Kant on the Embodied Cognition

My aim in this paper is to explode two myths about kant. the firstmyth is that kant’s early pre-critical writings are uninteresting dogmaticjuvenelia written when kant was under the spell of leibniz and wolff.on the contrary, i find the pre-critical works interesting both in theirown right and for understanding the origins of kant’s celebrated criticalsystem of philosophy. i also believe that, from his very first writings, thepre-critical kant broke from both leibniz and wolff. the second myth isthat kant, as the paradigm of “enlightenment rationality” either ignoredor evinced a hostile disdain for philospohical issues connected with ourembodiment. although i am sympathetic with the feminist critics whopush this line, i believe that in this case they are dead wrong. despiteappearances, kant was very much concerned with the philosophicalsignificance of embodiment. i think that this concern manifested itselfthroughout kant’s career, although i admit that it is most evident in therelatively litle-known early and late works