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Civilization #55: Kant, Hegel, and the Theory of Everything

2025-05-27 People & Blogs
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What is the legacy of Immanuel Kant, considered our greatest philosopher? In this talk to his Beijing high school students, Jiang Xueqin explains that Kant's insights had a tremendous impact on the development of neuroscience, artificial intelligence, and quantum mechanics. Kant's philosophical revolution was equivalent to that of the Copernican revolution in astronomy. With his precise logic, Kant showed us that we were active participants in the making of reality, rather than just passive observers. But Kant's epistemology had three major limitations: 1. He argued we could never know true reality (the "things-in-themselves"), thus creating an ontological dilemma. 2. He did not show us the source for our capacity to interpret the world. 3. He failed to show us why interpretations would be uniform across history and cultures. These problems led Hegel to develop his theory of the dialectic of the "geist," which will come to influence the development of both Marxism and the nation-state. References: 1. The Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant 2. The Critique of Practical Reason by Immanuel Kant 3. The Phenomenology of the Spirit by Friedrich Hegel

Top Comments (10)

@zenji2759 2025-05-27

Your students are extremely lucky. Others teach history, you teach the insights of history.

358 15 replies
@carlloeber 2025-06-12

Another thing I like about Jiang´s delivery is that he does not repeat himself .. does not repeat the same words when he is explaining or describing something ..

153 16 replies
@Gpen22 2025-10-09

It was hilarious when jiang says if you want to know more about Kant you can read his book which will take about 10 years 😅

119 9 replies
@imrazaaa 2025-06-03

01:00 Plato 04:00 Dualism 04:30 Aristotle 06:30 Rationalists, Empiricists, and skepticism 10:00 Kant

67 2 replies
@TheRealSlobo 2025-06-24

Kant apparently ended up paying his butler his entire university salary because he would raise his salary every time he wanted to quit . He did not want to change anything in his life Also an interesting story about Kant is that he got proposed by a student of his and he took such a long time to evaluate if he can incorporate her in his life that by the time he decided to give her an answer she got married

47 8 replies
@AwakenedOne-qu 2025-09-19

Where was he when I was in college. I'd pay for his lectures. He's brilliant.

29 1 replies
@dantegab2772 2025-09-15

I had to watch this 3 times to understand it lol

28 1 replies
@RealPapershaper 2025-10-28

I had a few philosophy courses in my life, I passed them well but never truly grasped Kant, but you made it so clear. You’re truly the top professor in the meta right now.

24
@Blackmagician96 2025-11-18

I love the professor's honesty in admitting his own limitations. I try and read this stuff and feel stupid, but he explained more succinctly than I have ever seen before.

14
@dailynuggets9577 2026-04-29

I still find it amazing that Prof. Jiang didn't actually study Science in Yale, but has an understanding of the underlying principles of General and Special Relativity, and possibly, Time Travel could work. Amazing! Hence, telling you we really need Science and Philosophy to be one and whole again.

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