The Superpowers We Forget We Have
The Firestone Files: Letters to My Grandchildren — Dr. Chris L. Firestone
March 16, 2026 · Episode 31 · 39:55
https://drchrisfirestone.com/episode/the-superpowers-we-forget-we-have/

Transcript is auto-generated from YouTube captions and lightly formatted; it may contain errors.

Hey everybody, welcome to the Firestone Files. I am Dr. Chris Firestone. Today I have a podcast on the four human superpowers that's coming at you today on the Firestone Files. All right, everybody. Well, welcome back to the files. Very rarely do I get an opportunity to talk about kind of three different things all at once. One is my favorite philosopher Emanuel Kant. The other is about general life lessons for young people. And the third is to actually speak to a group of young people about Kant and life lessons. And uh today I got that opportunity. And that's because I'm going to be talking about the four human superpowers that we all share with one another as human beings.

What prompted this? Well, I've got about I guess it's about 18 minutes of video of me being invited to speak kind of extemporaneously at one of our cousin events over the holidays this past year. That wasn't that long ago, but it was uh over the New Year's Christmas holiday. And I got a chance to review that video because I think uh one of my kids uh videotaped it and I finally got my hands on that and I just thought it was really kind of fascinating because one of the things the Firestone kids and their cousins do when they get together is they kind of invent fun things to do.

And this time it was really an interesting one because they got together and they shared um five minute uh speeches with one another. And what they I don't know how many were in the room. Probably like 15 or so. We have like 23 or 24 cousins. I've lost count. uh in that in that generation and there was 15 or 18 or something like that present for these uh impromptu speeches and I sat I was in the uh like an open concept kitchen watching this for quite a while.

It was fascinating to watch these young people give speeches and they're giving speeches on areas that they were experts in some hobby sport uh something they're working on in school or something like that and they were given five minute speeches and it was really quite fascinating to watch that skill of rhetoric being developed with their own you know prompting which was super cool and um and so I uh you know I watching I was having a cup of coffee and just watching this thing unfold and after quite a few of them had given speeches there's a little bit of a lull they they pointed to me in the back hey why don't you come up here and give a fiveminute presentation and I like oh okay um so I did you know I am a professor and very rarely you get young people saying come on up and give us a lecture I mean how many times has that happen in your teaching career um almost never.

Let's just put it that way. Um but here they did. They asked me to come up and give a presentation. So as I'm walking up there, I said, "Okay, stick close to what's near and dear to your heart, but choose a topic that will connect with these young people." So I decided to talk on the superpowers that human beings have. And you're going to get a chance to see that brief presentation. And it ended up being extended, not because I went over time.

I guess I did go over a little bit over time, but they started asking questions and there's this like Socratic dialogue that breaks out afterwards. Very illustrative, very interesting. And I'm going to be bringing that to you here shortly. Before I do, however, I would like to talk a little bit about the philosophy of Emanuel Kant and why I take it to be so important and so sort of illustrative of, you know, philosophy, life, the interface of those things and why I'd take Khan's philosophy to be so important. Now, I'm going to be doing a deep dive on the philosophy of Emanuel Khan.

And for that deep dive, you're going to you might want access to his books uh so that you can page through them and read some of them for yourself. And we're going to do a little more sophisticated deep dive. That's not what this is. I'm going to give you just a brief overview of Kant and his importance as a prelude to this little prompt impromptu speech that I gave for young people. It ties together a number of things we've been talking about. that is take young people on journeys. Here we are taking an intellectual journey together. So that's one of the themes. Um life lessons about living extraordinary lives and why philosophy matters to everyday life.

All of those things converge in this opportunity I have to speak before these young people. Now, one thing to note as we look forward to that is it's a sloppy event. The the the video isn't high quality. The sound is okay. I think I think I can hear it just fine. And so hopefully you'll be able to hear it just fine. But everyone is kind of being themselves. And it's a little bit like Plato's apology where Socrates is, you know, on trial and he's he's and he's, you know, being interrupted and he's having to give side arguments and so forth. So, a little bit of that is going on. Hopefully, you're going to find all of that quite intriguing because it also has a kind of dinner table feel where all these young people are sitting around and we're talking about the deep things of life together.

and uh then we make some applications to their lives and it really is quite fascinating. So I'm super like thrilled uh to be able to show you that as uh kind of philosophy in in action. Okay. So what was going through my head? Well, first of all, I'm a student of the philosophy of Emanuel Kant. I'm a scholar. I'm a publisher. Some might even call me an expert in the field of Emanuel Kant. This is a philosopher. those of you who don't know him lived in what's called the enlightenment period and he lived from 1724 to 1804. He lived 80 years. Um and during that time he was sort of what's sometimes called the watershed of modern thought.

