Kant’s Three Questions
Reed Winegar organizes this eight-lecture course around three famous questions that Kant himself poses in the Critique of Pure Reason: "What can I know? What ought I to do? For what may I hope?" These questions serve as a gateway into the full range of Kant's philosophy, from his theory of knowledge and his moral thought to his views on beauty, nature, and God. The course is designed to give both newcomers and returning readers a clear sense of the architecture of Kant's thought without sacrificing the detail that makes it so rewarding.
The course begins with Kant's answer to the first question. Winegar explains how Kant distinguishes between different types of knowledge and argues that we can have substantive knowledge of objects given in space and time but not of things beyond experience, such as the soul, the world as a whole, or God. This leads into Kant's famous doctrine of transcendental idealism, his striking claim that space and time are not features of things in themselves but forms of our experience. Winegar walks through the arguments Kant uses to support this view, including the dramatic antinomies, where reason seems to generate equally compelling proofs for contradictory conclusions about the age and size of the world.
From there, the course turns to Kant's moral philosophy and the second question. Winegar explores Kant's claim that moral action requires acting out of respect for the moral law rather than from any kind of consideration of utility or outcome. He pays special attention to Kant's moral psychology, including the complex feeling of respect and its surprising connections to the aesthetic experience of the sublime. The third question, "For what may I hope?", opens onto Kant's arguments about moral belief, the highest good, and the role of hope in a life governed by duty.
The later lectures extend the inquiry into Kant's views on God, natural teleology, and beauty. Winegar examines Kant's famous critiques of the traditional proofs for God's existence and his surprising argument that our inability to prove God's existence is actually good for both morality and religion. He then turns to the Critique of the Power of Judgment, where Kant considers how organisms seem to exhibit purposiveness in nature and how the experience of beauty hints at a deeper harmony between nature and the moral law.
Throughout, Winegar connects the different strands of Kant's philosophy into a unified picture, showing how questions about knowledge, duty, hope, nature, and beauty are all part of a single ambitious project. The course is accessible to those encountering Kant for the first time while offering fresh perspectives to those already familiar with his work.
Reed Winegar
Reed Winegar is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Fordham University. He received his Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Pennsylvania and has held research fellowships and visiting appointments at Humboldt University in Berlin and the Freie Universität Berlin.
His research focuses on Kant, German Idealism, and early modern philosophy, with particular interests in metaphysics, epistemology, aesthetics, and the philosophy of religion. He is the author of numerous articles and book chapters on Kant and his intellectual legacy, including work published by Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, Routledge, and the Journal of the History of Philosophy. He is co-editor of Infinity in Early Modern Philosophy and is currently completing a book on the reception of Kant's epistemology and metaphysics for Oxford University Press.
