The Body as a Subject of Knowledge in Physical Education: A Kantian and Phenomenological View

Abstract

This article examines the role of the body as a subject of knowledge in the field of physical education, articulating Immanuel Kant’s transcendental epistemology with Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology. Through a theoretical-reflective approach, it analyzes how these philosophical currents provide foundations for rethinking bodily training beyond traditional mechanistic models. The main objective is to argue that educating the body involves activating its sensitive and subjective dimension, moving beyond purely technical or quantifiable approaches. The method employed is a comparative analysis of key concepts, such as Kant’s a priori forms (space and time) and categories of understanding, together with Merleau-Ponty’s notion of embodied perception and recognition of the body as a perceptive subject. Furthermore, it examines the difference between the formal structure of knowledge proposed by Kant and the existential, situated dimension presented by Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology, applying both approaches to the field of physical education. Examples drawn from motor contexts-such as perceptual anticipation during a sports play-illustrate how space, time, and embodied perception shape bodily knowledge. The theoretical findings highlight that both Kantian a priori categories and Merleau-Ponty’s perceptual experience allow us to understand human movement as a form of active and situated knowledge. It is concluded that physical education should be understood not merely as a practice for training skills, but also as one that develops the subject’s capacity to know, interpret, and transform their environment through corporeality.