Those of you who have been following me know that we talk a lot about the Greeks and the early church and people like Thomas Aquinus and others. By the time we get to Renee Deart and we did a Decart special over the last holiday, philosophy takes an epistemic turn. It turns towards the question, what can I know? And for Decart, it was what can I be certain of? It's kind of a subset of this question, what can I know? And so, um, we have this massive epistemic turn in philosophy.

And in the west that broke into two categories and are kind of parallel to the realism and and and idealism of Aristotle and Plato. They're empiricism and rationalism. Decart was a rationalist because he believes some of the things that we know are rooted in the mind. And um people like Thomas Hobbes or um David Hume, John Lockach, these types, they're empiricists because they believe all knowledge begins and really ends with the senses. Although there is this phenomenon of reason, but its truths, everything it knows is rooted in experience of the world through the five senses. And so you have this differentiation throughout the modern period of the empiricists and the rationalists.

And Kant is going to be oftentimes described as the watershed of these. He brings the two together in his critical philosophy. That is he sees the truths of both positions and he develops a higher order position and that's sometimes called transcendental philosophy. And it's based upon Kant's insight or his turn to reason. What are the contributions that human beings and reason buried within the essence of a human being?

What are the contributions of reason that make experience possible in the first place? And that's a massively interesting and revolutionary turn in philosophy. And for the last couple hundred years, philosophers have been trying to deal with this Capernac revolution in Khan's philosophy, this transcendental turn toward reason and its contributions. But it's in those very contributions that reason makes to our experiences that we find these what what you might call four perspectives or what I termed in my talk with these young people these four superpowers of the human being rooted in reason and they directly correspond with the four major texts in Khan's critical period.

You see, Kot was born in 1724, but it wasn't until 17 81, notice that he's 57 years old, when he starts his major philosophical contribution of his lifetime called the critical philosophy. It was a book that he wrote called the critique of pure reason. And in that book, he argues that the human mind is constituted by space, time, and the 12 categories. That space and time in particular are not out there, but they're aspects of the human mind that make it out there possible.

And if that doesn't blow your mind, well, nothing will because it blew the minds of uh philosophers in the west for sure when they finally realized what Kant had done. He called these and there's a technical philosophical jargon for this called the synthetic op priori. It basically means it's knowledge within the human mind that is actively constructing our experiences. And by the way, the critique of pure reason gives us the first superpower that all human beings have, and that is the ability to perceive the world at all. That was a revolution at the time and a watershed moment.

And it creates a bifurcation of reality between things as they appear to us and things as they really are, or what you might say, things as they appear to God. We see them because we have the mediation of the five senses and the human mind organizing the sense datom of the five senses. That's that's what we call nature. That's the way the world appears to us. But we don't see the world unmediated by the five senses and the human mind. Only God sees the world that way. And so when David talks about God knowing every hair in his head and and having knowledge of his heart and you know search my soul and know the innermost me, there's only one person who can do that. That's God alone because he sees things including us as we really are. That is a basic human superpower.

Now, it just so happens that some variation of this superpower is held by other creatures as well. They see the world, they process it, they have a picture of nature. We don't know what that looks like for them, like a dog or a dolphin or a monkey or a bird or anything like that. We don't know how the world looks to them and how they process it, but we know what it looks like to us and we can communicate that and share our experiences. And that's really what being a human being begins as an experience of the world, the experience of nature. Our eyes go on in the great mystery of life.

And that's first superhuman power is the ability to experience the world through the five senses organized by spacetime in the 12 categories in the human mind. Now, that's only one superpower. There are a couple of others. And as you go through Kant's writings, you'll see he wrote a second critique. That's what it's sometimes called colloquiality, but it's called the actual title is the critique of practical reason. And he says at the beginning of that book that we have to make a transition to another perspective. There's another perceptive power that human beings have and that's the ability to tell the difference between right and wrong and act accordingly. We can actually do good things.

And this is a special human superpower because no other creature appears to have it. And I know you know turtles and dolphins and and things can save human beings. Maybe a dog can save a human being. And maybe there are some random acts of quote unquote kindness that we can interpret out of the animal world, but they are don't really have a superpower in this sense. If anything, it's an anomaly. It's like, whoa, you know, that that dolphin saved that person and dragged them ashore or whatever it is.

Um, no. Humans have a unique ability to know the difference between right and wrong and freely be able to choose the mole law and pursue the good and stand against the currents of our sensual inclinations which are rooted to the first superpower.

