Perennial Wisdom Ep. 249: Immanuel Kant - The Three Fundamental Questions | Perennial Wisdom
Oct 14, 2025
A concise tour of Kant’s three big questions about knowledge, morality, and hope. They outline how the mind shapes what we can know and where science ends. They explore the categorical imperative, duty, and treating people as ends. They discuss why freedom, immortality, and God become moral postulates for hope.
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Mind Shapes What We Can Know
- Kant argued the mind actively structures experience using built-in categories like time, space, and causality.
- We know phenomena (appearances) but not noumena (things-in-themselves), limiting metaphysical certainty.
Hume Interrupted Kant's Slumber
- Kant credited David Hume with awakening him from his 'dogmatic slumber' and prompting his critical project.
- This intellectual shock led Kant to investigate how knowledge is possible at all.
Duty Over Consequence
- Kant locates morality in principled duty rather than consequences or feelings, using the categorical imperative as a test for maxims.
- Moral worth comes from acting from reason and autonomy, not from outcomes or inclinations.
