Interpreting Kant in Education: Dissolving Dualisms and Embodying Mind – Introduction

This introduction to my Interpreting Kant in Education: Dissolving Dualisms and Embodying Mind begins with a disturbing puzzle. Immanuel Kant is one of the most significant thinkers of modern times, with unrivalled influence, but he receives a great deal of criticism in educational theory. The widespread, supposedly ‘Kantian’ picture – according to which mind structures or makes sense of experience and imposes its meaning and maxims – is frequently disparaged for its alleged dualisms, intellectualism and disembodied mind, detached from real life. But this ‘Kantian’ Kant stands in sharp contrast to the Kant to be found in more careful exegesis and contemporary work in the philosophy of mind and epistemology. By contrasting interpretations of some of Kant's central terms and insights, the chapters that follow seek to show that Kant can be understood in an altogether different and more valuable way. Exploring Kant's philosophy is at the same time delving into different ideas about knowledge and concepts, about rationality, about what it means to be minded and to be human, and about the role of education in these. This introduction gives a taste of Kant's status in educational theory. It lays the way for the argument that his conception of mind, as a capacity for knowledge, can be read as embodied and his idea of the human subject understood as embedded and engaged in everyday life.