Skip to main content

Kant’s Three Questions

Reed Winegar

Every chapter in the course, with links to the moment it begins in the video and in the transcript. For topics across all courses, see the Topic Index.

Lecture 1 Can We Know Anything Beyond Experience?

Course Introduction and Overview
▶︎ 0:00 transcript ↗︎
What Can I Know, Do, and Hope For?
▶︎ 1:29 transcript ↗︎
General and Special Metaphysics Explained
▶︎ 2:19 transcript ↗︎
Restricting What We Can Know
▶︎ 5:26 transcript ↗︎
Denying Knowledge to Make Room for Faith
▶︎ 8:23 transcript ↗︎
What Drove Kant to This Position?
▶︎ 10:32 transcript ↗︎
Dogmatists, Skeptics, and Indifferentists
▶︎ 11:54 transcript ↗︎
Why We Can't Ignore Metaphysics
▶︎ 16:17 transcript ↗︎
Hume's Challenge to Causal Knowledge
▶︎ 21:34 transcript ↗︎
Paradoxes and Contradictions in Metaphysics
▶︎ 30:47 transcript ↗︎
How Can Concepts Match Reality?
▶︎ 33:16 transcript ↗︎
Understanding, Sensibility, and Intuitions
▶︎ 40:55 transcript ↗︎
Analytic vs. Synthetic Judgments
▶︎ 47:14 transcript ↗︎
The Key Question: Synthetic A Priori Knowledge
▶︎ 51:32 transcript ↗︎

Lecture 2 Why the Cosmos Breaks Reason

Review: Synthetic A Priori Knowledge
▶︎ 0:00 transcript ↗︎
Space and Time as Ideal Forms of Intuition
▶︎ 1:35 transcript ↗︎
Dogmatism, Skepticism, and the Antinomy
▶︎ 3:03 transcript ↗︎
The Antinomy of Pure Reason Explained
▶︎ 7:11 transcript ↗︎
Reason's Demand for the Unconditioned
▶︎ 9:34 transcript ↗︎
Equally Good Arguments for Both Sides
▶︎ 15:31 transcript ↗︎
Why the World Can't Be Infinitely Old
▶︎ 18:27 transcript ↗︎
Why the World Can't Have a Beginning in Time
▶︎ 23:44 transcript ↗︎
Why the World Can't Be Infinitely Large
▶︎ 29:26 transcript ↗︎
Why the World Can't Have a Finite Size
▶︎ 32:58 transcript ↗︎
Transcendental Idealism as the Way Out
▶︎ 38:09 transcript ↗︎
Matter and Form of Intuition
▶︎ 41:59 transcript ↗︎
Appearances vs. Things in Themselves
▶︎ 43:06 transcript ↗︎
Resolving the Antinomy with Idealism
▶︎ 45:30 transcript ↗︎
The World as Indefinite: Potential Infinity
▶︎ 52:49 transcript ↗︎
The Unconditioned and Metaphysical Knowledge
▶︎ 58:42 transcript ↗︎
Can We Know Things in Themselves?
▶︎ 1:02:50 transcript ↗︎

Lecture 3 Can Free Will Escape Causation?

What Can We Actually Know?
▶︎ 0:00 transcript ↗︎
Analytic vs Synthetic Judgments Explained
▶︎ 1:32 transcript ↗︎
A Priori vs Empirical Knowledge
▶︎ 4:03 transcript ↗︎
Synthetic A Priori: The Revolutionary Category
▶︎ 5:18 transcript ↗︎
Intuition, Concepts, and Cognitive Faculties
▶︎ 12:05 transcript ↗︎
Why Math Is Synthetic A Priori
▶︎ 18:02 transcript ↗︎
Causation as A Priori Knowledge
▶︎ 23:02 transcript ↗︎
The Boat Argument for Causation
▶︎ 26:40 transcript ↗︎
Where Knowledge Hits Its Limits
▶︎ 35:24 transcript ↗︎
The Third Antinomy: A Causal Paradox
▶︎ 36:56 transcript ↗︎
Appearances vs Things in Themselves
▶︎ 39:30 transcript ↗︎
Could Humans Have Uncaused Freedom?
▶︎ 46:31 transcript ↗︎
Noumenal and Phenomenal Character
▶︎ 48:57 transcript ↗︎
Timeless Choice: Morality or Desire?
▶︎ 53:44 transcript ↗︎
Moral Autonomy and Self-Legislation
▶︎ 1:00:25 transcript ↗︎
Wrapping Up: Knowledge and Freedom
▶︎ 1:05:40 transcript ↗︎

