Beyond the Text: The Intellectual Historian's Podcast

Send us Fan Mail
What makes an action moral: its consequences, our feelings, or the principle on which we act? In the third episode of our Kant series, Samuel Woodall and Jack Thomson explore good will, duty and the categorical imperative.

Beginning with the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785), we ask what it means to act from duty, why Kant distinguishes hypothetical from categorical imperatives, and how the requirement to treat humanity as an end connects freedom with dignity. Rousseau's influence opens a discussion of social pressure, the purity of the will and universal law.

We also test Kant's ethics against difficult cases: lying, competing obligations and the limits of formal rules. The Critique of Practical Reason (1788) then brings us to autonomy, the kingdom of ends, the moral law, and the postulates of freedom, immortality and God.

This concludes the main three-part Kant series. The closing preview looks ahead to a members' bonus on The Metaphysics of Morals and Perpetual Peace.

Hosted by Samuel Woodall and Jack Thomson.

Explore Beyond the Text and the Reading Club: https://beyondthetext.co.uk
The Intellectual Historian: https://theintellectualhistorian.com

READING
Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785), Sections I-III. Thomas Kingsmill Abbott translation: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5682
Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason (1788), Preface, Analytic and Conclusion. Thomas Kingsmill Abbott translation: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5683
Ernst Cassirer, Kant's Life and Thought (original German edition, 1918).
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract (1762).

CHAPTERS
00:00 Welcome back to Kant
00:45 Good will and the foundations of morality
01:54 Nature, necessity and the moral will
04:06 Duty, inclination and moral worth
05:40 The categorical imperative and humanity as an end
07:42 Rousseau and the purity of the will
09:06 Universal law and the test of a maxim
11:02 Objections, lying and moral dilemmas
13:52 Autonomy and the kingdom of ends
18:04 Practical reason, freedom and hope
19:19 The moral law within
21:08 Subjectivity and the limits of natural explanation
24:21 The bonus episode and closing reflections
Support the show

Send us Fan Mail
Can society have a common interest when everyone has interests of their own? Samuel Woodall and Jack Thomson welcome Professor Jacob Sider Jost, Professor and Chair of English at Dickinson College, for an audio-only conversation about the many meanings of interest in eighteenth-century life.

Beginning with Robinson Crusoe, we explore how a single word connected money, storytelling, political allegiance, friendship and patronage. Lord Hervey's memoirs reveal a world of personal networks, while Olaudah Equiano's Interesting Narrative brings emotional involvement, financial independence and the abolitionist cause into conversation.

We ask when connections become exclusion, whose interests count as the common good, and whether self-interest must be selfish. The discussion closes with Adam Smith, sociability and the desire to be worthy of other people's approval.

Hosted by Samuel Woodall and Jack Thomson. Guest: Professor Jacob Sider Jost.

JACOB'S BOOK
Jacob Sider Jost, Interest and Connection in the Eighteenth Century: Hervey, Johnson, Smith, Equiano (University of Virginia Press, 2020).
https://www.upress.virginia.edu/title/5566/

FURTHER READING DISCUSSED
Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe (1719).
Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano (1789).
J. A. W. Gunn, Politics and the Public Interest in the Seventeenth Century (1969).
Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) and The Wealth of Nations (1776).

Explore Beyond the Text: https://beyondthetext.co.uk
The Intellectual Historian: https://theintellectualhistorian.com

CHAPTERS
00:00 Welcome and the question of common interest
01:21 Robinson Crusoe and two kinds of interest
05:21 Interest across eighteenth-century life
10:14 Method, selfishness and self-interest
17:33 Lord Hervey, patronage and networks
23:29 Human scale, merit and life writing
29:04 Equiano's Interesting Narrative
34:26 Groups, loyalty and nationalism
39:41 Whose interests count as the common good?
47:49 Adam Smith, sociability and recognition
49:53 Closing thanks
Support the show

Send us Fan Mail
When does political disagreement become a struggle to destroy the conditions that make disagreement possible?

Samuel Woodall explores The World in Fall, bringing intellectual history into conversation with international relations. Following his work on Britain, Russia and Ukraine, he examines how domestic extremism and authoritarian interference can reinforce one another, and why the distinction between party and faction still matters.

The episode considers Russian influence operations and financial relationships, the US intelligence assessment of Iranian intervention around Gaza protests, reporting on China-linked networks, and scholarship on authoritarian power. It distinguishes documented connections from allegations and inference: convergence does not require common command, and foreign amplification does not establish that a state organised a protest.

The conclusion argues for a liberal, democratic Europe and for keeping alive the freedoms of inquiry, toleration and restraints on arbitrary power to which the Enlightenment gave enduring force.

Read the paper and full references:
https://theintellectualhistorian.com/2026/10/22/the-world-in-fall/

Beyond the Text | Samuel Woodall
https://beyondthetext.co.uk
https://theintellectualhistorian.com

Music: Queens Arrival — Red Planet (TakeTones).
Support the show

Send us Fan Mail
What can we really know—and where must reason recognise its limits?

In the second episode of our Kant series, Samuel Woodall and Jack Thomson explore the Critique of Pure Reason: Hume’s challenge, synthetic a priori knowledge, Kant’s Copernican turn, space and time, phenomena and things in themselves, and the antinomies of reason. We finish by asking how the limits of theoretical knowledge lead towards freedom and moral responsibility.

Kant · Episode 2 of 3
Next: freedom, moral duty and the Critique of Practical Reason.

CHAPTERS
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

READING
Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason (1781; revised 1787), especially the second-edition Preface and A51/B75.
Kant, Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics (1783).
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant/
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-hume-causality/
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-transcendental-idealism/

EDITORIAL CLARIFICATIONS
Kant’s appearances are empirically real, rather than false pictures hiding reality. The discussion’s wording at that point is a slip: 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. See the reading links above.

Explore Beyond the Text: https://beyondthetext.co.uk
Essays: https://theintellectualhistorian.com
Reading and discussion: https://thehistoryofideasclub.co.uk
Support the show

Send us Fan Mail
What does it mean to think for yourself? In the opening episode of our Kant series, Samuel Woodall and Jack Thomson explore the life of Immanuel Kant and the challenge at the heart of his question: What is Enlightenment?

From his upbringing in Königsberg to his appointment as professor of logic and metaphysics, we follow Kant into the debates about science, sensation and reason that shaped his philosophy. We discuss the ambition of the Critique of Pure Reason, his call to dare to know, and the tension between intellectual freedom and the limits of human understanding.

Along the way: Descartes, Leibniz, Kant’s famously regular habits, his sociable lunches, and the question of whether knowledge alone can express human dignity.

This is the first of three conversations on Kant. Next time, we turn more closely to the Critique of Pure Reason.

Explore more: https://beyondthetext.co.uk
Support the show