Khan comes along again and recognizes man that's a great contribution ma matter of fact he wrote a smaller version of that book called the groundwork of the metaphysics of morals standard text in every ethics course in the western hemisphere and even in the east when I was living out in Hong Kong they read that book as well everybody knows the groundwork of the metaphysics of morals it talks about this second superpower that human beings have now before I go and look at the third and fourth fourth ones here uh because they're rooted in other texts that Kant wrote. It's important to note that Kant was not confident that human beings consistently exercise their superpowers. In other words, some people know the difference between right and wrong and they pursue evil or the wrong instead of pursuing the good. That doesn't mean they don't have the superpower. it means that they are either willfully or negligently ignoring it. Um, and so just something to bear in mind. These are potentialities, not necessarily actualities.

The third book, now there's two books. So that book's written in 17 uh I believe it's 86 or so, and he comes out with a second edition. The third book is in 1790. Uh, and that's the critique of judgment. This is the third superpower. We have the ability to perceive beauty and within beauty a kind of purposiveness that we feel. We are also able to create beauty and uh this is in the critique of judgment. Now he he believes it has a utility within reason. And the utility within reason is that you can pursue the good with your second superpower. But nature doesn't always reward pursuers of the good.

Sometimes they re reward pursuers of evil. Nature appears to be blind. In other words, to the superpowers that we have. So we need to know that there's hope for us if we pursue the good. And that's where beauty comes in. Because when you experience beauty, you feel a sense of harmony uh or of purpose of unification of reason whenever you experience a beautiful um say uh orchestra or song or sonnet or sunset. When you experience beauty, it g feels a sense of harmony that this world is going to make sense. But when you try to understand the nature of that harmony, your mind can't fully wrap itself around it.

It's kind of like when when um Socrates is marching around Athens asking the question, what is justice? Or he asks a similar question of Euththerro about justice as well. It's because we have a hard time wrapping our mind around the nature of justice even though we feel it whenever we experience beauty in nature. It sort of testifies to the reality of the meaningfulness of this world and the u the telos of justice that we that reason knows must be the endgame here. Okay. So that's our third superpower the experience and the um creation of beauty. And then the fourth superpower has to do with religion.

And this is where he writes his famous book religion within the boundaries of mere reason. Done a lot of research on that book. I think I could do a whole, you know, series of podcasts just on that book. Maybe I will do that one. I know I've got the one on con coming along. Um, but it could use an added measure for the fourth super power that human beings have, and that's the ability to experience God.

And in this writing, Kant is not at all satisfied with his leaning on beauty to unify the fact value divide the nature and fre you know we pursue good but nature wobbles because it doesn't always reward the good but we experience beauty and that helps to us to experience harmony. Religion comes along because we need to know the purpose of life. We need to know who we are and what our purpose is. And one thing we learned very quickly in life is that you can get glimmers of it from these other superpowers, but you can't really know who you are, what your purpose is without God telling you.

And an experience of God, an interaction with God, a relationship with God is the way in which you come to know who you are and what your purpose is in the world. That's the fourth superpower that human beings have. And so when I got my opportunity to speak to these young people about something near and dear to my heart, I wanted to quicken in them the realization that they're special. If they were on another planet with other creatures that had different powers, their superpowers would stand out because they're unique.

They're they're uh they're part of what it means to be a human being. and that's special. And so, um, I took my one opportunity. They gave me the floor for 5 minutes. I ended up taking, I believe, something like 15 to 18 minutes, something in that range. And that's what I really want to show you next is how this plays out with young people and why it matters how philosophy, faith, and reason integrate with one another. It's without further ado that uh we now turn to that recording. Again, my apologies for its um subpar standard, but you know what? It's real life.

And I think it teaches us something about the importance of asking the big questions, being ready to give an answer, fielding questions from young people, and taking them on an intellectual journey with you while you still have time and while the opportunity presents itself. I hope you enjoy this little discurses on the four human superpowers. Let me try to explain this to you. You see, because there's eight or nine billion of us, you take your superpowers for granted. You don't realize that you have at least four superpowers that make you all extraordinary people.

If you were to go to a different land, a different far away place, you would recognize just how powerful you truly are. But because you're among eight or nine billion other people with similar superpowers, you don't realize the immensity of the gifts that you've been given. Let me try to explain. One of the things I'm going to suggest to you in the brief time that I have is that not all your superpowers are operative. They're potential, not actual. You're living as mere potentiality. But once you achieve actuality with these superpowers, you're ready to change the world. There are four As I said, they're not all operative, but I'll allow you to self assess to see which ones of these are activated within you.