Lecture 4 Every Proof of God Collapses

Overview: Knowledge of God's Existence
▶︎ 0:00 transcript ↗︎
God as the Most Real Being (Ens Realissimum)
▶︎ 1:01 transcript ↗︎
Three Types of Arguments for God's Existence
▶︎ 4:02 transcript ↗︎
The Ontological Argument Explained
▶︎ 6:32 transcript ↗︎
Why Existence Is Not a Real Predicate
▶︎ 8:40 transcript ↗︎
The Hundred Dollars Example
▶︎ 12:20 transcript ↗︎
Influence on Frege and Formal Logic
▶︎ 16:09 transcript ↗︎
How Significant Is the Ontological Argument?
▶︎ 18:14 transcript ↗︎
The Cosmological Argument's Two Stages
▶︎ 19:24 transcript ↗︎
The Gap Between Necessary Being and God
▶︎ 22:35 transcript ↗︎
The Design Argument and Its Limits
▶︎ 26:11 transcript ↗︎
Potential Rejoinders from Traditional Metaphysics
▶︎ 29:59 transcript ↗︎
How All Three Arguments Are Connected
▶︎ 32:49 transcript ↗︎
Why Not Proving God Benefits Religion and Morality
▶︎ 36:23 transcript ↗︎
The Regulative Idea of God in Science
▶︎ 44:32 transcript ↗︎

Lecture 5 Must Morality Crush Our Desires?

Introduction to Moral Psychology
▶︎ 0:00 transcript ↗︎
The Goodwill and Unconditional Value
▶︎ 0:54 transcript ↗︎
Respect for the Moral Law vs. Mere Accordance
▶︎ 2:17 transcript ↗︎
Schiller's Critique of Kantian Ethics
▶︎ 4:44 transcript ↗︎
Unconditioned Value and the Highest Good
▶︎ 6:58 transcript ↗︎
The Feeling of Respect as a Concept
▶︎ 13:24 transcript ↗︎
Respect as a Mixed Feeling
▶︎ 14:54 transcript ↗︎
Autonomy: Reason and Sensibility in Humans
▶︎ 15:37 transcript ↗︎
Self-Love and the Moral Law
▶︎ 17:24 transcript ↗︎
Self-Conceit and Its Humiliation
▶︎ 20:36 transcript ↗︎
The Pleasant Side: Autonomy and Self-Determination
▶︎ 23:08 transcript ↗︎
Happiness vs. Contentment: Types of Pleasure
▶︎ 26:25 transcript ↗︎
The Sublime in Eighteenth-Century Aesthetics
▶︎ 29:49 transcript ↗︎
Kant's Theory of the Sublime Across His Works
▶︎ 33:24 transcript ↗︎
The Mathematical Sublime and Reason's Power
▶︎ 36:44 transcript ↗︎
The Dynamical Sublime and Moral Freedom
▶︎ 39:50 transcript ↗︎
Summary: Pleasure, Pain, and the Moral Life
▶︎ 43:41 transcript ↗︎

Lecture 6 When Belief Outruns Evidence

Hope, Belief, and Moral Philosophy
▶︎ 0:00 transcript ↗︎
Evidentialism and Its Intuitive Appeal
▶︎ 0:46 transcript ↗︎
Challenging Evidentialism: The Ravine Example
▶︎ 2:30 transcript ↗︎
Kant's Rejection of Strict Evidentialism
▶︎ 5:40 transcript ↗︎
Belief, Faith, and Types of Assertion
▶︎ 6:40 transcript ↗︎
Pragmatic Belief: The Doctor's Dilemma
▶︎ 12:58 transcript ↗︎
Moral Belief: God and Immortality
▶︎ 15:42 transcript ↗︎
Doctrinal Belief and Scientific Investigation
▶︎ 17:51 transcript ↗︎
Why Moral Belief Is Central
▶︎ 22:15 transcript ↗︎
Reinhold, Pantheism, and Kant's Reception
▶︎ 22:51 transcript ↗︎
First Critique: Moral Motivation and Happiness
▶︎ 31:58 transcript ↗︎
Groundwork Revision: Duty for Duty's Sake
▶︎ 37:59 transcript ↗︎
Second Critique: Virtue, Happiness, Highest Good
▶︎ 39:36 transcript ↗︎
Against Epicureans and Stoics
▶︎ 43:13 transcript ↗︎
Moral Grounds for Believing in God and Immortality
▶︎ 46:27 transcript ↗︎
Objections: Immortality and the Asymptotic Problem
▶︎ 50:20 transcript ↗︎
Objections: Why a Theistic God?
▶︎ 51:56 transcript ↗︎
Divine Symbolism and Analogy
▶︎ 54:18 transcript ↗︎
The Broader Importance of Symbols in Life
▶︎ 1:02:15 transcript ↗︎

Lecture 7 Nature Looks Designed. Is It?

