Lived space, geometric space in Kant

This essay is divided in three parts : I will discuss the intuitive nature of space(§ 1), then turn to the seeming discrepancies between the space of the Aesthetic and the space of the Analytic of the first Critique (§ 2), and finally concentrate on the question of handedness (§ 3). 1 The title of this paper may sound to some degree Husserlian. I will not engage in a comparison or contrast of Husserl and Kant on space, but I will let one particular problem on which I started reflecting while studying Husserl guide my reading of Kant on space and handedness. Let me also clarify at the outset that ‘lived space’ in my title cannot be replaced by ‘physical space’ because I mean it to refer to the space of a lived body. If physical space means a space in any way related to the space of physics as Kant understood it, and as it was presupposed by all physicists and philosophers of nature from Galilei and Descartes to Newton, then it is precisely the mathematical space constituting the framework for the investigation of matter in motion, and thus the homogeneous isotropic geometric space with which I want to contrast lived space.

Il problema della relazione tra spazio vissuto, spazio fisico e spazio geometrico in Kant viene in questo saggio trattato alla luce delle considerazioni kantiane sullo spazio orientato e sulla sua cosiddetta chiralità (mano destra e mano sinistra sono in linea di principio uguali, ma hanno un rapporto diverso rispetto al loro esterne, e a me come loro osservatore). La critica a Leibniz e all'indiscirnibilità degli identici, la differenza tra individuazione e identità, il rapporto tra geometria e esperienza (nella rivoluzione scientifica, nella filosofia di Kant, e nella fenomenologia), sono al centro di questo lavoro.