Ideal Embodiment: Kant's Theory of Sensibility

Introduction: Transcendental Embodiment

Introduction Transcendental Embodiment the history of western philosophy from the nineteenth century to the present has accustomed us to consider Kant to be the champion of an idea of rationality which each successive philosophical enterprise cannot avoid measuring itself by. In the cognitive and practical sphere, Kant’s “Copernican Revolution”1 aims at isolating an idea of “reason” in its utter purity. The pure dimension of rationality constitutes the knowing subject of Kant’s epistemology, the rational agent of his ethics, and the evaluating subject of his aesthetics. The aim of isolating a pure, i.e., nonempirical dimension of human rationality is instrumental to the transcendental framework of Kant’s investigation. In this perspective, what is at stake is not a direct analysis of human experience but the discovery of the a priori conditions of its possibility. However, from early on in the reception and interpretation of Kant’s philosophy the notion of rational “purity,” coupled with that of reason’s “formality,” has been often misunderstood and repeat- 2 ideal embodiment edly brought under attack. The attempt to establish reason’s purity—or the transcendental move from experience to its constitutive conditions—has been read as a forceful gesture that sanctions reason’s radical independence of, separation from, and superiority to sensibility—both with regard to the empirical sources of knowledge (such as sensation and perception) and to the empirical affections of the will (such as desires, emotions, and feelings). While the idea of transcendental philosophy overcomes the opposition between rationality and sensibility by proposing a new way of conceiving their reciprocal interaction, Kant’s project has often been accused of disregarding (or repressing) the “right” of sensibility for the sake of reason’s formal purity. One way to rectify such misconstructions is to assess the meaning of Kant’s transcendental turn in philosophy by examining the notion of sensibility it establishes. This is the task that I undertake in the present study. Instead of drawing Kant’s idea of rationality to the center, I follow the less traveled path of investigating the idea of sensibility in relation to which Kantian Vernunft gains its more or less rightly deserved reputation of purity and formality. In the framework of Kant’s transcendental philosophy, the idea of rationality is complemented and supported by a notion of “sensibility” (Sinnlichkeit ) that stands largely unprecedented in the history of philosophy. For Kant, sensibility covers a complex territory broadly construed to include different functions such as intuition, sensation, feeling, imagination, desires , affects, emotions, which both the empiricist and rationalist traditions had usually and variously conflated. Human reason is shaped in relation to human sensibility. A common reading of Kant’s doctrine puts this general claim as follows: pure rationality, as understanding, must collaborate with sensibility in order for knowledge (i.e., the pure synthesis of cognition) to be possible; yet, as practical reason, it must avoid sensibility for the sake of moral action. My task is to ascertain the extent to which such claims are justified and supported by Kant’s texts: what is the notion of sensibility at stake for pure reason and practical reason respectively? Moreover, the opposition between rationality and sensibility seems to be supported by Kant’s vocabulary: while understanding and reason are characterized by their activity , indeed by their “spontaneity,” Kant uses the traditional language of “receptivity” and “affection” (hence passivity) to indicate the modality proper to sensibility. Two points need to be underscored from the outset in this regard. The first crucial and often neglected point is that for Kant the notion of sensibil- introduction 3 ity is not coextensive with the sphere of the material and empirical. In his critical philosophy the sphere of sensibility claims an independence of its own—indeed, paradoxically, even a “purity” of its own. The second point concerns the possibility of viewing certain aspects of sensibility as exercising an independent type of “activity”—an activity that is different from those of understanding and reason, but that can claim a right of its own. From the fact that sensibility is somehow receptive in relation to understanding it does not follow that it may not disclose an active—even a spontaneous—aspect. One of the tasks of this book is to show that human sensibility, when viewed in the framework of Kant’s critical philosophy, discloses an irreducible active component responsible for shaping our human experience of and in the world. Once both points...