Ideal Embodiment: Kant’s Theory of Sensibility by Angelica Nuzzo provides a novel reinterpretation of Immanuel Kant’s philosophy, particularly his concept of sensibility, which has often been eclipsed by his more renowned ideas on pure reason and the transcendental subject. Nuzzo’s work challenges the conventional understanding of Kant as privileging reason over sensibility, a view that tends to depict sensibility as merely passive and subordinate. Instead, she introduces the concept of “transcendental embodiment,” which reconceptualizes sensibility as an active, autonomous component crucial to human cognition, moral agency, and aesthetic experience.
Nuzzo’s analysis begins by addressing the prevalent misconception that Kant’s philosophy is characterized by a strict dualism between reason and sensibility. Traditional interpretations often suggest that Kant’s notion of pure reason isolates and elevates rationality above other human faculties. However, Nuzzo argues that this interpretation overlooks the essential role that sensibility plays in Kant’s critical philosophy. She posits that sensibility in Kant’s system possesses an a priori dimension, an idea that challenges the Cartesian dualism of mind and body that has dominated Western philosophy since the early modern period. According to Nuzzo, Kant transcends this dichotomy by integrating sensibility into the very structure of human experience and knowledge.
Central to Nuzzo’s reinterpretation is the idea that human sensibility, according to Kant, is not limited to the empirical and material conditions of perception and sensation. Rather, it has a “pure” form, exemplified in the a priori forms of intuition—space and time—that structure all possible experience. This insight allows Nuzzo to reinterpret Kant’s doctrine, highlighting the autonomy and activity inherent in sensibility. For Kant, sensibility is not just a passive recipient of stimuli from the external world but also an active force that shapes our experience and cognition from within. This active dimension of sensibility, largely overlooked in Kantian scholarship, is essential to understanding how the human subject is both embodied and rational.
Nuzzo extends her analysis to Kant’s practical philosophy, particularly his moral theory, where the role of sensibility becomes even more intricate. Traditional readings of Kant emphasize the sharp divide between the moral law, derived from pure practical reason, and the inclinations and desires associated with sensibility. However, Nuzzo suggests that this opposition is not as absolute as it is often portrayed. She explores how the concept of “transcendental embodiment” reveals a deeper continuity between sensibility and reason, where sensibility is not merely an obstacle to moral action but can be seen as providing the conditions for the moral subject’s engagement with the world. This reinterpretation has significant implications for Kant’s moral philosophy, challenging the view that it is overly formalistic and detached from the realities of human life.
Nuzzo also examines how Kant’s critical philosophy effectively ends the Cartesian mind-body problem, a dualism that dominated modern philosophy but rarely extended to Kant. She argues that Kant’s transcendental doctrine offers a new method for addressing human embodiment within philosophical discourse. By dismantling the metaphysical notion of a disembodied soul, as discussed in the Paralogisms of the Critique of Pure Reason, and proposing a transcendental notion of embodiment, Kant assigns unprecedented significance to the body as a necessary a priori condition of our judgments and experiences.
Throughout Kant’s three Critiques—Critique of Pure Reason, Critique of Practical Reason, and Critique of Judgment—Nuzzo identifies a shift away from the metaphysical concept of the soul, with its implications of immortality and afterlife, towards a new understanding of the body as an active locus of specific a priori principles. On this view, the body is no longer a mere object of experience but the necessary a priori condition thereof. In his 1786 essay What Does It Mean to Orient Oneself in Thinking?, Kant suggests that the human body, considered in its transcendental a priori form, functions as the compass for our orientation in the world, both human and natural.
A key question Nuzzo explores is how Kant constructs the human body and its sensibility within a specifically transcendental framework. She contends that Kant does not ground the humanity of reason in any metaphysical or empirical concept of “human nature” but in the transcendental form of human embodiment, particularly in the uniquely human experiences made possible by the a priori conditions of the human body and its sensibility. The concept of “transcendental embodiment” emerges as a guiding thread in this investigation, offering a new perspective on the body within Kant’s critical philosophy. This formal dimension of embodiment, Nuzzo argues, is constitutive of our experience as rational subjects, both in our knowledge of the world and in our actions within it.