Imagine yourself in a dark room. You can't see a thing. This room went pitch black suddenly. You would probably begin by mapping your environment. find this chair. It's a solid place. I know where I'm at. And from this chair, I will be able to orient myself to the entire room, even though I can't see a thing cuz I always know where that chair is. The cornerstone of your superpowers are not unlike this chair. They're your ability to perceive the world at all.

How many different senses do you have? You know this five five different senses. Those five senses give you access to that superpower. You can perceive the world with five unique sensors. Anybody know what they are? Sight, hearing, smell, and touch, taste. Exactly. That's superpower number one. The ability to experience the world at all. Superpower number two, you are capable of doing good things. No other creature that we know of is capable of doing so many good things. You see, most creatures just kind of go along by instinct using their five senses.

But see, you're able to stand against the current of your instincts and not just do what the river of life is dictating you to do, but to stand against it and do good things. What an amazing superpower that is. Every one of you has freedom in the ability to pursue goodness according to the moral law buried within you. Not activated in everybody, but who are those who have it have an immense power agent. Once you've activated that superpower, you now realize the world is not just because as you pursue the good, everything else is warning against you.

Nature is warning against you. It doesn't recognize the fact that you're pursuing the good. And sometimes it puts you down because you're pursuing the good. And that's why the experience of beauty in music and in art unifies the sense of justice in this world whenever you experience it. makes you believe it's worth pursuing the good nature and freedom in harmony for a very brief moment as you listen to that great orchestra or that great beautiful thing like a sunset or sunrise that makes you feel like the world's going to make sense for just a moment in time. Well, then you try to analyze the purposiveness that you feel whenever you experience beauty.

You realize I can't quite understand it. And so you ask yourself, what's the meaning of life? What is my purpose in this world? I feel justice, but I find it hard to actualize. And that's where you activate the four super. And that is the exper the ability to experience God because it's God alone who tells you who you are. It's God alone who can answer the question what is the meaning of life and what is my purpose in life. And when you activate that superpower, you flip the entire script of life and you find the ground of meaning and being in the world. No other creature that we know of has access to this fourth superpower. So let me review them. Number one, the ability to experience the world at all. Number two, the ability to act good in the world and not just according to your instincts.

Number three, the the ability to experience beauty and even to create it. And number four, the ability to know and experience God. And there you find the meaning of life. Thank you very much. Any questions? Any questions? Wow. What did you prepare that for? Huh? What did you prepare that for? Just for you guys at this moment. Studies based in your K studies. Uh it it has it does have affinities with some of the research on philosophy of K. Yes. Yes. Okay. Yeah. Thank you for that question. Any other questions? Just out of curiosity has a question. There's a question. There's a question. This is a question that may bore so some folks in the room.

I'm curious for the brief enough so that it won't bore people too terribly. Connection to Kant. Oh, right. Well, Kant wrote four major texts and they correspond Oh. very closely to four superpowers. Okay. particular pure reason which he analyzes the very power of having an experience at all. You guys are able to have experiences conscious manifestations of this world in that little bitty mind of yours. I mean it's like a fast little itty bitty mind that we have and that's a that's the first superpower. The second one is what ought I to do? That's the second critique essentially. And you ought to act freely. But freedom alone is not sufficient for moral action cuz people freely do all sorts of stupid stuff and immoral stuff. Freedom must be tethered to the moral law. And the moral law is what makes you free indeed because now you're able to stand against the inclinations of culture and society and your own instincts for some higher good.

The third critique is called the critique of judgment. That's where we experience beauty. And beauty is a necessary experience. things can't because whenever you pursue the good, nature is blind to your pursuing. So you might mean well, but nature might not reward you for it. David talks about this in the Psalms all the time. You know, why are my why are my enemies prospering while I'm not? Why is justice not finding me? Why is it that I pursue the good, but every time I do, I get knocked down for it? Now, there's not a necessary correlation.

The point is is that it appears to be blind to it, but it's in the experience of beauty where you sense a kind of harmony in the world that this will all make sense at the end of the day. And then of course he writes a fourth book called the religion within bounds of mere reason. But I've done a lot of research on them. And that basically suggests that when you try to understand the beauty that you feel in nature or in your own creations, you always come up short of the highest good. There's always air. There's always mistake. There's always shortsightedness.

And if you're going to ever have a chance of overcoming that problem, it's going to be because God told you how to overcome that problem. And that's where the fourth superpower comes in. And that's by the way, this template corresponds to all other lots of other things. For example, love maps perfectly well onto this template. There are four main types of love. They're experienced with the four different superpowers that we have. Epimeia kind of love is kind of sensual love, physical love. You have philea which is brotherly love which is based upon the moral law. You have os which is kind of a poetic love in which you experience that third superpower.

