Gemt [animus]

Gemt is a key term in Kant's philosophy and is variously translated as 'mind', 'mental state' and
'soul', even though these translations fail to do justice to the term's significance. It does not mean
'mind' or 'soul' in the Cartesian sense of a thinking substance, but denotes instead a corporeal
awareness of sensation and self-affection. Indeed, at one point in CPR he explicitly distinguishes
Gemt and Seele (A 22/B 37), a distinction expounded in Zu Smmering ber das Organ der
Seele (To Smmering, Concerning the Organ of the Soul, 1796) in terms of the 'capacity to effect
the unity of empirical apperception (animus) but not its substance (anima)' (1796c, p. 256).
Gemt does not designate a substance (whether material or ideal) but is the position or place of
the Gemtskrfte (the Gemt's powers) of sensibility, imagination, understanding and reason.
Kant's use of Gemt remains close to the meaning the term possessed in medieval philosophy
and mysticism, where it referred to the 'stable disposition of the soul which conditions the
exercise of all its faculties' (Gilson, 1955, pp. 444, 758). This contrasts with Leibniz's restriction
of the term to mean 'feeling' as opposed to understanding (Leibniz, 1976, p. 428). For Kant 'the
Gemt is all life (the life-principle itself), and its hindrance or furtherance has to be sought
outside it, and yet in the man himself, consequently in connexion with his body' (CJ 29). With
this view of the Gemt Kant sought to bypass many of the problems of mind-body relations
bequeathed by Cartesian dualism, a strategy explicitly stated again in Zu Smmering ber das
Organ der Seele, but insufficiently appreciated by many of his later critics. This view of Gemt
also provides a linkage across the three theoretical, practical and aesthetic/teleological sections
of the critical philosophy, once again explicitly stated by Kant, this time in a variant of A 7
where it is described as the 'essence [Inbegriff] of all representations which in the same place
occupy a sphere which includes the three basic faculties: the faculty of knowledge, the feeling of
pleasure and displeasure, and the faculty of desire. Reiterat in CFJ p. 71
In CPR Kant locates the origin of knowledge in 'two basic sources of the Gemt': the first source
is that of 'receiving representations (the receptivity of impressions)', the second is that of
'knowing an object through these representations (spontaneity of concepts)' (A 50/B 74). The
Gemt may accordingly be disposed either passively or actively, in the former mode receiving
representations, in the latter creating concepts. The mutual workings of passive and active
aspects of Gemt may be seen most clearly in Kant's discussion of intuition. In the opening
paragraph of CPR it is said that objects can only be given to us 'insofar as the Gemt is affected
in a particular way' (A 19/B 33). The Gemt here is in its receptive, sensible mode of 'external
sense' through which we represent objects as outside of us and in space. Apart from being
passively affected by means of external sense, the Gemt however can also be actively affected
by means of the inner sense. In this case the 'Gemt intuits itself or its inner condition' giving rise
to the 'determinate form' of time (A 23/B 37).
The passive affection of the Gemt by external objects and its active self affection is also crucial
to the argument of CJ, where this property is described as the 'life principle' itself, and the source
not only of the faculties of knowledge and volition, but also of pleasure and displeasure (CFJ,
p71 n.n.). In CJ 1 Kant distinguishes between perceiving a 'regular and appropriate building'
and being conscious of this representation with a feeling of delight. Here the pleasure concerned
emerges from both the receptive and spontaneous work of the Gemt. The perception of the
building is received and then 'tied wholly to the subject, indeed to its feeling of life'. The delight
arises from the Gemt becoming conscious, through this representation, of its condition, or

'whole capacity for representation'; in other words, it makes itself an object of reflection, and
thus finds delight in its own powers. Kant describes this reflection in terms of a harmony
between the Gemtskrfte of the understanding and imagination, one which he says occasions
delight by 'quickening' or by the
'relieved play of the mutually harmonising enlivened powers [Gemtskrfte] (the imagination
and understanding)' (CJ 10).
Although Kant's discussion of Gemt is central to his understanding of mental topography, and
clearly significant for his theories of knowledge, action and aesthetic, it has never been the object
of sustained scholarly scrutiny. The significance of the concept was still appreciated by Mellin in
his 1797 Encyclopdisches Wrterbuch der kritischen Philosophie, but thereafter disappeared
from view. It has recently reappeared, however, in the work of Heidegger and Derrida in the
context of reflections on the notions of spirit and soul. It features in Being and Time (Heidegger,
1927) as that which has not been correctly understood in Cartesian subjective metaphysics; it is
also scrutinized and given an historical genealogy as the topos of spirit by Derrida in Of Spirit
(see Derrida, 1987, pp. 78, 127). But these fresh insights have yet to be systematically employed
in the interpretation of Kant's use of the term.