Natural Teleology in the Critique of Judgment
▶︎ 0:00 transcript ↗︎
The Gulf Between Freedom and Nature
▶︎ 0:43 transcript ↗︎
Bridging the Gulf: The Highest Good
▶︎ 2:20 transcript ↗︎
Physico-Theology in the Eighteenth Century
▶︎ 6:51 transcript ↗︎
Early Views: The Beweisgrund and Possibility Proof
▶︎ 10:35 transcript ↗︎
Necessary Teleology: Harmony of Essences
▶︎ 15:20 transcript ↗︎
Contingent Teleology: Organisms as Exceptions
▶︎ 21:02 transcript ↗︎
A New Physico-Theological Argument
▶︎ 22:42 transcript ↗︎
Critique of Physico-Theology in the First Critique
▶︎ 26:06 transcript ↗︎
Structure of Teleology in the Third Critique
▶︎ 30:32 transcript ↗︎
Organisms as Causes and Effects of Themselves
▶︎ 32:11 transcript ↗︎
Resisting the Physico-Theological Argument
▶︎ 38:45 transcript ↗︎
The Intuitive Understanding: Paragraphs 76-77
▶︎ 42:20 transcript ↗︎
Three Options on Organisms and the Supersensible
▶︎ 51:16 transcript ↗︎
Why Teleological Thinking Remains Necessary
▶︎ 57:51 transcript ↗︎
Two Symbols: Artisan vs. Vitalist Life Analogy
▶︎ 1:00:41 transcript ↗︎
From Teleology to the Highest Good
▶︎ 1:06:22 transcript ↗︎

Lecture 8 Is Beauty More Than Opinion?

Introduction to Aesthetics and the Third Critique
▶︎ 0:00 transcript ↗︎
Two Logical Peculiarities of Judgments of Taste
▶︎ 3:07 transcript ↗︎
The Paradox of Pleasure-Based Judgments
▶︎ 6:31 transcript ↗︎
Pleasures of the Agreeable vs. Beauty
▶︎ 9:25 transcript ↗︎
Perfection, the Good, and Beauty
▶︎ 11:21 transcript ↗︎
Purposiveness and Nature's Amenability to Cognition
▶︎ 14:51 transcript ↗︎
Defining Purposiveness
▶︎ 24:17 transcript ↗︎
Aesthetics and Natural Philosophy in Context
▶︎ 28:41 transcript ↗︎
Subjective vs. Objective Principles of Taste
▶︎ 30:40 transcript ↗︎
Free Play of Imagination and Understanding
▶︎ 33:40 transcript ↗︎
Why the Pleasure of Beauty Is Universal
▶︎ 41:00 transcript ↗︎
Beauty in Art: Genius and Aesthetic Ideas
▶︎ 45:22 transcript ↗︎
The Moral Significance of Beauty
▶︎ 50:09 transcript ↗︎

Interview Did Kant Really Answer Hume?

How Kant Answers Hume on Causality
▶︎ 0:27 transcript ↗︎
A Prussian Hume: Two Critiques of Metaphysics
▶︎ 4:20 transcript ↗︎
The Second Analogy and the Problem of Induction
▶︎ 6:38 transcript ↗︎
Categories, Particular Laws, and the Third Critique
▶︎ 9:56 transcript ↗︎
The Boat and House: Objective Temporal Order
▶︎ 13:03 transcript ↗︎
Knowledge, Opinion, and Certainty
▶︎ 17:41 transcript ↗︎
Limits of Causal Knowledge: The Bread Example
▶︎ 21:05 transcript ↗︎
The Transcendental Deduction and Unity of Self
▶︎ 25:18 transcript ↗︎
The Self as Activity vs. Object
▶︎ 33:29 transcript ↗︎
Who Legislates the Laws of Nature?
▶︎ 40:40 transcript ↗︎
Things in Themselves and Empirical Truth
▶︎ 47:36 transcript ↗︎
Is the Categorical Imperative Just Christianity?
▶︎ 57:08 transcript ↗︎
Pietism, Culture, and Philosophical Independence
▶︎ 1:00:39 transcript ↗︎
The Murderer at the Door: Can You Ever Lie?
▶︎ 1:04:20 transcript ↗︎
Reason as Master or Servant?
▶︎ 1:08:14 transcript ↗︎
Moral Law, Happiness, and the Need for God
▶︎ 1:12:51 transcript ↗︎
Beauty as a Sign of Moral Hope
▶︎ 1:16:45 transcript ↗︎
Natural Beauty and the Crooked Timber of Humanity
▶︎ 1:21:07 transcript ↗︎