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What can we really know—and where must reason recognise its limits?

In the second episode of our Kant series, Samuel Woodall and Jack Thomson explore the Critique of Pure Reason: Hume’s challenge, synthetic a priori knowledge, Kant’s Copernican turn, space and time, phenomena and things in themselves, and the antinomies of reason. We finish by asking how the limits of theoretical knowledge lead towards freedom and moral responsibility.

Kant · Episode 2 of 3
Next: freedom, moral duty and the Critique of Practical Reason.

CHAPTERS
00:00 Introduction
00:25 Science and the crisis of metaphysics
01:27 Synthetic a priori knowledge and Hume
05:09 Kant’s Copernican turn
06:35 Concepts, intuitions and the soul
10:17 Appearances, things in themselves and antinomies
18:19 The limits of reason and moral freedom
20:07 Next: freedom and moral duty

READING
Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason (1781; revised 1787), especially the second-edition Preface and A51/B75.
Kant, Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics (1783).
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant/
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-hume-causality/
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-transcendental-idealism/

EDITORIAL CLARIFICATIONS
Kant’s appearances are empirically real, rather than false pictures hiding reality. The discussion’s wording at that point is a slip: the distinction concerns objects as experienced and considered independently of our mode of cognition. Hume’s problem of causal necessity is distinct from the is–ought problem in moral reasoning. See the reading links above.

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What does it mean to think for yourself? In the opening episode of our Kant series, Samuel Woodall and Jack Thomson explore the life of Immanuel Kant and the challenge at the heart of his question: What is Enlightenment?

From his upbringing in Königsberg to his appointment as professor of logic and metaphysics, we follow Kant into the debates about science, sensation and reason that shaped his philosophy. We discuss the ambition of the Critique of Pure Reason, his call to dare to know, and the tension between intellectual freedom and the limits of human understanding.

Along the way: Descartes, Leibniz, Kant’s famously regular habits, his sociable lunches, and the question of whether knowledge alone can express human dignity.

This is the first of three conversations on Kant. Next time, we turn more closely to the Critique of Pure Reason.

Explore more: https://beyondthetext.co.uk

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Can an outsider understand a divided political culture better than those inside it? Samuel Woodall and Jack Thomson are joined by Dr Michaël Green, University Professor at the University of Łódź and Director of its Centre for Self-Narratives, for a special audio-only conversation.

Through letters, diaries and memoirs, we explore what personal accounts reveal about early modern lives, privacy, exile and belonging. Paul de Rapin de Thoyras and Henry Bentinck, Viscount Woodstock, take us into Huguenot experience, education and the Grand Tour. Jean Roux and Jewish life writing offer contrasting accounts of integration, gratitude and home.

Does distance make a historian more perceptive or more impartial? What changes when a tutor becomes regarded as a spy? And is being treated with dignity the same as being accepted?

Hosted by Samuel Woodall and Jack Thomson. Guest: Dr Michaël Green.

Explore Beyond the Text: https://beyondthetext.co.uk
The Intellectual Historian: https://theintellectualhistorian.com

Chapters
00:00 Welcome, outsiders and egodocuments
08:17 Privacy and public selves
12:51 Rapin's exile and Woodstock
24:36 Grand Tour education and belonging
33:33 Jean Roux, Jewish lives and belonging
39:07 Gratitude, outsiders and impartiality
42:31 Political division and patronage
45:55 The Grand Tour traveller
49:19 Dignity rather than acceptance
49:40 Farewell

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