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Paul Guyer on Immanuel Kant

Episode 19

Lucid, and Reversible

Featuring Paul Guyer

Audio episode · 14 min

Paul Guyer on A Kant Primer

Immanuel Kant said human beings are evil by nature, and Goethe, reading him, decided the philosopher of freedom had surrendered to original sin. Paul Guyer thinks Goethe got it exactly backwards. This episode sits with the strangest claim in Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason: that our evil is chosen, chosen with open eyes, and owed to no inheritance from Adam. Guyer reads the single paragraph the whole argument stands on, takes a side in a live scholarly fight over self deception, and ends in a quarrel with Schopenhauer about how many chances a soul gets.

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Paul Guyer's Kant lets you hire a man if you pay him fairly. Garth Greenwell's Adam Verver pays the Prince perfectly and still does him a profound wrong.

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Nature Gives the Rule

John Kaag's Thoreau lifts Kant's definition of genius and gives it to a Concord woodchopper. Paul Guyer's Kant has one condition Thoreau refuses: be understood.

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What Was Kant's Copernican Revolution?

Kant's Copernican revolution: objects conform to the mind, which supplies space and time — securing science on a foundation Guyer himself doubts.

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What Is Kant's Categorical Imperative?

Kant's categorical imperative tests the policy behind your act: can you will it as universal law? Guyer shows where Kant's own arguments fall short.

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Why Is Freedom the Keystone of Kant's Philosophy?

Guyer reads Kant's three Critiques as one arch with freedom as its keystone: a theory of knowledge built to make room for a will nature cannot explain.

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The Will That Gives the Law

Kant and Nietzsche agree the human will gives itself the law — and split on whether that law binds everyone or only its maker.

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A literary publication for the self-taught reader. Where to start, which translation, why it matters — with editors who'll actually take a side.