Nuzzo’s exploration systematically examines Kant’s notion of sensibility across his three Critiques, guided by the concept of “transcendental embodiment.” Unlike many recent studies that focus on Kant’s applied philosophy, her work delves into the critical-transcendental foundation underlying Kant’s thought, tracing the development of his transcendental project from its pre-critical beginnings in works like the 1766 Dreams of a Spirit-Seer and the 1768 essay On the Ultimate Ground of the Differentiation of Regions in Space to its culmination in the Critique of Judgment. The concept of transcendental embodiment serves as a unifying thread across Kant’s epistemology, moral philosophy, aesthetics, and teleology of living nature.
The study defends the novelty and irreducibility of Kant’s transcendental philosophy by emphasizing its focus on the formal conditions of our judgments, rather than on the production of mental content or the application of these conditions to concrete experiences. Transcendental embodiment, as a methodological notion, stands in opposition to empirical views of the body as a mere object of experience, views often rooted in disciplines like physiology, psychology, anthropology, or phenomenology. These disciplines treat the body as a self-evident, trivial fact, while Kant’s transcendental investigation reveals the body as a necessary a priori condition of experience, never merely a physical given.
Nuzzo argues that Kant’s transcendental investigation uncovers a formal, ideal dimension of the body that is essential to our experience as human beings. This formal structure of embodiment articulates autonomous spheres of experience, justified by specific a priori principles, and it is this structure that underpins the universality and necessity of human life. The body thus becomes the locus where different functions of sensibility, such as imagination, intuition, and affects, are exercised.
Nuzzo further demonstrates how this transcendental view of embodiment influences Kant’s epistemology, moral philosophy, and aesthetics. For example, Kant’s doctrine of space is shown to be foundational for his epistemology and moral theory, rooted in our bodily sense of orientation, which allows us to construct a coherent experience of nature as governed by universal laws. In the realm of ethics, the moral agent is necessarily an embodied rational being, and Kant’s concept of freedom as independence from sensibility does not eliminate human desire but leads to a transcendental account of desire, feeling, and emotion, where the body plays a crucial role in experiencing the moral law as a feeling of respect.
In aesthetics, the transcendental significance of our embodied condition is explored in how it contributes to our experience of beauty, the sublime, and our teleological reflection on nature. These experiences are rooted in the transcendental form of the body, which enables a feeling for our own life and an appreciation of living nature.
Nuzzo’s study places Kant at the crossroads of two radically different ways of understanding the human body, revealing yet another “Copernican Revolution” in Kant’s philosophy. By uncovering the a priori active dimension of human sensibility, Kant dissolves the privileged status of the metaphysical soul and ends the traditional Cartesian mind-body dualism. This transcendental turn in Kant’s philosophy lays the groundwork for the emphasis on the human body and its sensibility seen in the philosophical projects of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, influencing thinkers like Fichte, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty.
Nuzzo argues that while post-Kantian philosophers often perceive Kant’s legacy as largely negative, their own emphasis on the embodied aspect of human experience is deeply indebted to Kant’s transcendental investigation. Concepts such as imagination, the feeling of respect, and the sublime in Kant’s philosophy already embody what she calls “transcendental embodiment”—active ways of shaping our human experience.
Ideal Embodiment not only reinterprets Kant’s transcendental philosophy in light of its implications for human embodiment but also sheds new light on contemporary developments in Continental philosophy, particularly in traditions influenced by Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty. Nuzzo uncovers the positive Kantian heritage in these recent philosophical positions, demonstrating that Kant’s transcendental embodiment remains a vital concept for understanding the embodied nature of human experience.
By proposing “transcendental embodiment” as a key to understanding Kant’s philosophy, Nuzzo not only offers a new reading of Kant but also addresses broader philosophical issues concerning the nature of human experience. She engages with contemporary debates in both analytic and Continental philosophy, suggesting that many modern discussions on the body, emotion, and reason unwittingly echo Kant’s insights, even as they position themselves as critiques of Kantianism. In this way, Nuzzo’s work shows that Kant’s thought continues to offer valuable resources for addressing present-day philosophical problems.
Ideal Embodiment: Kant’s Theory of Sensibility is a dense and rigorous text that will be of interest not only to Kant scholars but also to those engaged with broader questions of embodiment, cognition, and the relationship between the empirical and the transcendental. Nuzzo’s reinterpretation challenges the conventional wisdom about Kant and invites readers to reconsider the role of sensibility in human experience. Her work opens up new avenues for understanding the complexities of Kant’s thought and its relevance to contemporary philosophical discourse, making it a significant contribution to the field of Kantian studies and beyond.
Simon Gros 
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