Phenomenal Knowledge in Kant and the Buddha: Transcendental Conditions and the Origination of Discriminative Consciousness

This paper examines the relationship between Kantian epistemology and Buddhist philosophy, focusing on the origination of discriminative consciousness and the conditions of phenomenal knowledge. Kant demonstrates that human cognition is structured by the faculties of sensibility, understanding, and reason, which shape our experience but inevitably incline the mind toward dualistic projection. In contrast, the Buddha’s teaching of the Twelvefold Dependent Origination shows that the arising of discriminative thought—the first turning of the mind—is the subtle source of attachment, craving, and suffering. By observing the mind’s movements directly through mindfulness and insight, the practitioner can interrupt this chain at its origin, allowing cognition, ethical action, and freedom to arise spontaneously. This comparative study highlights both the structural and practical differences between Kant’s regulation of reason and the Buddhist transformation of consciousness, offering a perspective in which knowledge, ethics, and liberation are intimately connected and immediately accessible.