Kant · Episode 2 of 3 · Samuel Woodall and Jack Thomson
What can we really know, and where must reason recognise its limits? This conversation explores Hume’s challenge, synthetic a priori knowledge, Kant’s Copernican turn, space and time, appearances and things in themselves, and the antinomies of reason.
Listen to the episode on Buzzsprout
From knowledge to freedom
The discussion ends by asking how the limits of theoretical knowledge lead towards freedom and moral responsibility. Read the second-edition Preface to the Critique of Pure Reason alongside the conversation, distinguishing the conditions of experience from claims to knowledge beyond possible experience.
Audio chapters
These timings reproduce the published episode description.
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
Editorial clarifications
Kant’s appearances are empirically real, rather than false pictures hiding reality. 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.
Reading
Kant, Critique of Pure Reason (1781; revised 1787), second-edition Preface and A51/B75; Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics (1783).
Continue exploring
Discuss Kant, authority and independent judgement
Released 21 October 2026.
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Cite this episode
Woodall, Samuel, and Jack Thomson. “What Can We Really Know? Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason.” Beyond the Text. 21 October 2026. Permalink.
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