Dissertatio 15C revisited: Concept and body in Kant’s problems of directionality

Abstract

This article focuses on the relationship between Kant’s reference to our own body in the context of problems of directionality and the type of resources that, according to him, are necessary to distinguish left and right and to orient ourselves in space. It challenges the almost universally accepted idea that the principle formulated in Dissertatio 15C (namely, that two incongruent counterparts cannot be distinguished by notae) is fatally flawed. While arguing that this principle is correct in its strongest formulation, the article offers a unified line of reasoning that runs precisely from Dissertatio 15C to the presence of the body in 1768/1786 and extends to include several important features of the Transcendental Aesthetic of the first Critique. The final part of the paper explores some of the implications of this reading for Kant’s theory of space and its development.