Ideal Embodiment: Kant's Theory of Sensibility (review)

This book is a survey of Kant's three Critiques that makes use of an "interpretive concept" that Nuzzo calls "transcendental embodiment" (8). According to Nuzzo, if we think of Kant as holding that there is something like the "a priori of the human body" or body as "the transcendental site of sensibility," which "displays a formal, ideal dimension essential to our experience as human beings" (8–9), then our understanding of Kant will be greatly improved. That is because the "notion of transcendental embodiment provides the unifying thread of Kant's epistemology, moral philosophy, aesthetics and teleology of living nature" (ibid.).

The main body of the book is divided into three parts, each corresponding to one of the three Critiques. In turn, each part is divided into three chapters.

For some grip on what Nuzzo means by "transcendental embodiment," the first chapter of the first part is the most helpful. What is behind this "interpretive concept" is Kant's argument against Leibnizian nominalism about space from "incongruent counterparts." Kant's argument is that there can be two conceptually indistinguishable objects that do, however, differ in spatial orientation, e.g., the mirror image of a glove. Even though a glove and its mirror image are distinguishable from one another, it is not because of any conceptual difference between the two objects that one can tell them apart. Instead, according to Kant, it is because we can present space as a form of intuition that such diversity in spatial orientation is palpable at all. Whether or not the argument is sufficient for the ideality of space is debatable. For instance, when first introduced during the pre-critical period, it was used to defend Newtonian realism about space, which the critical Kant, of course, renounced.

Regardless, here is how Nuzzo introduces her interpretive concept: "In his repeated argument, the essential asymmetry that characterizes incongruent objects is always and most clearly revealed to us by the observation of our own body," such that this observation of our own body should count as "a privileged entry-point into all discussions of incongruent counterparts" (22). She then adds an even stronger claim: "Kant's more radical claim is that we need to use our left and right hands in order to understand how 'left' and 'right' work in the outside world, and ultimately to know of the incongruence of incongruent objects" (23).

Accordingly, I take it that Nuzzo has some argument like the following in mind: if space is a form of intuition, and thus ideal, then the argument from incongruent counterparts must be sound. The best or "privileged" way—or maybe the only way—to understand the argument from incongruent counterparts is either "by the observation of our own bodies" or "to use our left and right hands." It turns out, however, that Nuzzo does not mean any literal (i.e., empirical) observation of our own bodies, since she later says that the "body of this agent, however, is not visible" (154). Therefore, in order to accept the ideality of space, either the best or the only way is to be embodied. But to count as transcendental, I suppose best would not be good enough—so the only way to accept the ideality of space is to be embodied.

But there is also another sense of 'transcendental embodiment', namely the "embodiment of practical reason … in subjective action" (131). Nuzzo's clearest explanation of this second sense is this: "the process of deliberation, along with the formation of moral feeling, are the two places in which Kant's transcendental inquiry addresses the problem of freedom's realization or of its effects in the phenomenal world—that is, the issue of practical reason's transcendental embodiment" (185). Accordingly, I think Nuzzo literally means that, if you are going to save a drowning person (say, out of respect for some moral law), you will need a suitable body with which to do that. "Thereby," she adds later...