modify this third point.

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about the understanding as a human capacity? Let me suggest the following answer. If concepts are rules that may be possessed solely through the successful performance of an embodied practice, and if the understanding is our capacity for rules, as Kant states for instance in the Anthropology,76 then the understanding may be considered as a human capacity both more basic and more omnipotent than is commonly allowed. Whenever a person partakes in a practice, the understanding is active. The understanding is that in us, whatever it is, that makes it possible for us to partake in such practices. From the very first moment when a child starts to acquire the practices necessary for mastering the world, the understanding is active and develops along with the development of these practices. As far as I know, Kant never says this explicitly. However, I see it as implied by his more general ideas about concepts and practices. In what follows I shall assume this more comprehensive account of the understanding to be part of Kant’s rational theory. This interpretation may also be seen as supported, I think, by the passage from the Anthropology examined above, where the understanding is associated 77 with the role of a servant. This servant, Kant tells us, makes no individual judgments but simply carries out the duties assigned to him. He lives his life at the ground level where manual labor is done, involving simple but basic practices essential to human life. The fact that Kant uses this servant to illustrate what characterizes the understanding, as contrasted with the higher cognitive faculties, strongly suggests, I think, a conception of the understanding like the one I have suggested: the understanding is that in us that makes it possible for us to partake in embodied practices.

3.10 The unconscious employment of the understanding We have seen that Kant espouses the idea that a person may possess a concept solely through the successful performance of an embodied practice, sometimes even without being aware of possessing these concepts. I have also contended that Kant holds the understanding to be that in us that makes it possible for us to partake in such practices. From this we may infer that, according to Kant, there is a mode in which the understanding proceeds unconsciously. 76 77

Ak VII: 199. Ak VII: 198.

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The idea of an understanding proceeding without awareness or consciousness may seem strange. However, it conforms well to the general idea of the mind found in Kant’s writings on anthropology, pedagogy and logic. In the following passage from the Anthropology, for instance, he states that he does not take everything existing in the mind to be conscious. On the contrary, consciousness pertains only to a few and limited parts of the mind: In man (and in beasts too) there is an immense field of sensuous intuitions and sensations we are not conscious of, though we can conclude with certainty that we have them. In other words, the field of our obscure [dunkeler] ideas is immeasurable, while our clear ideas are only the infinitesimally few points on this map that lie open to consciousness: our mind is like an immense map with only a few places illuminated. This fact can inspire us with admiration for our own being; for a higher power need only say ‘let there be light’ and, without the least co-operation on our part, set half a world before our 78 eyes, so to speak.

And he continues: So the field of obscure ideas is the largest in man.

79

Also where the activities of the mind are concerned, most of it escapes our conscious attention. This is argued, for instance, in Negative Magnitudes from 1763: But what an admirably busy activity is concealed within the depths of our minds which goes unnoticed even while it is being exercised. And it goes unnoticed because the actions in question are very numerous and each of them is represented only very obscurely. Everybody is familiar with the facts which prove that this is the case. One need only consider, for example, the actions which take place unnoticed 80 within us when we read.

78

Ak VII: 135. Ak VII: 136. 80 Ak II: 191. 79

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Thus, the idea of an understanding proceeding without consciousness is not in conflict with Kant’s general ideas of the mind as put forward 81 before or after the Critique.

3.11 Judgments cannot be learned Now, let us return to Kant’s pragmatic theory of embodied rationality. So far this theory of rationality has been discussed primarily in connection with his theory of the understanding, but he also discusses practice in relation to another higher cognitive faculty, that is, the power of judgment [Urteilskraft]. Let us take a look at some of these passages in which this is done and try to find out whether these passages add something new to Kant’s pragmatic theory of embodied rationality, or whether they only express the theory in a somewhat different form. Let us start our examination with a passage from the Anthropology. Instruction can enrich natural understanding [Der natürliche Verstand] with many concepts and equip it with rules. But the second intellectual power, judgment (judicium) – the power of deciding whether or not something is an instance of the rule – cannot be instructed; it can only be exercised [geübt]. This is why we speak of a growth in judgment as maturity, and call judgment the kind of 82 understanding that comes only with years.

Kant opens this passage by arguing that what he calls the natural understanding may be enriched by a multitude of concepts and rules. However, where the second intellectual capacity is concerned, the power of judgment, the task of which it is to decide whether something is an instance of a concept or not, this cannot be taught but can only be developed through practice. This is why we refer to its development as a process of maturation, and why this maturation is not normally found in people below a certain age. He then proceeds to explain why proper judgments cannot be taught, but only learned through practice.

81 82

We shall see later that Kant promotes similar ideas in the Critique. Ak VII: 199.

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We readily see that it could not be otherwise: to instruct [Belehrung] is to impart rules, and if judgment could be taught there would have to be general rules by which we could decide whether or not something is an instance of the rule; and this would involve a further inquiry to infinity. So judgment is, as we say, the understanding that comes only with age, that is based on our own long experience; it is the understanding whose judgment the French Republic seeks in the 83 assembly of the so-called Anciens.

To teach a person a rule [Belehrung], Kant argues, involves making the rule explicit to him [Mitteilung]. Now, suppose that it was also possible to teach the person to apply this rule in the same way. This would require a second rule saying how the first rule was to be applied. This, however, would require a third rule saying how the second rule was to be applied, and so for every rule we would need a new one, ad infinitum. This is clearly impossible so something else is required and this is practice [Übung]. What does Kant mean when he describes the function of the power of judgment as deciding whether something is an instance of a concept or not? I think he has two related cases in mind. The first might be exemplified by a student in an educational setting being asked by her teacher to give examples of objects falling under a certain concept. The student may answer by pointing at objects in the room, or by verbally referring to such objects. The second case might be exemplified by a professional, for instance a doctor, examining a patient and deciding on the basis of the symptoms exhibited and her knowledge of diseases what illness this particular patient suffers from and what treatment to give. Both cases exemplify what I would call embodied practices. Kant’s point then, is that both these kinds of activity require a well developed power of judgment, and also that this require practice [Übung]. What then does Kant mean when he talks about an understanding enriched by a multitude of concepts and rules? Such a superficial enrichment is brought about through Belehrung, that is, by making the concepts explicit to the students. I take Kant here to be referring to the didactic practice of making students memorize abstract concepts and/or theories without learning what these concepts/theories mean or how to apply them. When asked to give examples falling under a concept a student with this kind of knowledge would not be able to give an answer either by pointing at objects in the room or verbally referring to such objects. Neither would she be able to use a theory to successfully deal 83

Ak VII: 199.

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with actual problems. Even if the theory prescribed ways of handling the problem, she would not be able to use these prescriptions in practice If this is so, then the above passages may be seen as expressing views very similar to the ones identified above, for instance in the didactic advice given in On pedagogy, that there is no use in teaching students abstract concepts if they do not also learn how to apply them; i.e. students should do for themselves in practice what is to be learned. The above passages may also be seen as implying the two-level model suggested there, according to which conceptual knowledge may be present in two ways. First we have the level where a person knows how to apply a concept in practice, then we have the second level where the person possesses the concept in abstracto. Finally, Kant may in the above passages, as in On pedagogy, be seen to express the idea that the second kind of concept possession is of no use if it is not also converted into practice. Seen in the context of this interpretation, however, there is one way in which these passages are confusing. Above we identified the understanding as the human capacity that makes it possible to partake in embodied practices. Now, the understanding seems to be ascribed a much more limited function