Remember experiencing beauty. Then there's agape love because God first loved us. And that's the fourth one that we don't really have access to unless God gives us access to that kind of there are other things that maps beautifully on this as well like the proofs for God's existence for example cosmological argument based upon immediate sense perception the moral argument for the existence of God maps onto the second superpower the teological argument for the existence of God on design in nature and in the world and then of course the onlogical ical argument for the existence of God, which is the very idea of God proving the existence of God. Um, and so they map very neatly onto this four sets of superpowers that we all possess. Now, when you're when you're doing people watching like I do, I can look at people and I can say, "You got the first superpower activated.

Second one's flickering a little bit." You know, we can walk through each one of it. Well, you know, some of you have a few of these superpowers with kind of like this isn't sputtering. Go ahead. Go ahead. Um, I think let's just use the physical examples because we have a lot of athletes in the room. You guys know that you have capabilities, but you also know you're short of your true potential. And that's a condition we all we all find ourselves in. Excuse me. That's a little rude. She's realized her true potential. That's okay. That's what he not even close.

Well, but the and I think I think in the latest Firestone Bible, we talked about a trained athlete always beats a natural athlete, which fits into this notion of growing into what you were made to be. And so, what always excites me about young people is to realize all they need is a little push along the way and they can actualize the potential that they have buried within them when they have these four superpowers fully activated. Yeah. And so I'm always interested with the artists in the room because that's an important indicator, the third superpower. Not a lot of people have that activated. I think it's a key ingredient uh in living the good life and living the life that you were intended to live.

And so that would be the artistic the ability to appreciate beauty and even to create it. I think that that's a big one. Um, perhaps not as big as agape. Um, but the agape is the most obscure to the uninitiated because it seems so counterintuitive. Why would I love the undeserving? Why would I do such a thing? I got a lot a lot of life to live. Why would I waste my time? You see, that's what the world thinks. But those who've experienced God's love because he first loved us, we are capable of stepping into their world and loving on them in a way that might just might spark them into realizing their potential as human beings.

That comes in a relationship with God. Yes, I was going to clap. ANY other questions? I have a question. Yes. How might we pursue the the realization of these of these superpowers within ourselves? Yes. Well, I do think that as Aristotle puts puts it, habit matters and it usually starts with childlike steps. the physical. This is one reason why I focused earlier on in your lives to use physical stuff as metaphor because you realize your limitations very quickly. You have the Andrew bench.

Of course, of course. And those things then uh as you overcome those, you realize they're just small stumbling blocks in the way of something much greater God has in store for me. But that metaphor works both in the good life as well. when you do acts of goodness, acts of service. One of the reasons I enjoy no no sub so much is they put into practice service in a regular basis trying to do good things making that a habit. I I do think that all all four fall into that similar category.

Experiences of beauty, you know, trying to be creative and uh you know, I'm not quite as good on the piano or with a guitar or with, you know, singing as almost anybody in this room except maybe Jacob. Okay. But he and I were buds in this regard. However, I am trying um you know to work that out in other areas of my life like podcasting for example or writing a book in philosophy. Um and so yeah, I would say practice makes perfect and makes things and all these are Thanks for stopping by to spend some time with me here on the Firestone Files. I hope today's reflections offered you some new insights and perspective on life.

If you enjoyed the episode or found it valuable, I'd appreciate it if you'd take a moment to like, subscribe, and share it with someone you care about. I'd also love to hear your thoughts. What resonated with you? What challenged you? Or what would you like to hear more about in future episodes? Drop a comment below or send in your suggestions to the email in the description. Your input helps shape where we go next. This has been Dr. Chris Firestone. Until next time, keep asking the big questions and remember the kingdom journey is always best with your friends. Further up and further in. Bye for now.

Yes. H. What power do you think I need to work on the most? Um, what power do you think you need to work on the most? I asked the question. I mean, I'd love to hear what you think and I will either affirm it or or try to uh ask. No thanks. You were unwilling to answer the question you asked of me. Correct. No, I do want to dance. Well, I tell you what. I I tell you what I will I will use I will practice some agape and do unto others even if they don't want to do unto me. Uh I'll tell you what I think you should work on.

No, I want to know what you think you should work on. That's not the same. No, that's not the same question. What is the same doing unto I'm asking you to tell me what I could work on and so I'm willing to do the same unto you if you like me. Well, I saw flickers of your aesthetic prowess in your youth. Uh um it has morphed away from creation to appreciation as you've gotten older. I just uh I I I just don't know enough about your daily activities to know whether or not it is um still being creatively active. How's that? Yeah, it's very tactful. Good answer. Good answer. Family feud.